Hi! I am just starting to get into baking and cake decorating, and I have a very simple beginner question about stacking cakes. I want to make a birthday cake for my DD (inspired by one I saw here). The bottom tier will be 10" and the top tier will be 6." I'm thinking just 2 layers per tier will be high enough. Can I set the smaller cake directly on top of the larger cake? Is just a cardboard circle enough? Or do I need to use dowels? Thanks in advance for any help/advice!!

a 10 inch should be able to support a 6 inch with just the cake board circles. Two layers should result in 3 inches...so the cake would be 6 inches tall....is that high enough? that is up to you. hope this helps

You always want to use dowls under the cake. You might think its not too heavy, but after its iced, it weighs alot. It only takes a second to cut 5 dowls then to ruin your hours worth of work! Good Luck!!

Thanks so much for the advice. Is two layers going to look too small? I'm not feeding that many children, but I do want to make sure it looks good! I don't care if I have a ton left over. LOL!

Okay...so, if I've got this straight...I poke wooden dowels in the larger cake, then put the smaller cake on a board, and set it over them, right? Sorry for the questions, I'm VERY new at this and I really want to do it correctly!

For a small cake like this you could always use the paperlike sucker sticks that wilton makes. Also, you should have one that is longer in the middle to go through the top tier to make sure it doesn't slide. I sharpen it with a pencil sharpener first.
Hope this makes sense....good luck I'm sure it will be cute.

Place a dowl in the cake and mark it, then pull it out and cut all the dowls to this size. Use a cake board the size of the cake you are going to place to mark the top of the icing so you know where to place the dowls. one in the center, the rest around in a circle. Now you can either place the same cakeboard you used to mark your spot back on top of the dowl so you can slide your cake right onto this, makes it easier to move around and center, or, use a spatula on one side and hold the cake with your other hand to place it on top. then pipe a border or use a piping bag to fill in the gap smoothing with a sm spatula.
If you look at my cake photos, the two tiered ones are all just 2 layers. Each layer is 2 inches high with filling in between so the cake tier is a little over 4 inches tall.

Thank you all so much! It's starting to make a lot more sense now!!