I need to make a cake for 150 people. I am fine with a 3 or 4 tier cake.

I am a hobbiest baker and this is a cake for a friends 40th birthday bash. It's going to be a BIG party obviously and I'd like her cake to be special.

I currently have the following pans

12 inch round
8 inch round
6 inch round

9 inch square
6 inch square

In looking at Earlene's serving chart I don't really think I could make a pretty cake (proportion wise) with these pan sizes for 150 people.
Am I missing something? Do any of you more experienced bakers see a combo that would work for a 150?

The max pan size for my oven is 14 inches.

So here is my initial thought.

14 inch round (will have to buy the pan)
9 inch square
8 inch round

My concern is the 8inch round on the 9inch square. Are they too close in size?

Oddly I have a 14 inch cake dummy and I stacked them up and I don't think they look bad but having never mixed square and round, I would love any feedback from people who have done this. Or other suggestions on tier sizes. Also if I absolutely had to I have a friend with a larger oven that she would let me use.

I have tons of time. Party is in Feb. Would like to keep cost down because I'd rather spend the money on the Satin Ice and other things since I'm doing the cake as a gift. I know...very expensive gift

Thanks in advance.

Cristy

Put the 8"pan on top of the 9" pan. How does it look?

Mike

I looked at it and it seems fine but not being experienced I have no idea once I get the buttercream and fondant on the cake if it will look ok or be right on the edge. Does that make sense?

Even stacking the pans then may look proportioned but I find that once you ice them and cover them in fondant they may seem to close together in size....

generally I always try to do my tiered cakes in 2" increments....

for example 12-10-8 etc... this gives the cake nice even proportions when looking at them stacked.

HTH

this is totally my preference but I really dont like to see square tiers on top of round tiers.

I just think it looks funny. but I really like mixed shape cake with rounds on top of squares.

That said, I don't think your square pans are big enough to use as the bottom tier. This is what I would suggest...

Have you ever done a double barreled tier? Where you stack the tier double height so its 8" high instead of 4"?

you could do all rounds and get enough servings. I use the Wilton chart so you might have to make adjustments if your serving chart is different. but you could do:

double height 12" round - 112 srv
regular height 8" round - 24 srv
regular height 6" round - 12 srv

or even double up on all three tiers and you'll have enough cake and a stunning tall towering cake.

I did this cake http://vertucakes.com/blog/2009/11/02/teal-and-black-very-tall-birthday-cake/ each tier is double height 4", 6", and 8" rounds. it was really impressive because it was so tall and skinny.

I LOVE the double height tiers I think it's a beautiful look but it scares me to death. I'm a newbie. I have every intention of doing a practice cake first. I have pretty much totally freedome over the cake design so I can assemble on site if I need to. How do you do your tier support for the super tall tiers? I've seen this done where they put cake boards in the middle of each tier so it cuts correctly but it just seems like it would be so unstable.

I normally use SPS. They make the super long legs so I'm assuming I could use that but man it would make me nervous. Your idea of only doing the double height on the bottom doesn't scare me so much so that's good.

I bake my tiers as normal only I bake two of the size that will be doubled, in your case the 12".

I level, torte, and fill them as normal, with a cardboard cake circle on the bottom of each cake. I crumb coat them separately and then I dowel the bottom cake and put the top cake right on top. I do the final coat of frosting on the whole double barreled tier. My cake was buttercream.

in your case you're doing fondant so you could do it a bit differently.

option 1: easiest
do two 12" cakes as usual and cover each in fondant separately, then dowel and stack them. use a ribbon, either fondant or fabric to cover the seam between the two cakes

option 2: requires more skill
crumb coat, dowel and stack, then give the whole thing another coat of bc to smooth between the two cakes and cover the whole 8" high cake in fondant.

it depends on the design if you could cover the seam. I think you could come up with a really creative design that incorporates your seam hiding ribbon in the center of each double height tier.

good luck.

thanks leanne, I really appreciate the feedback. I am planning on doing a test run so I can try the double tier and see how I feel about. I think it such a beautiful look if I can pull it off

Well... You want to stack paper and pans to get an idea of what it would look like... Get some meat wrapping paper, newspaper, etc and using your 9" square pan, make 4 of them to form an 18" square bottom... In cake you would want to double that, of course... That gets the majority of your cake out of the way... Put your 12" round on top of that either making it an extended height cake or not... You could put a 6" on top if you wanted. That leaves a lot of room for decorations... You didn't really say what kind of design that you had in mind. If it's flowers, bows, etc. then you have some play room...

Good luck!
Pat

Pat that's a great idea. I didn't even think about baking multiples of the squares as the base. I use the SPS system so I think that would be fine as long I put them together well. Right now I'm thinking of doing the black and white stenciling on at least 1 layer, haven't made a final decision on that. I've seen so many neat black and white cakes I'm sort of in idea overload.