Made a 3- tier (6 cake) Slanted top wedding cake last week. Base 12", middle 10" and top 8"
Each tier was made of 2 3" depth pound cakes covered in marzipan and fondant and separated on thin board and dowelled with 5 plastic dowels.

Transported individually to the wedding venue without problems. And was told by all reception staff that it was the best cake they'd ever seen!

After stacking the cakes, noticed that the middle tier was beginning to shift off the board. Tried to do damage control by inserting additional dowels to the side of the cake.

Unfortunately, reception venue was marquee with wooden floor boards and so each movement rocked the cake, reception did not begin until 4 hours afterwards...2 hours late! The final straw was in the dance before the cutting of the cake - resulted in HUGE cracks across middle tier.

Feel so so terrible that Bride will not have good cutting of the cake memories and cake was so attractive that half of guests rushed forward to take pics and so got good view of cracks! Bride very gracious about the events, still said the cake was beautiful and tasted fab.

But I am soo soo crushed and have had sleepless nights an several weepy moments since then! What did I do wrong?

I don't have any advice, but I am so sorry that happened to you. It is a beautiful cake!

What method did you use for constructing the cake? The cut out and slot in, or just stacked on each other?

I stacked them on each other

Is the picture before or after the cracks?

I'm sorry this happened to you. What kind of filling did you use? It sounds to me like the layer slide off each other. It happened to me once. I used too much jam so it got slipery and the layer start sliding. Luckily it was for a class.

I am so sorry this happened to you but we've been seeing a lot of these stories lately. I'm sure it's partly the summer heat etc but I am going to pop in with Leah_s advice ...use SPS. No sliding, no slipping ..it would have cost you less than $10 to use SPS in a cake that size. And if you buy in bulk you will always have it on hand.

Hmmm, well the slot-in method is so much more secure and stable becase your cakes are sitting on a level surface, so there is no sliding around and a lot less movement potential (in fact, none at all).

Thanks for your replies! The picture is before the cracks and the cake did not have any filling apart from some jam used in the carving of the top of the cake.

Where do I get SPS in the UK...although truth be told, I am so very afraid that no one is ever going to order a wedding cake from me again!!! Really finding it hard to stop the tears!

I know you feel badly that the cake had gotten some cracks, but if the bride was happy and raving about the cake then I would still count it as a success

I would contact Bakery Craft who makes SPS or Global Sugar art or oasis cake supply and see if any of them do international delivery. Do you have access to wilton products? They make something similar called "hidden pillars" or push in pillars or something. Apparently it's not as strong as SPS but if you can't get SPS it's a good place to start.

Don't let this ruin your cake mojo From all of the posts from the pros on this website where they have had a cake actually crash or fall and they're still in business, I'm sure someone else will order from you again. In the meantime, did you use a center dowel to help stabilize the cake? You should check out the topsy turvy tutorial here on CC that shows the cut out method and SPS all in one go. I think it will help you for your next crooked cake.

Best of luck and remember everything is a learning experience.

Looking at the photo, it seems like the middle tier isn't centered on the bottom one, and that it's REALLY tilted more than it should be. If it's dowelled with the tier above centered over the dowels, then the top is really off from the bottom. When you stack the tilted cakes they still need to be centered over each other. If they're off-center a lot then you should make sure that the dowels are really centered with the tier they're supporting.

To me, I think that the problem was the degree of the tilt in the center tier, but that's just my guess based on the photo!

I'm trying to remember what it looked like now, but were the tops of each tier also tilted, or was it just the sides of the tiers that were slanted? I seem to remember that the tops were level, but the sides were slanted, and it could be that you just did too much of a dramatic tilt on the middle tier.

Try Squires Kitchen in the UK for the SPS system.