I am stacking and decorating a top hat cake tonight. I baked the cakes last night, I was going to do 6 thin 6 inch cakes but the cakes I baked rose more than I thought they would so I am now going with 5 thick 6 inch cakes. Should I stack 3 of them and then dowel and add the last two layers? Also should I put a thinner dowel down the middle of the entire cake? Help! I have never done a cake this tall before and I am worried that the whole thing is going to slide everywhere and go smoosh.

The general rule is to add supports for every 4" of cake height. I'd stack two of your 2" layers, add dowels, stack another two 2" layers (on their own board), add dowels, and stack the final 2" layer (on its own board) on the top. Definitely use a center dowel but not a thinner one (as in a skewer stick), use the same diameter center dowel that you're using for the supports.

Totally agree with CWR41

Doesn't the center dowel have to be sharpened though? I use the plastic dowels at Michael's and I can't stick those through three boards down the center.

I just did this last night in fact. I did use all 6 of my cakes so I ended up doing 3 segments/sections of cake if you will. I did two 2 inch cakes then bubble tea straws, new cake board and another two 2 inch cakes. I forgot about putting more straws in for the 2nd segement and by the time I remembered I decided it wasn't worth making a mess trying to remove cake to put the straws in so ended up with another cake board and last segment of two 2 inch cakes.

I have a large dowel in the middle of mine. I can't be sure on what size I picked (went for the smallest dowel I could still screw into), but my gut tells me it was a 3/4 inch diameter dowel. I just screwed up from my wooden cake board into the dowel (after of course I drilled a pilot hole in the dowel) The middle dowel is almost a must if traveling since the cake's higher center of gravity will make it easier to fall over.

If you go with a center dowel I am very confident you could go 3 layers and then your final 2 layers. Another option would be to torte one layer and go with 2.5 layers for each segment

Thank you so much for the help! How did you get your center dowel to go through the board? I have seen where some people sharpen theirs with a pencil sharpener and then I have seen where other people put a hole in the board before they stacked them.

I put hole in them beforehand. Just traced a circle around the dowel on the board and then cut out. With the size of center dowel I used it would be very tough to use a sharpen dowel.

I did sharpen part of the left over dowel to help poke through the cake, but looking back I should have used a small cookie cutter. This is just because of the size of the dowel since it is pushing a lot of cake out of the way and I was very close to spliting the cake with the size of dowel I was trying to send through.

*side note - now I am reconsidering going back and lifting my last cake segment off to put in the bubble tea straws I forgot. Argg - I just know I am going to make it worse

Thanks for asking this...I have to do a Dr.Seuss hat next month and it will be the first time for something that tall. Mine will be 5-2"layers!