I'm so excited, I've been wanting to do a topsy turvy cake for a while and a friend has asked me to do one last night. Okay, so it's for tomorrow, but I love them enough to say yes and would rather try this out on them vs. a stranger. However, I'm a little nervous, because my friend loves my scratch, super moist, red velvet recipe, and I don't want to have the cake topsy turvy right on the ground. The cake store is closed today so picking up a SPS system is probably out of the question, (our michaels sucks, I doubt they have it) and I'm not feeling super confident in using my normal dowels for this. Also, in reading a tutorial, I saw the tiers were 3 layers vs 2, is this normal? Any useful tips or hints in aproaching this project wouldve greatly appreciated. TIA
You can use bubble tea straws. If I can't use the SPS I like the straws better than dowels. Scroll through this tutorial, it is a good one and should answer all your questions.
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/71115-demo-topsy-turvy-cake/
Good Luck and post a picture when your done!
I use the straws from Sams Club(just buy a drink and take a handful),they are very thick and strong.If you dont have a membership then there are several asian marketplaces in ATL,I know there is an International Marketplace off of Jimmy Carter,behind the Chickfila.
Ok, so maybe someone could give me some advice on if I can make this work, because I keep running into bad luck, miscalculations, etc... So I don't have enough batter to make a third level for the top tier (Its red velvet, and no more color, and refuse to leave!). So for the bottom I have 2 10" and 1 slightly messed up 8" round (forgot to spray pan, but think it's salvagable). One of those 10" is smaller, maybe only 1" tall after leveling and before torting. Other two are slightly less than 2". The top teir has a 8" and 6" layers. Are these proportions going to give me a weird looking cake? Should I leave the 8" off the bottom? Ugh...I need a simple solution!!
you can carve them to the angle you want.....anything goes with topsy turvy......go to youtube and put in topsy turvy by janelle
I made my first topsy turvy yesterday. I would use dowels and a center dowel down the middle. Because of the angle the cakes are heavier on one side. I didn't dowel my top cake down the center and it fell. I had to take it home and fix the damage and place a dowel through the entire cake. I guess we live and learn from our mistakes.
I want to do one for my daughter's b-day this weekend, but I'm just so scared!!!
I don't have enough batter to make a third level for the top tier (Its red velvet, and no more color, and refuse to leave!). Ugh I need a simple solution!!
I feel sure you are long past this point now, but if it was to happen in the future, you could always use a different color food coloring, especially if it would coordinate with the cake, so it would have been, red, different color, then red again...still a red velvet cake, just not red. I made a "pink" velvet at Easter one year & "green" velvet once too. To sorta repeat what someone said, TT cakes are crazy funky anything goes cakes. Plus it doesn't hurt it is for a friend. Please if you have any info to help me out I'd love it!! Can't wait to see the pics!
Daltonam, i haven't even started carving or putting the cakes together, Between Morning sickness and being nervous about putting it together, I can't seem to get motivated this morning! I'll be sure to post pics (I hate the design that one of our friends suggested, so that's going to be another major block) and let you know what I learned! 
I'm going to be attempting my first topsy turvy cake soon. I baked my layers last night and wrapped them nice and tight and stuck them in the freezer. I'm pretty nervous about it but I've been wanting to try it for awhile now.
I watched the youtube tutorial and I will probably watch it several more times before I attempt to assemble the cake. But "Karen421" posted this link to a tutorial in another thread and it looks very helpful. The cake in this tutuorial is 3 tiers. I'm only doing a 2 tier for my first attempt. If that turns out, I'll try a 3 tier next time.
This tutorial tells you exactly what size each layer of each tier is. I'm going to use the sizes she used for the top two tiers. 10/9/8, 8/7/6... except I'm doing 8/8/6 because I don't have a 7" pan. Here's the link: http://forums.egullet.org/inde.....urvy-cake/
Good luck Bskinne and everyone else who is attempting this! Can't wait to see everyone's pics 
Oh, and I'm also using bubble tea straws for support. I've used them on my last several tiered cakes and they work great. I ordered mine online.
That's the tutorial I originally saw. My bottom layer is the three cakes, but the top is only going to be two because I was too lazy/sick to make more batter. I have the bottom layer stacked now and it's so tall, so I'm scared it's going to look kinda weird. I only have a few more hours to get this done, talk about working well under pressure!
Here's a 2 tier topsy turvy I did
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1218997
It's not quite as dramatic as the 3 tier, but it's fine. Make the angles a bit more severe to make sure it's clear that you did it on purpose.
My take on the design, cover it in fondant and be prepared to dowel immediately - you don't want your fondant to harden too much, it cracks easier with the displaced weight. I always do my base board as 4 corrugated cake boards, glued and wrapped. Bottom tier on it. Using wooden dowels and my husbands wire cutters I slide the dowel into the bottom, lift it up marking with my nail where it was and use the wire cutter to cut the angle - don't pull the dowel all the way out, just slide it up and cut, slide it back in place. 5 dowels in a circular kind of setup.
I use 2 cake boards for the top tier, the cake is on one of them, use RI to glue the other board to the top of the dowels, centered and where I want it to be, a little squirt of RI on top of that board, then put the 2nd cake on it's place. Have ready a sharpened wooden dowel or 2 and a hammer. Hammer it down GENTLY and perfectly vertical until you tap into the base board a bit. Snip off the rest of the dowel. Use some decor to cover up the hole or wet down some fondant and create a patch.
If I'm doing a 3 tier topsy turvy I use 3 sharpened dowels and then cut them level at the top of the second tier and put the top tier on them with the same double board and RI deal. Then one long dowel down the center.
HTH
I'm doing a 2 tier, so that's helpful, I figured it's less mess when it all comes tumbling down....right now it's moving into disaster territory. The top tier is red velvet, and cream cheese icing, and when I tried to build it upside down, it's started sliding. So I turned it over and it's like one big goopey cake ball mess. I've had issues using this cake for shaped cakes because it's so moist and soft. I think it's going to cause me a big problem. They wanted the whole thing rv but I vetoed that because I knew the bottom could support itself if it was. Ugh. I might need a miracle.
So, just a quick update while I take a break, and if i'm on here, it prevents me from ripping my hair out! I had to rebake the top tier, and it at least stayed together. Barely. It was falling apart some on the sides and the results make it look like I've never worked with fondant before. 
I've got to do some creative decorating to hide the flaws but I guess the most important lesson I've learned is to use a very sturdy, dense cake...the bottom tier turned out great. So back to the kitchen, wish me luck, and hopefully you'll see the cake here before cake wrecks.
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