The local bakery in my town just closed so I'm going to have to make my twins' birthday cake by myself...and I've never decorated a cake before! I am wanting to make a two-tier heart-shaped cake. I want the bottom layer to be red w/ pink hearts or dots and the top layer to be pink w/ red hearts or dots. The icing will be buttercream. Do I need to use dowels? Do I need to frost the layers separately before I stack them? Any advice would really be helpful. Please e-mail me at [email protected] with any tips. Thanks!!
Hi! Welcome to Cake Central! You'll love it here, everyone is so helpful and friendly!
You should definitely dowel your cake if you're doing more than one tier. Here's a link to an article on stacked cake construction:
http://www.cakecentral.com/article23-Teired-Stacked-Cake-Construction.html
It is better to ice the cakes before you stack them. You will need a cake board underneath the top tier (should be cut to the exact size of that cake, so it doesn't show), use this board to hold the cake - carefully! - without smudging the icing, and if you don't push your dowels all the way into the cake, when you place the tier on top, you will have a second to pull your fingers away as the weight of the top tier pushes the dowels down, so you don't smudge the icing on the bottom layer.
Also, if you're doing red icing, you will need a lot of red colour which makes the icing taste bitter, but you can get Wilton No-taste red. Please bare in mind that the red can stain peoples teeth and clothes!
I hope this helps, and I'm sure there will be others with more advice who have more experience of this (I've only done one stacked cake so far!)
Kelly
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