AHi, I am gifting a 4 tier cake for 200 to a family friend next month. Well, I'm getting paid for the ingredients,I'm donating my time. Is going to be 14, 12, 10, 8 inch tiers. I'm practicing ow, since I've never made 14 inch cakes before.

I used this recipe here:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Double-Chocolate-Layer-Cake-101275

The pan I put it into is a 3 inch Wilton, can't afford the other lines of pans now. I used bake-strips around it, connecting two. Didn't use a flower nail, because I wanted to see how it came out with the Bake strips. I did collapse in the middle, took longer to cook than the sides. I'm sure there will be a disparity in the moistness, so cake nail next time??? Also, this only came to about 1 1/2 inches, so I either need to level and tort this or make two more, instead of one.

Questions: what do you recommend? Should I level this, and tort it? Seems like really thin layers of cake, 1 1/2 inches, would have four of them for the first, bottom tier, with 3 layers of filling. Seems like it wouldn't be that strong since the cake is moist. I get confused about this aspect of baking/decorating. I know how to stack them, etc., I'm actually going to splurge and get the SPS system for piece of mind, but what makes up each tier?

Here are some photos. Thank you, Nancy

[IMG ALT=""]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3199166/width/350/height/700[/IMG] [IMG ALT=""]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3199167/width/350/height/700[/IMG]

i use 3 1-inch-layers for a 4 inch high tier. Most tiered cakes have 4-5 inch high tiers as a standard. 

Assuming the recipe baked properly, I would bake 2 more layers, fill and frost. 

AThat's what I thought! Thank you very much. This is going to be a very expensive cake I'm making as a gift! Nancy