Just an opinion polll....dies anyone else hate doweling cakes as bad as I do? Of all the steps in doing a tiered cake I hate doweling the most!!!
yes! i dreaded it -- i used to wake up my husband to cut the wooden dowel for me -- always working late into the wee hours of course -- but then i had to man up and quit bugging him -- steak knives were my friend -- ha!
then i switched to the 3/4 inch plastic hollow dowel -- love those and they snap off easy peasy with pruning shears -- but working for someone else setting up wedding cakes ultimately took the sting out of it for me -- and delivery got fun too --
everything about it just gets so much funner (sic) when your name is not on the dotted line :)
For some reason, doweling doesn't bother me at all. My husband does cut my dowels, but that is because he is a good cake husband and likes to help. I also do it in the daytime, lol. Being a hobby baker has it's advantages!
jchuck -- i don't usually use the center dowel except for tilt-a-whirl type off center cakes -- where i would thread the tiers onto a cake board with the center dowel already attached --
i've tried the center dowel -- pounding it in -- but i think the center dowel makes it more difficult for the cake server and i never used one for the first forty years of caking -- i don't see the benefit, myself -- but a thought for you -- if you pierce your cake board in advance -- your center dowel will go in much easier --
If a cake is going to fall or slide nothing will stop it. It will just rip around it..
Over the yrs I have used all kinds of doweling. In the beginning (back in the '80s) of course we used push in pillars. Then went to wood dowels that I cut myself, then to straws. Straws are soooo strong and soooo easy to cut to size and don't leave a funny taste on the piece of cake where they are inserted. Like Elizabeth said, if a cake is going to fall or slide nothing will stop it. So we have to make sure our layers are level. That;s probably the #1 thing - w/.o perfectly level layers the tiers will not be level and the higher one goes up the more the cake will lean and eventually topple.
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