Hello all my friends!
I have been asked to make a wine barrel cake for my haircutter for December. Like a paying gig - sort of! As you may know I am a hobby baker and everything I make is big because I like the way it looks not necessarily because it needs to feed x amount of people. Now this cake is to serve 50 people and it will be cut at an event place so they will cut the right sizes not family-style. (PS that's pretty optimistic to have an indoor event in December in NY for 50 people these days but hope springs eternal!!)
So far I am thinking of the starting size being 10"/8"/8" board 8"/8"/10" (the 10" is the top and the bottom)
How do I figure out how many that serves?
Thanks in advance,
Theresa
aren't wine barrels bigger in the middle and smaller at the top and bottom usually
but anyway -- how tall will this be? are those 2" tall layers?
My thought too, -K8. I think she means the two 8" tiers will be the top and bottom with the 10" in the middle. I would do it as a double barrel with two 10" layers and two 8" layers on top of a cake board and the same configuration, in reverse, on the bottom. This will yield approximately 60 party size servings.
so i would make it 8" across 10" tall and 10" across the fattest part of the middle for the profile i would want -- that could be fudged on some -- that's a nice amount over the servings you need -- not too much -- -- i would do from the bottom up 9x10x10 board 10x10x9 pre-carving size
i would want those sizes so i could carve it -- it's kinda fat -- if i started with eights my barrel would be too skinny -- that's how my head sees it
Thanks for setting me straight - yes, yes the 10's in the middle! And yes, K8 kinda fat - in this case that's a good thing! I don't think I have 9" pans but I will see!
I like that it would be 60 servings so it's over but not tremendously so
I've had that song in my head for a week for some other reason but its funny!
I appreciate that I can always count on the you both for advice !
xo
Theresa
I had another thought, theresaf. If you didn't want to do drastic carving, you could bake one additional tier, crumble it and mix it with buttercream (like cake pop mixture) and fill in the spaces between the 10" layers and the 8" ones. That way, you would have very minimal cake loss and the mixture molds really well.
if i didn't have nines -- i'd do all 10's because the top and bottom tiers are angled, cut in and if i used eights i would have sixes when complete --
there's no wrong way to do it --
Sandra I love your idea - plus I like the idea of having an extra layer in case I dont know In case I got hungry or needed a little more height! So I will do that.
And Kate - I completely agree if not 9s then 10's
Now a friend having a micro wedding next Saturday (20 people) just asked if I would make her a handbag cake. (nott the wedding cake) Sure - what day job?!? lol That I have done before so I feel pretty good about that.
Thank you!
T
Yikes, don't get yourself over loaded theresaf! It is a good thing you are familiar with the handbag cake, so likely no surprises.
I love handbag cakes -- I'm on standby to come help 
Dangit, wish I had handbag experience! I want to play too.
Ugh I can never log on from my phone so I had to get on my laptop!!
Sandra your cakes are always so beautifully sculpted - a handbag cake would be a breeze for you
Right now I'm just deciding which texture mat to use - maybe it will be a quilted or an alligator bag? It's gonna be a light pink, which would not be my first (or second choice) .
In other news, I went to a 2nd Michaels to get some fondant because the one nearer to me had zero inventory. The 2nd store is now carrying Satin Ice fondant as well as Wilton. And they had gold shimmer fondant too - I'm excited about that so let's see how it all plays out.
Sandra & Kate you are always welcome to "swing by" lol
T
gold shimmer fondant -- wow!
who knew, not moi obviously -- but it amazes me all the cool stuff you can get nowadays -- and we used to get b*tched out (by customers or were they sucktomers) 
for not being able to mix fuschia...before they started bottling it -- stone age decorating haha hahaha
signed,
a dinosaur
I am happy to hear that, theresaf. I usually make my fondant, but I do love Satin Ice Chocolate fondant It tastes like Tootsie Rolls! I may have to try the glittery stuff, just because!
-K8, I know decorating was harder and more frustrating when you started, I dabbled a little bit myself, but you learned and you are a real decorator! Today, we mostly depend upon molds and gum paste flowers. To me, it is sooooo much easier to make flowers out of gum paste, although it takes longer, than it is to pipe pretty ones. I am in awe of your kind of decorating. While not a lost art, not many people are good at it anymore.
sandra, your work is outstanding!
I am proud of my accomplishments in the field -- I learned from library books and wilton yearbooks initially -- I went to wilton's when it was in rose lawn, in chicago -- it was 'rose' something pretty sure it was rose lawn -- it was a long dang time ago nearly fifty years-- yoiks -- it was breathtaking! all those perfect cakes in the yearbooks were enclosed in all glass sided displays you could walk through -- they changed them each year of course --
I was lucky to get employment as a baker and later as a straight up cake decorator without much real experience up to that point --
when the kids needed something special for school or something and the budget wouldn't budge -- I'd always get a cake call! I worked my cake job, thur, fri, sat and did my own cakes on top of that -- ha! ouch! took a few days to recover 
I absolutely loved it!!!!
Kate your knowledge of all things baking and decorating should be called Kate-Apedia! You are always the source of info whether it's first hand knowledge or know where to find it. I always appreciate that.
That's really what this site has been about for me is the first hand experience and the no judgement! Although I check in less frequently I still see the spam/voodoo curse stuff but the this site does hold the best info and connects us all together.
Thank you, Kate. I am just lucky to have some artistic ability, because old school cake decorating not only requires talent, but a lot of patience and practice. Sculpting and making flowers, for me, comes pretty easy, but I struggled for years to get a smooth cake and am just now starting to achieve sharp edges. My flower piping skills are almost non-existant and I've only tried string work once, what a joke! I have Wilton year books from long, long ago and, like you I just drooled over the designs. I actually did make three wedding cakes, stacked and everything, using the designs. Everyone thought they were wonderful, but that's because none of us knew any better, seriously.
Theresa, I think once Jackie is back to good health, she will be able to take care of the spam problems. In the interim, we tag them and she deletes them (they still show, but are not there if you click on them). She's have a very hard time and a long, long recovery.
I've never clicked on one of the spam links but good to know there's nothing there. I am sure it is a long road for Jackie and she is in my thoughts
Remember back in the day there were also mods? I guess that doesn't help the behind the scenes and coding workthat Jackie is good at but she is keeping the site from being totally overrun and that is definitely good news!
theresa -- k8-apedia hahahahaha too sweet! 
" I have Wilton year books from long, long ago and, like you I just drooled over the designs. I actually did make three wedding cakes, stacked and everything, using the designs. Everyone thought they were wonderful, but that's because none of us knew any better, seriously."
sandra and everyone -- see to me there seems to be this high (grand?) expectation for cake deco that every cake needs to look like wilton's glass menagerie of royal icing camera worthy flawless beauties that i mentioned above-- and i think you'll agree there's room for alll kinds -- some of the homeliest cakes on the planet took the most time and energy and to me that's love -- and while kerry vincent is a legend in cakedom, rightly so and has accomplished wonderful wonderful things -- i think cakes made in real time are the best -- not the ones that took months to create into museum quality perfection -- nothing wrong with museum quality perfection but is that really cake? dude, when i started i couldn't even get the camera to focus -- the flash took out all the detail -- took weeks to get photos of big white blobs back from the developer hahahahaha
the only big cake competition i ever did was one where the cakes had to be ones that could be created in real time in a bakery -- that emphasis really appealed to me --
there's this one decorator who was on tv with several other decorators on a weekly show and her work was sometimes criticized for being "messier" but i would call it impressionistic --
all that to say i think this is one area where we were better off 'not knowing any better' = happier
a pretty cake is a pretty cake is a pretty cake to me --
I would add that a pretty cake is one that will be enjoyed and eaten!
When we were young, my brother Steve and I would always be looking for something sweet to eat in cabinets.You'd think we were starved lol but we were mostly bored. And then we saw the bottle of dragees. Ooh so silvery and pretty they must be delicious right? Oh Jeez we almost broke our baby teeth! I shiver when I see them on a cake now, I know it's supposed to be pretty but that one experience was quite a turn off! Clearly I am not the museum-quality work type but I can appreciate all the hard work that goes into it.
K8 but I see you learned all of that part so you could draw from that to make what you wanted !
I agree with everything you said about the grand expectations, -K8. I was never able to enter Kerry's Oklahoma State Sugar Arts Show because we couldn't leave our kitties, but I always wanted to, just for fun. The big competitions are more of an art thing than a cake one, in my opinion, and there's nothing wrong with that. But, to me the best cakes are rustic frosted buttercream or cakes surrounded by fluffy, piped borders and gorgeous piped flowers! Nothing I admire more. Of late, my go-to design has been a simple butter cream frosting with an accent gum paste flower.
Theresa, your poor baby teeth! Agreed, dragees are beautiful on a cake, but I only used them one time and they almost broke our adult teeth! They are wonderful for my chocolate sculptures, but no one eats them. My husband doesn't even like sanding sugar on a cake. Doesn't like the crunch. I love it because I like the sparkle and the crunch.
sandra, cool -- then those three wilton cakes from long ago are so too wonderful -- wedding cakes are just beautiful things
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