I will be making a 4-tier wedding cake on Thursday and have a question regarding cake assembly. The square cake pans (2" pans) I used were 4.5", 8", 10", 14", and there are 2 layers for each tier.
All the tiers will be stacked except their will be a 4" pillar between the 8" and 10" tiers (I am using the Bakery Crafts SPS system). How is the best way to assemble this? Would I use a single dowel on the 10" & 14" (and a single dowel for the 8" & 4.5") and use the SPS system between the 8" & 10" tiers?
Help!
A single dowel won't provide adequate support.
http://www.wilton.com/cakes/tiered-cakes/stacked-tiered-cake-construction.cfm
The single dowel only helps keep the tiers from shifting during transport, they do not provide support. Each cake needs to be on its own cardboard and that cardboard sits on a series of dowels in the lower level. Basically the cardboard and dowels act like a table and keep the weight of each tier from pressing down and flattening the tier below. The board and dowels support each tier, not the cake below.
Thanks for replying!
My main board will be a fondant covered 20”x20”x1/2” (which will be ¼” thick plywood and 3/16” foam board) and each tier will be on its own cardboard; I guess I should have made myself a littler clearer in what I am trying to do.
So if I understand this correctly, I will need atleast 4 dowels inserted into the bottom tier to support my third tier.
The third tier will NOT have dowels in it because I am using the SPS system (plates & pillars) to support the second tier.
The second tier will have atleast 2 dowels inserted into it to support the top tier.
I just want to be sure that everything will be supported firmly as I will need to transport about 80 miles!
AThat is not enough dowels. On my cell so can't search for the right number. Not familiar with using the sps/pillar system so not how that all works though. Four dowels is not enough to support the ten inch. You need something in the ten inch to support the upper layers and not sure about supporting the top little guy. Part would depend on the weight of the topper. Do some Googling on cake supports.
Thank you everyone for your replies! I will be using the Bakery Craft SPS system so based on the youtube video I just watched about using this system (from Chef Alan Tetreault), the wooden dowels are NOT required. I'm a little nervous about it only because of the distance I will need to drive for delivery, but I'll let you all know how it turns out and will post pics as well.
Thanks again!
As long as you are using the system through all the layers you should be fine. I thought you were only using that between the 8 and 10. Good luck with your cake and delivery.
I was originally going to do that because I thought I needed dowels too, but after watching the video, I realized that I didn't need dowels at all :)
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%