I am new to decorating and I don't have any experience whatsoever but I can decorate a decent cake.

Anyway, I am baking a tiered cake but it is just for my brother who is moving back to Michigan from Florida and I wanted to bake a small cake because we aren't going to eat a huge cake and I don't want any leftovers. I baked a 6" and an 8" cake and I plan on stacking the 6" on top of the 8" but I don't want to use a board...what will happen if I don't use a board?

My cakes are pretty firm so I don't have an issue with it falling apart.

If you're going to serve it from the place where it is decorated--in other words you're not going to transport it in a car, etc.--and it isn't going to sit out in heat for any length of time, you'll probably be fine.

If the cakes are torted and filled, the weight of the top tier may make the bottom tier bulge/split/crack, or the top tier may sink into the bottom tier a bit (that can spoil the bottom borders on the top tier).

Not sure what the objection is to using a cake board(s) and a few dowels...it's a cheap, small insurance policy so that your hard work can be appreciated and admired. You can cut a cake board from foamcore or any corrugated cardboard (just cover it with some saran wrap) and you can use heavy straws (the ones for McDonald's milkshakes are OK) for make-shift dowels on a small stacked cake.

Whatever you choose to do, hope it goes well. Show us some pics.
Rae

The reason why I am not using dowels and a cake board is because I don't know how to yet and I don't have the time to learn because I'm baking this cake for tomorrow.

I am a serious beginner! And I am only stacking them so that I don't end up with too much cake using any of my other pans. We just need a small cake.

You may be taking a chance that your 6 inch cake might cause the 8 to sink in. I t is not hard to cut a few straws the same depth as your 8 and cut a 6 in circle out of any kind of cardboard and put your 6 on it. Then just put it on top of your 8. You might be glad you did.

if you look in my pictures the first birthday cake i made for my little girl is a stacked cake without any boards, i only used a skewer or two in it and it held up fine, it is four cakes two for top tier and two for the bottom.

i didnt have to travel with it, but if i did i would just sit it on the front seat of the car and drive really slow. lol

kylie

If each size of cake is only one layer then I wouldn't hesitate to make the cake without dowels. If you look at the Hexagon cake in my photos, each size is only one layer. On this one I actually stacked all three without any dowels. I also didn't travel more than a few blocks with i so I didn't have any problems.

If each size of cake is two layers each then i would dowel, that is a lot of weight on the bottom cake.

HTH

Leily

I would use the dowels, it really doesn't take any time to learn.
Yesterday I baked the same sizes you are making to do a practice cake for my sister's wedding and my MIL was over. I stacked them up unfrosted to give her a quick idea of how deep the cakes will be and it wasn't stable and that was only a couple minutes.

Please don't assume you don't have time to learn. And like Blakescakes said, you probably don't need any special equipment to do it.

Check out the CC tutorial:
http://www.cakecentral.com/article23-Teired-Stacked-Cake-Construction.html

I don't see any reason you couldn't cut out a cardboard and 4 straws for tomorrow. It's a great reason to learn something new.--the cake you save may be your own

If you really want to make sure the cake is ok, then please cut a cake board the size of the 6" cake & use a few dowels. It is just safer.
What will happen if you don't? Well, I guess you would find out if you don't use them! LOL

I've done a few tiered cakes (in my pics) and I've never used a board in between the layers. I have, however, used dowels, which as mentioned, is easy enough to do. It just gives it a bit of stability, especially if you're traveling. Good luck.

Samantha

You will be surprised how heavy a cake can get! Do yourself a favor (and your wonderful cake) and start off right from the beginning by using a board under the 6in and dowels. You can cover the board with foil on both sides too. I use contact paper usually. Even if you use straws this time for your dowels,you'll be better off in the long run.
As far as traveling with a cake,the last place you want it is in the front or back seat. You want a level surface that you can put some non-skid material down and then put the box on that so your cake doesn't move in transport. The seats are not level and are a disaster waiting to happen to all your hard work.

Are you doing 1 layered or 2 layered cakes?

If you are doing a 1 layer 6in and a 1 layer 8in then you shouldn't have any problem stacking them on top of each other. We stack two layers together all the time with out boards when doing 2 layer cakes.

Generally you want support if you are going over 4 inchs, unless you are diong 3 inch tall layers, then I'd add support then as well.

Well I ended up not stacking them after all because I couldn't get the darn icing right! It's my first time with this cake decorating stuff and I call myself teaching myself because I can't take the class because they don't offer it at a time that's good for me. So I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to icing it smooth....the sides and edges were really hard and it seemed like my frosting kept seperating.

So it looked AWFUL..so bad I didn't even want to take a picture of it.

I just wanted to cry...how am I going to ever learn to icing it right without a class? I read the instructions on how to icing a cake but it didn't work for me. How much icing are you supposed to put on it? I'm not sure if I used enough. I used about 2 cups or so for an 8 inch 1-layer cake. The edges really look bad.

Any tips? Were you all really bad when you started off? I want to keep practicing but I don't want to keep making that icing and a cake to practice everyday.

The Wilton charts say you need about 4 cups to fill, ice and decorate the 8" but most people feel that's a little skimpy.
It's impossible to tell what you were doing wrong without knowing the kind of icing you were using and what method you were using to smooth.
You're never going to get the cakes as smooth as the pictures from the yearbook, someone on here recently said that they sand the cakes iced in royal icing.
If this was the first time you tried to smooth a cake don't give up, it's really not as hard as it seems and lots of people never take classes.

My suggestions for getting decent icing is to get a big icing bag and the icer tip and look in the paint section at wal-mart for one of those spackler things. Put lots of icing on the cake with the icer tip then use the spakler to smooth the cake. Then you can take your spatula and dip it in very hot water, shake off the excess and very,very lightly touch the cake to finish smoothing. Smooth the sides first then the top. Also get a revolving turntable to put your cake on when icing-they are about $10 at wal-mart