Do you fill before you carve or carve before you fill?

I need to make a laying down jar and want to make it about 4 layers high. I'm stacking up pieces of a sheet and will *try* to carve it so it looks like a jar.

They want pineapple filling which would need a thick icing dam.

Can I carve it first and then separate the layers to fill or will that ruin my shape? If I fill first, I'm worried that the pineapple will leak out once I've
"carved" away the dam.

HELP!

I don't know about the pinapple filling, and I have never carved a cake ( I will next month though) But on the cake shows that I have watched they are usually filled before carving. I'm sorry I am not really any help to you though!

I've carved a few cakes, and I always carve before I fill. I make sure the cake itself is frozen solid first. Once I've done all my carving, then I'll split and add in the filling. You can stick toothpicks in the side so you know what matches up to what when you put it back together. I guess it would depend on the shape to see if you would make a mess, but I think it would be okay. you don't want a thick layer of filling anyway because that can cause the top layer to shift. Carving already makes such a mess as it is - I can't imagine having a filling getting all the place too! Ha ha. I carve on a cookie sheet to catch most of the crumbs.
good luck!

I always carve BEFORE I fill b/c when I stack the cake I don't know where to put my dam of icing to hold the filling in, if I would fill before hand I might carve to much away then my filling would start to come out... and I don't want to try to fix that mess...

That's what I was thinking!

I make enough of a mess as it is, LOL!

Thanks.

I always fill before I carve. BUT i only use buttercream or ganache for filling. If it were ME I would probably mix in some of the pineapple filling with buttercream instead. Torting a frozen cake is a PITA!

I also fill before carving but I usually just fill with BC so I don't have to deal with filling and refrigeration....

Maybe I'm confused, but couldn't you use round cakes cut in half? I did a tube of lipstick that way. Cut baked round cakes in half, slapped icing between the layers to stick them togeher and voila! Maybe you don't want it to be "half" a jar, but if you made rounds, you'd only have to be carving the area around the neck of the jar. If this isn't what you pictured...just ignore me. HTH!

I would agree about carving first, then filling.

But I don't like to carve frozen cakes. So, I've just kept them good & cold in the fridge. I would start with cold cake, do the carving, then chill it again before you try to move the layers at all.

I use a flat cookie sheet to move the layers around while I'm filling the cake, and it's worked well. My mom had a really old one in her kitchen that is super thin, which means it's also warped a bit, but it still works very well for torting!

oops....sorry about not paying attention to the pineapple filling. Sounds YUMMY though! Hope it goes well. Can't wait to see pics! Good luck!

We do alot of carved cakes and depending on what "shape" you are doing, we almost always fill first and then carve. After we fill the cake layers we just stick the whole thing in the fridge for about 10min and then carve away. It might come out just a little, but that is to be expected...

I always fill, freeze, then carve. I try not to use many slippery filling for cakes that are going to be carved or stacked. They are less stable and your filling will ooze more.

I fill after I carve if its a filling like the pineapple. If I am just using buttercream, I fill then carve. I also don't had a need to freeze the cake first. I have a special recipe I use for carved and 3d cakes. I hate freezing cake!

Wow, thanks for all the responses!

You have all raised some very good points which I will keep in mind next weekend when I carve the cake.

Thanks again!