Hi everyone,

I'm about to make my very first wedding cake for my girlfriend and I need sume advise. The cake will be 4 tiers and each tier will be about 12". How often, in general, do I need to insert cake board and dweller for support?? I'm making the cake with box cake and sour cream mix so the cake is a little more denser than regular white cake. I'm not sure staking the each tier to make 12" high would be too heavy without any support in the middle.... Or do I need a cake board just for each tier??? I'd appreciate if you'd share your experiences. Thank you.

I use a cake board and dowels for every 4" of height in a cake........if the height is an odd number like 9" I use a board and dowels every 3" of cake.

HTH

I use boards under every single tier. When I have a significant amount of decorations around a layer, I cut a foam board large enough to support those decorations plus the cake tier, so that the cake can be easily taken apart with the decorated tiers intact. I find that many times the cakes are larger than needed to feed the people present because people choose the design that they like - rather than calculate servings needed. The exception is large wedding cakes for very large weddings. I've never had too many cake boards, but I have had too few :>) Oh, yes.... and I use dowels under EVERY tier. You never know for sure how a cake is going to settle - especially in the summer!

Dweller?

Let me make sure I've got the mental picture. 12" across and 16" tall, right? (A tier is 4" tall X 4 tiers.) So it looks like a column?

I figured by "dweller" they meant "dowel" and just misspelled

??? Did you really mean each tier is going to be 12" high???? That's 4 feet tall, a lot of cake and a monster for what would be your first wedding cake??? jmho

Whoa, I read that 12" measurement differently. You could be right. Four tiers, each tier being 12" tall.

Impressive.

I would not even attempt that. Good luck!!