I am working on a wedding cake for a friend. 10", 8" and 6" rounds. I baked, iced and stacked them today. The top and bottom tiers were going to have scrolls around the sides and top. The middle layer is going to be diamonds/quilting. All buttercream. I am unhappy with my scroll work and now have decided that I need to change it. I went ahead and also put the borders on thinking that it would all come together. When my husband walked in and I told him I wasn't happy with it and he agreed that I needed to redo the scrolls I knew I had a problem.

My question is.....can I scrape it down - now that it is stacked with supports in the tiers - and re-ice it stacked? I know if I tear the tiers apart I will have to worry about the supports being different heights. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

a lady i used to work with iced as she stacked, and hers were always fine.

Yes you definitely CAN, but it's going to be far more difficult that just unstacking and starting individually. What kind of supports are you using? Can you leave them in and ice right to their level so they will still be correct? You can always pull them all out and insert again, but you run the risk of swiss cheese cake and a problem with support that way.

If it were me, I'd unstack, leave the supports, scrape a little off all over, re-ice just enough to make it smooth, restack and proceed. And after the scraping process you will be a much happier camper if you keep the cake chilled, especially with the additional handling.

All is not lost! Breathe!

Thank you both for your help. I think my main problem was that I had been working on this cake for almost 15 hours (baking, making icing, and decorating) and I was extremely tired. I shouldn't have tried to do the scroll work after such a long day. I put the cake in the frig, then the next day I was able to remove the scrolls with a toothpick - one by one. The bottom tier I had not completed, so I was able to remove what I didn't like and re-do this tier pretty easily. The top tier I removed the scrolls and tried to smooth with a viva paper towel. When I wasn't satisfied with that I went ahead and removed the border on that tier, smoothed it out a bit with hot water, then added a thin layer of icing and smoothed it again with both hot water and viva. I changed the pattern on this tier and added the borders. I was happy with the finished cake. Thank you again for your help!!