I don't have fondant, I need to make a 3 tiered cake tonight, so, how do I do it? Before, I have tried to frost the cake ahead of time and stack them, but that was a mess because I had to hold the sides of the cake. The next time, I tried to stack the cake and then frost the tiers, but, it took me forever to make it look nice because I would scratch or hit the top or sides of the other frosted layers....so, I was continuously re-frosting and re-frosting.

Is there any way to frost the layers seperately, then stack them without having to grab the sides?....are there any tricks? or do you have to use fondant on a tiered cake?

Here are few links. Edna is AMAZING! Very helpful. Just google search how to frost and stack a cake. There are tons of helpful links.

I frost (and cover in fondant) first then stack the cakes but I never grab the sides of the cakes to stack. I only touch the bottom board of the cakes, never the sides.

Watch this youtube video by Edna De La Cruz - this is how I stack my cakes too:

You can also not insert the support dowels all the way down into the cake and have them sticking up above the top of the cake about 2 inches. When you center and place the top tier over the dowels, quickly move your fingers off the bottom of the cake board and the weight of the cake will push the dowels down into the cake and the top tier should rest perfectly over the bottom tier.

And even better, if you chill the tiers through before stacking, you can manhandle them pretty well without any damage.

Oh thank you so much, that video and your advice is awesome..yay, now I know what I'm doing

IF you have to make the whole cake tonight, you might be better off buying the fondant, to save time. As it is you will not get any sleep.