AHi everyone, I would love to ask a question. I know it might sound foolish, but please let me down easy.

My SIL wants me to make her wedding cake. Herein lies the problem: the cake she chose requires carving; I can't carve a cake if my life depended on it. Now the stupid question is, can I use bundt pans instead? As in for each tier, bake 2 bundt cakes and one 2 inch cake (2 inch cake to be sandwiched between the bundt cakes) and then cover the whole thing in ganache to hide the grooves? If this is remotely possible, will it be sturdy? What kind of support system would I need? It would be a 3 tier cake like the one below. Pls help me! TIA

http://www.swankcakedesign.com/color/ambers_charcoal_hydrangeas.html

I'm definitely not an expert at all things cake decorating, but I recently made a jack-o-lantern cake using 2 bundt cakes. After I covered the cake in fondant (and before I made a ridges) it looked like a big ball. It wasn't a perfect round shape, but if you plan to add decorations to the tops of each layer like your picture it would hide that. I had to drive the cake 2 hours to a family birthday party so I bought the thickest dowel rod I could find, which was still too thin, had my husband cut it to the size I needed, then wrapped it in fondant so it was a snug fit. I'm not saying its the best and greatest way of doing it, but it worked for me.

You don't have to carve this cake.

You can use shallow mixing bowls of different sizes to bake the cakes in two sections per tier, plus the one round that you already figured out.

But you need to do some homework here.  Your SIL is asking for a very intricate and labour intensive cake.  Get some price quotes so that you know how much this would cost her to order from a local bakery.

Then try to negotiate a fair price for all your time.

AI apologise for the late response. @ Amanda, thank you for answering that. I had been rolling it around in my head. Nice to know the grooves don't show after ganache.

@ baking Irene, you are one of my cc heroes. I've picked up sooooooo many tips from your answers to others. Im really grateful that you took the time to reply. You saved me further, i was asking myself how and where i would get a 14inch bundt pan.

I live in Nigeria, and everyone has her/his own system of charging a customer. We never charge by the serving size though, because the cakes hardly get eaten at the reception. There are sheet cakes that are served, the main cake is just for pictures. After the reception, the couple take their tier, groom's parents get one and the bride's parents get one. Depending on the number of tiers, any one from the families can get one too; this helps a lot in the days after the wedding when the parents receive a barrage of visitors coming to congratulate them on their children's wedding (they can serve cake and drinks). I apologise for the long explanation, i was trying to explain why we don't charge per serving.

Thanks again Irene and Amanda. I'm very grateful for your time.

I thoroughly enjoyed your explanation, dinmauk! Thanks for taking the time to write it. Actually, charging per portion has less to do with the number of servings you will really be getting from the cake and more to do with how to charge for the size cake you're making. In fact, when most people do sculpted cakes, they charge for the number of servings you get from the cake before you cut it down to size, because you actually had to make all that cake in order to get what you finally end up with. I agree with BakingIrene - I'm an inveterate user of mixing bowls (glass or aluminum) to bake in when I need a strange shape, and if you use them, you won't have the ridge problem. The nice thing about mixing bowls is that they are slightly flat on the bottom, so even if the tiers are ball-shaped, you have a stable base to set them on. This is a really lovely cake. I hope it comes out just like you want it to! By the way, I love the quote in your signature - so true!

Added later: Here in Mexico, cake decorators often charge by weight, but not always by the weight of the final cake. When you say you need a kilo of cake what you're actually asking for most of the time is cake made with a kilo of flour.

AMarianna, LOL! I was typing the explanation and asking myself 'does anyone even care?' Wow, cake by the kilo? Hmmmmm

I'm definitely using bowls to bake this cake, i can only hope i do the design (and the designer) justice. My flowers are smaller than these though, so i'm at work making a whole bunch of flowers. Plus i have to travel with the cake (i'm thinking ganached and frozen) 1 day before to get there. Pray for me!

If you could travel with separate tiers and stack them when you get there, it would probably be easier all around. I wouldn't freeze them after they're ganached, because the condensation that forms as they thaw can be a problem. My experienced is that once a cake is ganached, or frosted or covered with fondant, it is sealed and it stays fresh and moist for three or four days, at least. And that's in the hot, humid climate I live in. Not sure what the weather's like in Nigeria. Just make sure everything is stabilized for traveling and you should be okay. Anti skid material, if you can get your hands on it, can be a lifesaver. Best of luck. I'd love to see a photo of your finished cake.

AThanks, I'll do just that. About heat here, hmmmm, I've been to Australia and it makes me smile when I see Australianss on CC talk about heat. On a cool day, the weather here is about 39 degrees celcius (102 Fahrenheit?) and the humidity is off the chart! Thanks again for your help. I'm very grateful.

Chidinma

Oh, lord, and I complain when the thermometer gets above 30 (yes, Celsius - don't get all freaked out all you people who live where there's snow - that's just below 90°F).