I have a huge slice of oak tree that will have a 4 tier wedding cake on it, 12/10/8/6. The client wants it to look like the cake is on the stump, meaning no visible cake drum underneath that 12" bottom tier. The stand is too tall and too heavy to use as I'm making the cake, and will be already on the cake table. How do I minimize/eliminate the drum? This cake is a rough-iced design, so will not be able to be stacked on site, but instead delivered fully made. Help! (thanks)

i do this all the time for cakes displayed on plateaus --

place a piece of nubbley shelf liner on a 16" foam core board that you then place the 12" drum onto -- the shelf liner  and weight of the cake will hold things in place --

and ice the drum and corresponding 12" cake as if it were all one tier--

you can then handle the cake by the foam core that you will discard at the venue when you set up the cake--

in fact i'd usually use a smear of icing to hold them together but you maybe wanna not get the stump messy or oil stained --

you'll have a few little spots to repair around the edges --

love me some rough iced cakes

One thing you need to make sure of is that the stump is 100% level. I delivered a cake that the bride wanted on a tree stump, but when I got there the stump wasn't perfectly level so we couldn't use it because the cake looked like it had a lean in it.