How Do I Carve A Spherical Cake
Decorating By praetorian2000 Updated 14 Oct 2006 , 11:03am by MikeRowesHunny
I don't have time to get a ball-shaped cake pan, plus I have read that several people had issues with how that pan baked their cake. My thought was to stack 3 2-inche layers and carve a sphere. I have never carved anything in my life. I have 3 leftover cakes in my freezer that I could practice with before I do the actual cake. Any tips, suggestions, advice, etc for how to turn a 3 layer round cake into a sphere? Or would 4 layers be easier?
Cluck Cluck Bawk Bawk Big Chicken here. I couldn't do it 
Why not use two cakes baked in bowls and sandwich them together? Grease the bowls well and use a palette knife to get them out. I used this for the teapot on my 'tea on the lawn' cake which is in my gallery, before I got a sphere cake tin. I'd worry about carving smaller and smaller until I was left with a cake ball if I tried to carve layered cakes!
Carving a sphere sounds really difficult to me. I'm not sure what sizes you'd have to use to accomlish a reasonable shape without a large amount of waste.
Do you by any chance have a Pyrex (oven-safe glass) bowl in the size you want? You could bake two cakes in the bowl and stack them to make a sphere.
The bowl I used to make the top dome on my Fall Basket cake (in my photos) was about 7 1/2" across (fit on top of an 8" layer cake, which was--after slight shrinkage during baking--also 7 1/2" across). I don't remember the exact height of the half-sphere, but I know it was about 3 1/2 inches before torting and filling. That would mean that it was about half as tall as it was across--a nearly perfect half-sphere.
If you have a bowl that is less deep, you could use a round layer cake pan in the middle, between two bowl cakes.
If you can do that, it would be a lot easier than trying to carve a sphere.
The main thing you would want to do is make sure it had a stable base (probably by cutting off a bit from the bottom). You also might want to consider torting each of the two half-spheres and filling them, and then using a cake board between the two cakes. A sharpened dowel rod through the cake, top to bottom wouldn't be a bad idea.
RP
Debbie Brown uses 2 cakes baked in pyrex mixing bowls to make spheres, when you put them together, they are already on their way to being round (with a nice flattish base so it will stand well), you just have to finish the job off. If you need the instructions, pm me your e-mail address and I'll send them to you 
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