How Do You Travel With A 3 Tiered Stacked Cake?
Decorating By jakenheather Updated 6 Jan 2010 , 1:36pm by tracycakes
I have a 90 minute drive to deliver the wedding cake, 6, 9, 12 square. I am in a debate of stacking before I leave, or leave early and do it there...
I was wondering what you CCers have done, or suggest.
Thank you,
Heather
I travel with stacked cakes all the time. I despise stacking cakes on site. I just stack with dowels and go. Cakes are always chilled so they are firm and less likely to move around and I put in a central dowel as well. You could use a stacking system like the SPS or wilton plates and dowels too.
I delivered a cake to Nantucket Island. I am in NH so it was a 4 hour car ride (with traffic) and a 2.5 hour ferry ride. It was 4 tiers and I brought it fully stacked in a box and it made it with no issues at all. It was fully chilled and there was no central dowel. It's in my photos... turquoise and white with dark brown accents... and it was a 4-7-10-13. Once you do a few... the terror goes away. I promise. 
Thank you, I have traveled with 2 tiers stacked and am just nervous traveling this monday with thte 3 tiers...
If you have time to order SPS, traveling with it assembled is no problem. A center dowel should get you there, but know that it's no guarantee. If you have to slam on your brakes (like I had to once resulting in my first slider), the cardboards will stay in place, but the cakes can slide right thru those dowels.
FromScratch, I've always wondered something and perhaps you can educate me? Cakes can go from frozen to thawed within minutes. So if just chilling (not freezing) a cake makes it sturdier for travel, how sturdy (chilled) does it stay in a 2 to 4 to 6 hour transporation ride? Doesnt' it get to regular room temp practically right away? I dont' chill my cakes at all, and it seems to me that the cake would be chilled only for about 15 minutes, give or take, so please fill me in on how this actually works. It's always been a puzzlement to me. Thanks!!
Exactly Indy - I have always wondered the same thing when I read this. When I take frozen layers out of the freezer to thaw for use it doesn't take long for it to unthaw and that's in a house that it kept at 68-70 degrees.
I would like to know how this works also as I have never done more than 2 layers (hobby baker do what I want) because I am afraid to do more than that and travel and no to assembling on site.
I also don't know if I would like to refrigerate my cake with gum paste decorations on and risk something happening to them. I am very interested in knowing how this works.
Thanks.
SPS! I hauled a 4 tier cake, already stacked, for an hour in the rain 2 weeks ago and it never moved. I probably won't travel with a 5 tier just because I can't carry them but they never move with SPS.
SPS of course! I even let customers pick up a three tier stacked all by themselves. And to make them feel more secure, I put my hand under the cake board and tilt the cake at about 30 degrees and hold it there. "See nothing's going to happen to the cake. You'll be fine."
Seriously, anybody not using SPS by now, I don't know why. It's not for my lack of preaching. Cheap/disposable/secure/sturdy/easy.
This may sound silly, but what is SPS?!
I'm a newbie too and wondering the same thing! I am delivering a two tiered cake tomorrow and not to worried about it shifting but I would love to use SPS (whatever it is) for a larger cake in the future!
http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-603925.html
SPC info is a STicky ... .link above.
A frozen single layer of cake thaws generally quickly... it takes more than 15 minutes for me though and my house is kept a warm 67-70 degrees as well. I don't freeze them for transport. I don't ice them and cover them frozen either... I don't like doing that. When I put the cake together... the layers are cold. Fill and ice the tiers and chill them before I put the fondant on. Then stack and decorate and pop it in the fridge. It takes a long time for them to come to full room temp. My sister's baby shower cake was still cold in the center and it was out for a few hours. Maybe it's a scratch vs mix thing? I know that box cakes are more airy than scratch cakes and maybe they thaw quicker? I know my icing is pretty sturdy since it's mainly butter. It also gets rock solid when chilled so that helps too. I have no idea why it takes one of your cakes 15 minutes to completely thaw from the fridge... mine take hours (all stacked), and if they were frozen it would take much longer... but they have pounds of butter in them. A 10 inch round cake would have about 3.5 sticks of butter in the cake and 3 more in the icing. It sets up damn hard when cold and I think that helps a ton.
Now let me say that after 6 hours on the road I know the cake wasn't still rock solid... I never claimed that it stayed chilled for the entire ride... just that I chilled it before I headed out. It was an airconditioned ride and it wasn't 90 degrees for the ferry ride (it was humid though). I know being chilled helped.
Also... if there will be gumpaste flowers and such... I put them on after I take it out of the fridge. I haven't tried to chill them, but I know some do. I don't want to risk that.
http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-603925.html
SPC info is a STicky ... .link above.
typo ... meant SPS, not SPC. 
A frozen single layer of cake thaws generally quickly... it takes more than 15 minutes for me though and my house is kept a warm 67-70 degrees as well. I don't freeze them for transport. I don't ice them and cover them frozen either... I don't like doing that. When I put the cake together... the layers are cold. Fill and ice the tiers and chill them before I put the fondant on. Then stack and decorate and pop it in the fridge. It takes a long time for them to come to full room temp. My sister's baby shower cake was still cold in the center and it was out for a few hours. Maybe it's a scratch vs mix thing? I know that box cakes are more airy than scratch cakes and maybe they thaw quicker? I know my icing is pretty sturdy since it's mainly butter. It also gets rock solid when chilled so that helps too. I have no idea why it takes one of your cakes 15 minutes to completely thaw from the fridge... mine take hours (all stacked), and if they were frozen it would take much longer... but they have pounds of butter in them. A 10 inch round cake would have about 3.5 sticks of butter in the cake and 3 more in the icing. It sets up damn hard when cold and I think that helps a ton.
Now let me say that after 6 hours on the road I know the cake wasn't still rock solid... I never claimed that it stayed chilled for the entire ride... just that I chilled it before I headed out. It was an airconditioned ride and it wasn't 90 degrees for the ferry ride (it was humid though). I know being chilled helped.
Also... if there will be gumpaste flowers and such... I put them on after I take it out of the fridge. I haven't tried to chill them, but I know some do. I don't want to risk that.
This may be a stretch, but your butterceam may also have something to do with it. I use a meringue buttercream and it definitely takes my cakes iced/filled in SMBC longer to thaw than cakes that I made using a powdered sugar based buttercream.
Yeah.. that was my thinking. I think the combination of a dense scratch cake and the meringue buttercream (all that buttah) makes a difference. I find myself worrying about when I take the cake from the fridge not thinking it will thaw too fast, but thinking it has to come out so that they will be able to serve it and not have it be too soild.
I was thawing a frozen 12" round chocolate layer and it was out for 25 minutes and still mostly frozen... and that was just a single 2" layer. I take cakes from the freezer the night before... put them in the fridge overnight and then take them out to the counter in the morning. I wish they would thaw faster... LOL.
I can't say enough great things about SPS. I used to hate doing tiered cakes because I hating cutting dowels, fearful they would collapse, had problems getting it level, etc. I would have never considered travelling an hour with a 4 tier cake stacked already on some pretty rough roads.
I don't worry about level because I know they will be, although I do check them. Even my hubby is sold on SPS. He's seen what a great product it is.
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