How to assemble a wedding cake – tips and techniques of assembling a tiered cake
Years ago, before I started attending cake decorating courses, I always wondered how to assemble a wedding cake, especially the tall tiered ones. Now, after attending various baking courses and having made many of such cakes myself, I have come to learn the right techniques of assembling tiered cakes, including cake dummies.
2 broad categories of tiered cakes.
The first category is tiered cakes which are stacked directly on one another.
The second category of tiered cakes are those cakes which are stacked together using pillars
Of course, there are also designs which use both methods, and once you know the techniques of how to assemble a wedding cake under both these categories, then assembling tiered cakes in a combination of designs becomes very easy.
Tools needed for assembling tiered cakes:
The next basic thing in making tiered cakes is the utensils needed. You must have the following items to make stable tiered cakes:
Dowel rods
- these are long and thin wooden rods and are widely available in baking speciality shops.
Cake boards
- For stacked cakes, you will need a base cake board which should be larger in diameter than that of the lowest tier cake. You will also need cake boards for the rest of the other cake tiers but the diameter of each cake board should be the same as that of the cake it will hold.
- For pillared cakes, you will also need a base cake board and this is similar to the stacked cakes. As for the other tiers, however, I would suggest that you use the separator plates. separator plates are a must for tiered cakes which use pillars. These plates have special knobs at the bottom where you can secure the pillars into. Separator plates need to be slightly larger in diameter than the cake it is holding and most commonly it be 2 inches larger than the cake diameter. If the separator plate is of exactly the same diameter as the cake, you will not be able to do a border at the bottom for the cakes.
Pillars
- there are many different types of cake pillars available in the market. They come in different shapes and colors and are used to make tall tiered cakes. Each tier would typically require 4 pillars, so if you are making a 3 tiered cake, then you will need 2 sets of such pillars.
Want to learn how to make your own cake boards? Click here for step by step instructions on how to make your own cake board and decorate it.
Next - assemble tiered cakes the correct way
From How to assemble a wedding cake (basics) - Back to Wedding cakes
Back to Homepage
|
