60th birthday cake

[wobblymum]

It's my mum's 60th in a while and I'm baking her a suprise cake. The only thing is that our family have loads of different tastes so I was going to make 3 small tiers - sponge, chocolate and fruit. The only thing is then, how big do I make each one because I can't really visualise how many people each will feed, like I usually can with one big cake. It's only got to feed 6 of us, and leave a few pieces over for a couple of friends, and to eat later.

The hard bit is not making each too big but leaving enough on each to give everyone a slice of whichever they want without one running out!

I'd make the 3 different cakes, put them on a board and make them look like flowers with icing, and petals etc.

Cannot really advise on sizes, as ANY leftover cake gets gobbled in our house! Perhaps about 8" in diameter each?

It sound like 3 very small tiers will be plenty. With a rich fruit cake you usually cut it up into little rectangle about 1 x 2 inches - that would fit into a postal cake box. With sponge or chocolate you might cut large pieces, possibly in the usual wedge shape.

How are you planning to display the cake? With tiers you have to worry about the weight. I would definitely make the bottom tier from a rich fruit as it is denser and can take the weight. You also need to ice it with proper royal icing if you want to use columns. I am worried that a sponge or chocolate will not support the weight of another tier balanced on top of it.

If you use roll-out icing for the bottom tier, you may get away with sitting the columns on top of a small cake card on top of the fruit cake to spread the weight a bit. But on a sponge or chocoate even that might not work, and the whole thing could cave in.

You could sit the cakes directly on top of each other in the more modern (American) style, but even then I am afraid the weight-bearing tier of sponge might collapse.

There is one more way - you can hire a cake stand from a cake decorating shop which sits the three tiers on three posts of varying heights and does not have the weight of one cake on top of another.

I have often made tiered cakes with a soft icing/covering, and I'm going to reveal to you my 'trade secret': the trick to making cakes stack without collapsing is plastic straws (the Macdonalds sort). If you want one cake to sit directly on top of another, ie no pillars, then push 4 straws firmly straight down into the bottom cake until they reach the cake board, mark where the top of the cake reaches on them, carefully pull out again and trim to size. Then push them back into the same holes and put the next tier on top of them. If you like, you can just push one straw in and mark it, then use it as a gauge to cut the rest of the straws. It's better that way, but you have to be confident that the surface of the supporting tier is perfectly level. The next tier has to be on some sort of cake board, but if you don't want it to show then use a very thin board the same size or smaller than the tier. 4 straws will easily support an 8 inch cake, but if you want to put a third tier on top then 6 straws in the bottom tier and 4 in the second tier might be better. If you want to use pillars, then the technique is the same, but when you have pushed the straw in, slip a hollow pillar over it and mark the position of the top of the pillar.

It's ages since I made a proper fancy whacky cake, and my fingers are itching...

20 years of cake decorating and I had never heard of that trick! What a good idea. Thank you, boyandgirl.