'scuse me - comeoveneer (or anyone else) - can I borrow your upside-down cake expertise for a minute?

[stealthsquiggle]

I am planning to try and approximately copy this R2D2 cake

I know you make (beautiful ) inverted tiered cakes, so I was hoping you could advise on how much support it would need - do I need to build in dowels and/or board(s) part way up R2D2?

He will need to be stable enough to be transported - not a huge distance but down windy lanes...

Bump for CoV [hopeful]

Don't know how tall it actually will be but yes I would definately add dowels and therefore board (will also aid in cutting it as you can dismanlte it on the boards and then slice. How many actual cakes are you using?

Generally for a topsy turvy cake I make each layer out of 3 slices, with 2 layers of filling. Each cake is 1 inch bigger than the previous one I assemble them with the largest at the bottom, then next size then smallest. Once they are assembled (trimmed so the overhang is removed)/filled/crumb coated I turn then over so biggest is at the top. I then cut a circle (to match the board of the next tier about 1 inch deep into the top of the cake, place 3-4 dowels (depending on size of cake) into the bottom cake and the next teir sits on these dowels in the hole I made (this adds to the support.

If the cake is very tall and needs to be transpoted I sometimes put a central dowel all the way through the entire cake to stop teirs sliding off, but this is a pain in the neck as it has to go through the boards as well. I don't think it will be necessary in this case.

HTH

Thank you so much - you are a star.

I am not sure yet how tall he will be either - I am about to get uber geek DH to find me some diagrams so that I can get him correctly in proportion - so he will be however tall he needs to be given the size of pyrex basins I have to make the bottom and top.

So I was thinking - bottom curved bit (v small circular cake (black iced), then hemisphere cake), then board, then straight bit (2 cakes), then board, then top bit (another hemisphere, more or less) - I think I should then be able to put a dowel/rod across the top board to support the legs in place as well.

One more question - do you use thin boards for the middle ones, or the 'normal' thick ones?

I use a thick board for the base then sit each individual cake on thin ones

I would suggest you make the legs out of syrofoam covered in fondant and secure to the cake with toothpicks.

It is tempting, but I have a 'thing' about cakes being 100% edible. I was thinking about using rice crispie cake (edible styrofoam) though.