Baking a Tiered Cake

[jenhen2]

My daughter's birthday is coming up and we're expecting about 40 friends and family to join us for a party. It's very important to me to make the cake myself and I'm planning on making my first tiered cake. Does anyone know if I can used boiled flour icing for the cake instead of swiss buttercream? I am really good at making the boiled flour icing, but never tried the buttercream, which is what my recipe calls for. I am not using rolled fondant, but the party is in December in New York, so heat won't be a problem.

Also, any other tips or tricks for a great stacked tiered cake? I'm finding the internet surprisingly unhelpful as I prepare for this project. Thank you!

[LaureltQ]

Have you searched "How to bake a wedding cake?"

For each tier, I'd assemble and frost it on a carboard or plastic round and use dowels to support the one above.

I don't see the frosting being an issue, though a buttercream like mousseline is pretty easy to throw together if you have a stand mixer.

What type of filling are you planning? Make sure it's something sturdy that doesn't have even the slightest proclivity to slipping.

[jenhen2]

Thanks for the quick replies! I'm planning on 2 vanilla cake tiers and 1chocolate cake tier each of 3 layers. For the filling, I am planning on a stiff chocolate ganache for one layer and the vanilla frosting for the other layer. Do you think that would work? Is there an alternative vanilla flavored filling that might work? I didn't think pastry cream would hold up.

[TerriL]

The boiled flour frosting will work great. Just make sure you give it time to chill and set up before stacking.

[sunshine842]

just make sure you follow the doweling and platform method detailed in the website above -- all that frosting and ganache gets heavy, and will crush your bottom layer.

[jenhen2]

Great - thank you!!! I'm so excited for this!

[sunshine842]

Get yourself to a craft or baking supply shop and buy a copy of the Wilton yearbook -- the instruction pages have a great primer on making stacked cakes.

Alternately, Wilton has instructions here: http://www.wilton.com/cakes/tiered-ca...

I can't help on icing -- I've never made boiled-flour icing.