Читать книгу Fun & Original Birthday Cakes - Maisie Parish - Страница 9

Dowelling Cakes

A stacked cake is dowelled to avoid the possibility of the upper tiers sinking into the lower tiers. The Retail Therapy cake is the only cake that requires dowelling but you could use this technique to add extra tiers to any of the other cakes, if you want to adapt the designs.

1 Place a cake board the same size as the tier above in the centre of the bottom tier cake. Scribe around the edge of the board (A) leaving an outline and then remove the board.

2 Insert a wooden dowel vertically into the cake 2.5cm (1in) from the outline, down to the cake board below. Take a pencil and mark the dowel level with the surface of the cake (B) and then remove the dowel.

3 Tape together the number of dowels required (four is usually sufficient), and then draw a line across using the marked dowel as a guide (C). You can then saw across all the dowels to make them exactly the same length. Alternatively, you can unwrap the marked dowels and cut each of them separately with a pair of pliers or strong kitchen scissors.

4 Place the cut dowel back into the hole, then arrange the other dowels into the three, six and nine o’clock positions to the first one (D). Ensure that all the inserted dowels are level and have flat tops.

5 The cake board of the upper tier should rest on the dowels and not on the cake. The very slight gap in between the cake and the board of the upper tier will not be noticed and is normally covered by decoration.