Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A
Doweling Worry!
Hi all!
I am a Newbie at making cakes. I have seen loads of video about doweling the cakes just to secure them during transport.
My question is when we dowel the next tier does the dowels have to hit the base tier board? or they just hit the base of that particular tier…
i am a bit confused as i see people stacking tiers along with board and then doweling everything together…Please enlighten me with what exactly happens as when i see Paul doing it in his video it appears as simple as could be with just stacking tiers on one another in between having dowels on each.
Hi all!
I am a Newbie at making cakes. I have seen loads of video about doweling the cakes just to secure them during transport.
My question is when we dowel the next tier does the dowels have to hit the base tier board? or they just hit the base of that particular tier…
i am a bit confused as i see people stacking tiers along with board and then doweling everything together…Please enlighten me with what exactly happens as when i see Paul doing it in his video it appears as simple as could be with just stacking tiers on one another in between having dowels on each.
Hello ankitagupta
Paul places each cake on it’s own cake card. Each cake is dowelled using the 9 dowel method while the icing is still wet. This is to prevent cracks which can occur if dowels are inserted into dry icing.. The dowels go down to the cake card which the individual cake is sitting on and not through every single card right down to the bottom. Allow the icing to dry overnight. Have prepared a couple of days in advance a cake drum which will be the platform for the largest cake. Apply some ganache or royal icing to the drum and place the base cake, still on it’s card, onto the cake drum. Stack the remaining cakes in order of size as seen in the tutorials. That’s all the dowelling done and each cake stacked.
Some people like to use a centre dowel where a hole is made in each card so a central skewer can be driven all the way down to the bottom. This is called a centre pole construction, the measurement for the centre has to be pretty accurate for the pole to sit centrally. Anyone can use this method although I have seen it mainly used for securing very tall tiers or on cakes which may have many small elements. You’ll have seen Paul sometimes drill holes in cake card so that a centre pole can be used. I can’t find in which tutorials he has used this method but if I come across one I’ll let you know. I have never used centre pole construction on stacked cakes so can not say how well it works. I have used a centre dowel when making the teddy cake so the the layers are held together.
Follow Paul’s dowelling and securing methods in the tutorials for good results. This great blog explains the mechanics of dowelling, I hope it helps you.:
http://www.cakeflix.com/how-do-cakes-work-1
