Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I will be baking my first three tiered wedding cake for March and am planning on transporting each tier unstacked and assembling the cake at the venue. Would you recommend that I use buttercream/royal icing on top of a cake before stacking the next tier to give the cake some stability?

Hi Mandy

Butter cream for for adhering tiers is not a good idea. as it doesn’t set hard enough for the job. Royal icing sticks very hard and can cause some of the fondant to come away with the board when removing the stacked tiers. Ganach is strong and can be removed more easily (chocolate melts) by sliding a hot pallett knife under the board causing minimum damage.
If the venue is an hotel, staff will deconstruct the tiers behind the scenes so any fondant damage will not be seen by the guests.
To make strong white chocolate ganache use three parts chocolate to one part double cream eg 300gm white choc x 100ml double cream.

Thank you for the suggestion! I will give this a go in a trial before the big day.

Another source advised not needing to use anything to stabilise the stacked tiers. Is this safe? I am worried that when the bride and groom go to cut the cake the tiers slide off, or if children are running around and knock into the cake table, the cake might tumble into a big mess!

Hi Mandy76

I don’t know which source has suggested this but if you look at all Paul’s tutorials he always uses ganache for securing the tiers. Might give you some confidence if you just have a quick peep at some of them. The tiers, as you rightly say could topple if unsecured. Far better to be safe than sorry. Good idea to have trial run, you’ve got plenty of time to get some practice in. Hope it all goes well for you. x

Thank you for your advice! I will try all of this out. I am quite new to this website and am finding it most useful!