This is how to decorate a wedding cake. The first thing you need are your three cakes already iced. Take a board the same size as your middle tier and place it in the middle of your bottom tier.
Scribe a line around the edge. This will help you position the dowels and also to position the cake, correctly. You then take a board the same size as your top tier, place it on the top of the middle tier and scribe a line around the edge; again to help you position the dowels and the cake correctly.
You need to use plastic dowels, you can't just sit cakes on top of each other otherwise you run the risk of them collapsing. Plastic dowels are more advisable than wooden dowels, they don't splinter and you can sanitize them so they're more food safe. And you push one dowel all the way through the middle of the cake, right down until you can feel the cake board.
With a food pen, mark on the dowel a fraction above the height of the icing. You then want to take the dowel out and line it up with another 4 dowels. Make sure all the dowels are to exactly the same height.
There's the mark that I made with the food pen, so I'm going to score all the way across so that all 5 dowels are marked at exactly the same height. You can use a small hacksaw, but I find that a serrated kitchen knife works just as well. Then, with your serrated knife, you want to score all around the dowel.
Don't try and saw through the dowel, just score around it, and then snap it. Once you're cut your 5 dowels, you then push them into the cake. Make sure it's the uncut end that goes into the cake and you push down firmly.
So, I've got one in the center and I want to space the other ones out. I've got the line scored so that I can see where the cake's going to go and you want to spread them out because that will distribute the weight of the next cakes. The dowel should be just above the height of the icing so that the next cake is resting on the dowels, not on the icing.
You then repeat the process with your next cake. Once you've cut your three dowels, again make sure that it is the uncut end that you push into the cake and you want to spread them out to distribute the weight. The best thing for sticking the cakes together is a little bit of royal icing.
If you place a little royal icing near each of the dowels. Nobody is going to see it so it doesn't have to be tidy, it's there to act as a glue. Your middle tier, you slide your hand underneath so you're hanging onto the cake board.
Where you've got the scribed line, that's where you want this cake to sit and you can just nudge it into shape if need be. A little bit of royal icing around here and then you pick up your top tier and place that. Having assembled the three cakes, you then want to add some decorative touches.
The easiest way to fix the ribbon into place is with a little bit of royal icing. Just put a bit of icing onto one end of the ribbon and a little bit, onto the other, allowing an overlap because that helps it sit flat, and do that on each of the tiers. And then I'm going to use icing flowers and a bride and groom to finish the decoration.
To stick the bride and groom into place, I'm going to put a little bit of icing just on their feet and sit those in place. When you design a wedding cake, you need to make sure that the design links and the colors link from the top all the way down to the bottom. It looks a lot more balanced.
So, I'm going to place a sugar rose on the top just to link the design. I'm fixing the roses on using a bit of royal icing. I'm going to make a little cluster on each of the tiers.
