Monday, June 20, 2011

Topsy Turvy Wedge Cake Tutorial

I hope you all enjoyed a glimpse into my wedding! Now, I want to show you how I stack my wedding cake to achieve the topsy turvy look. I have already explained how I construct a different type of topsy turvy cake here. For my wedding cake, I used a wedge construction in order to achieve the look I wanted.

First, I iced and fondanted all of the cakes separately and placed each cake on its own acrylic plate. Then I decorated each tier separately before attempting to stack the cake. If you do not have acrylic you can use wood just be sure you have a hole in the center for the center dowel support. (Sorry about the poor quality photo, it was late at night).
Here are some close-ups of the berries and other flowers I made for the cake.


Here is the cake stacked up normally before placing the wedges. Since my cake was fake, and for display purposes only, I can get away with stacking up the cake without any dowels.  
For, the wedges I used green styrofoam that is used for floral arrangements. I cut the styrofoam so that each wedge gave the slant that I wanted. Be aware that a slight slant will be pretty significant when the cake it stacked. If the cake had been real I would recommend covering the styrofoam in plastic wrap or fondant so the styrofoam does not touch the cake. When stacking you want to stack each tier over a center dowel and then be sure to dowel each tier sufficiently. After, you have the wedges in place you can then start placing your flowers between the tiers. If the cake is large you may want to transport it in sections, just make sure that you have enough icing glue to secure the tiers in place on site.


This is of course the finished cake! Since the cake was fake I drove with the cake full assembled to the site of the wedding. Even though the cake was fake it was still a very stressful drive with all of the sugar flowers rattling in the back of the car.
I hope you enjoyed this short tutorial of how to make a wedge style topsy turvy. If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

7 comments:

Alex said...

your topper is amazing where did you get it

Samantha @ Food Fitness Family Friends said...

Thanks Alex! The topper was made by my husband out of polymer clay! He carved the initial out to match the initial on our lanterns. The inside of the pumpkin was hallow so we could put tealights to light it up!

Cupcations said...

The cake was amazing! Thanks for sharing

Arlene said...

I just want to say thank you for explaining with pictures on how to create the Topsy turvy stand, and how easy it is to create that look with floral Styrofoam. I am creating a dummy cake centerpiece for my Halloween party this year, and this will help me keep my budget and my nerves down on doing my first Topsy turvy! Keep up the good work!

Samantha @ Food Fitness Family Friends said...

You are very welcome Arlene!

Pauli said...

Love you cake!! I will be doing my first topsy tuvy cake in a couple of weeks (very nervous). It is only two tiers with wedges in between the tiers. My question is : does the central support need to be glued or somehow attached to the base? Or would it be enough to hammer the central support throu the cakes, wedges, and boards when stacked? Your advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Samantha @ Food Fitness Family Friends said...

Hi Pauli,
I always use a center support that is screwed to the cake board. I usually buy a flange and pipe that screws into it from the plumbing section of the hardware store. I then screw the flange into my cake board and screw my pipe onto that. Then just make sure your cakes are centered on the pipe. Hope this helps. Good luck!