INSTRUCTIONAL

CENTRAL SUPPORT

TOOLS

3 pre-prepared cakes, each iced on a cake card with a centre hole of 12 mm diameter (THIS IS IMPERATIVE) and with a larger acrylic disc or cake card underneath

wooden dowel, 12 mm diameter

non-toxic pencil

mini saw

4 mm masonite cake board, larger than your bottom tier

1 screw—this needs to be a skinny screw approx. 20 mm long (you don’t want to split your dowel)

screwdriver

masking tape

pieces of baking paper, smaller than each of the tiers

extra cake cards or acrylic discs, smaller than each of the tiers

small cake tin (smaller than the middle tier)

metal smoothie straws

jug of boiling-hot water

compostable smoothie straws

scissors

small measuring cup

Let’s start with the WHY. Why would you need to go to so much trouble to put a pole up the wazoo of your tiered cake?

Well, my friend, if you are asking that then you have never seen a tiered cake fail!! I would have experienced many, many cake fails had I not had a pole up the centre of the tiers. Let’s call it a ‘fail-safe’, a ‘cover your ass’ or just ‘security’.

Now, you know you want to hear my ‘cake fail/centre pole saved my ass’ story, right? Picture this. It’s the middle of wedding season and I have overbooked myself with two wedding cakes on one day (classic Bets . . . *facepalm*). Of course, these two cakes also require delivery to opposite ends of Auckland. Now, both cakes have been tiered with this technique here and both are made with ganache (’cause you know ‘it’s all fucken ganache’), so I’ve done everything right. I’ve planned my route and accounted for the ridiculous traffic I might encounter, I’ve placed non-slip mats under my cakes as I put them in the boxes, I’ve put non-slip mats on the seat of the van. I’VE PREPARED EVERYTHING.

Anyway, I then go and deliver the first wedding cake . . . all is going well and I’m heading to my final destination in central Auckland from up north. The GPS says I’ll be there in an hour and I am even ahead of schedule WOOHOO. (Y’all know that is unheard of for me.) So I’m cruising along the windy roads between Warkworth and Silverdale and I come around a blind corner to find a standstill queue of traffic. I swear my life flashes before my eyes as my brain says ‘slam on your brakes and that cake is FUCKED, or don’t slam on your brakes and the cake will STILL be fucked but you will also now be dead’. I go for the self-preservation option and slam on my brakes.

I manage to stop inches from the car in front of me in a squeal of tyres. As I realise that I am still alive, I look over my right shoulder to check the cake—which has shot forward in its box and is now hanging from the crossbar between the front and back seats, with the bar embedded in its top tier. I am yelling and screaming at myself as I reach over and push the cake back into place on the seat.

It now dawns on me that I HADN’T PUT THE SEATBELT ON THE CAKE! A fairly easy way to learn that seatbelts save lives! Turns out they also save cakes. I’m still about 40 mins drive from the venue so I have plenty of time to go through the stages of grief. First I’m relieved I’m alive—for a split second—and then I’m crying ’cause fuck my life, LOOK at that cake . . . I seriously resembled Homer Simpson yelling with his mouth wide open. Then I call my husband and yell and rage at how fucked I am, my business is over, I might as well close the doors right now and give up. My reputation is ruined, I might as well have just not braked . . . I’M DONE!! (I know I know, soooo dramatic!)

The next stage is to realise I am, after all, a master caker and no one knows how to fix my own fuck-ups like me! I remind myself that I have all I need with me to fix the cake. I have time to repair it, and I have spare ganache, palette knives, scrapers—literally a cake-fixing kit. I do all my deliveries with it ’cause apparently I have been preparing for this cake fail all my caking life.

I fire off quick calls to the venue and the florist to let them know I need to do a ‘minor’ repair job onsite. Thankfully my girl Tash from Zimzee Flowers is the florist for the day, and she makes sure to leave me a massive selection of florals just in case I have to resort to a cover-up job.

I turn up. I cut back the damage and do the most epic plastering job you’ve seen in your life—the cake now looks as it originally did post-disaster BEFORE FLORALS. I even decide to show the whole awful situation on Instagram. I figure it’s important to know that even people you think are invincible have epic fails too. But I’ve learned a lot about failure along the way, and I know that it’s less about the failure itself and more about how you deal with it. I wanted to look back on this experience and be proud of how I dealt with it. (The groom stopped by after I’d made my repairs and was adding the florals, so I candidly told him what had happened, in the interests of full disclosure. He was so proud of the fix-up job I’d done and agreed that you would never know!)

I learned a lot about myself that day. I learned that authenticity is key even when it has the potential to discredit your ‘perfect’ image. I learned that I am good at facing adversity and pressure, that I wanted to live at the cost of my art (haha)—and that the cake would have been splattered in three separate tiers against the windscreen of my van had it not been for THE CENTRE POLE. This technique was the single reason that this cake fail was reparable. The force of me slamming on my brakes propelled the cake AS A WHOLE UNIT forward, as opposed to separating the three tiers and having them all fly forward.

Learn from me and put a pole up the wazoo . . . that is WHY.

  1. Gather all your tools.
  2. Prepare to cut your dowel. Measure the height of the bottom and middle tiers. Mark the bottom-tier height on the dowel, then mark the middle-tier height starting from that first mark. When you get to the top tier, only measure two-thirds of its height as you don’t want the dowel to come right to the top of cake. Mark this two-thirds height on the dowel above the middle-tier mark. The final mark is where you will cut.
  3. Brace your dowel on the edge of your bench and use your saw to cut the dowel at the full marked length. Make your cut at a 45-degree angle, as this makes the dowel sharp and will help when guiding the cake onto it. Wash down your dowel with hot soapy water to make sure there is no debris on it, then dry it.
  4. Most masonite cake boards have a hole in the centre. If your board doesn’t have a small centre hole already, then just measure and mark the exact centre of the board; this is where you will put your screw. Turn the board over and pre-screw the screw into the board until approx. 2 mm protrudes out the other side.
  5. Centre the flat end of your dowel against the screw, pushing it slightly so that the screw holds the dowel in place. Now for the balancing act . . . I enlist my gut to hold the board on its end on the bench while I hold the dowel straight against the screw on one side and then use the screwdriver to work the screw into the dowel. When the head of the screw is flush with the board, tape some masking tape over the screw head. This will ensure that you’ll be able to move the finished cake across a bench without scratching the surface.
  6. This is what your finished centre-dowel board will look like—with the dowel straight up and down. Set aside and move on to cake prep.
  7. Place a piece of baking paper on top of your bottom tier, then place an acrylic disk or a spare cake card on top. This will protect your cake for the next step.
  8. THIS IS DEATH-DEFYING, but don’t worry, it will be fine—just remember to move fast. First, place a small cake tin upside down on your bench; you will be using this to rest your cake on in a moment. Lifting the cake up, place one hand below the cake and one flat on the top, count to three, take a deep breath and flip it over.
  9. Once you have your cake balanced upside down, set it down on the upside-down cake tin.
  1. Remove the larger disc or cake card that you iced your cake onto, leaving the smaller cake card with the hole in the centre exposed.
  2. Sit your metal smoothie straws in boiling water to heat up for a few minutes.
  3. Position a heated smoothie straw in the centre of the cake board and push it straight into the cake. Make sure you keep the straw straight up and down, as this is the path the centre dowel will later follow. Continue pushing down until you reach the bottom of the cake.
  4. Before you remove the metal straw, give it a few twists and move it up and down to ensure that you have made the hole straight and right to the bottom. Once you are happy with it, remove the straw and return it to the hot water to soak.
  5. Now reverse step 8. Lifting the cake up, place one hand below the cake and one flat on the top, count to three, take a deep breath and flip over.
  6. Remove the small acrylic disc or cake card and baking paper. You will now see that there is a straw-sized hole in the top of the cake.
  7. With both hands under the cake, lift it up and over the centre-dowel board. I crouch down so that I can see the hole in the bottom to guide it onto the dowel. As you guide it, ensure that you keep the cake as level as possible—this will help the dowel stay central.
  8. When you have lowered the cake to approx. 10 cm (4 in) above the masonite board, position your fingers at the very edge underneath each side of the cake, count to three, and then fast as lightning let go of the cake. I know this sounds mad, but if you have iced your cake using my recipes and instructions your cake will be fine—the ganache has a nice solid structure and can handle what seems like a violent drop onto the base. (If you lower your cake right to the board and then try to remove your hands from underneath, you will compromise the perfect edges around the base of your cake.)
  9. Add your internal supports; I use compostable smoothie straws. They are eco-conscious, sturdy and load-bearing, easy to cut and easy to insert. I am working with a 23 cm (9 in) cake on the base, so I am adding six straws, evenly spaced.
  1. Be careful to not place your straws outside where the next tier will sit—you don’t want them to be visible. Push them right down to the bottom of the cake layer.
  2. Using your pencil, mark each straw at the level of the top of the cake.
  3. Pull the straws out halfway to expose the pencil mark, then cut each straw at the mark. Try to cut as straight as possible, to make things as level as possible for the next tier to sit on.
  4. Push the straws back into the cake so that they are flush with the top of the cake.
  5. With your second tier, repeat steps 7–16: flip the cake, place on a small tin, cut a hole in the centre with a hot smoothie straw, flip back and lower onto the dowel.
  6. When you have lowered the cake to approx. 10 cm (4 in) above the bottom tier, position your fingers at the very edge underneath each side of the cake, count to three, and then as fast as lightning let go of the cake—just like you did with the bottom tier. It will glide into place and rest on top of the supports in the bottom tier.
  7. Add your supports to the middle tier, following steps 18–22. I am using four straws for an 18 cm (7 in) middle tier.
  8. Now for your top tier. Place some baking paper on top of your cake, then an acrylic disc or spare cake card, as before. Placing one hand on top and one on the bottom, flip your top tier over.
  9. Rest your cake on a measuring cup that sits flat on your bench. Remove the larger acrylic disc or cake card that you iced your cake onto, exposing the cake card with the hole in the centre. Continue with steps 11–13, but when you push the heated smoothie straw into the cake DO NOT PUSH IT ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM. You will be able to tell when you are pushing through cake (easier) and when you are pushing through the icing layer (a bit harder). So only push until you reach the second icing layer. (If you find it easier, just push down approx. two-thirds of the way through the cake.)
  1. The same as you did to before, lift the cake up, place one hand below it and one flat on top, count to three, take a deep breath and flip back over. Remove the small acrylic disc or cake card and baking paper—there shouldn’t be a visible hole in this tier.
  2. With two hands under the cake, lift it up and over the dowel board as before to guide it on to the dowel. Again, keep the cake as level as possible to help the dowel stay central. You can use one hand against the side of the cake to help guide it down—the top tier is taller than it is wide and this makes it a wobbly little sucker. Do what you need to, but just make sure you don’t have dirty fingers before touching the side of the cake!
  3. Marvel at your beautiful three-tiered cake that you know is as structural as fuck! It is peace of mind on a plate (even on that precarious cake stand haha).

These instructions can be modified to allow you to put a centre pole inside a two-tier cake; just adapt the steps accordingly. The same goes if you are constructing a four-tier cake.