Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Having done a few double tier cakes now it occurred to me that I only ever tell the customer they have dowels in but don’t advise them how to remove – basically because I wasn’t sure myself. The dowels go in before covering the cake so how do you know where they are later? Do they show up when you take the top tier off? If not what’s the best way to locate and remove them?

Apologies if I come across as dense but I am a novice so as Tesco says “every little helps”

Thanks
Rainzley x

Hi Rainzley Cooke
Usually when doweling a cake you insert the dowels after icing then the little bit you can see after inserting I use a dab of royal icing to cover the top of dowel, once second cake is placed on top it’s usually on a cake board for easy removal, if doweling a cake in this way you will be able to see where the tops of the dowels were inserted. Hope this helps !

Hi Rainzley Cooke
In all the years I’ve been making and decorating cakes I’ve never put dowels in before the fondant, if you do it that way then you won’t know where the dowels are ! I hope you find putting them into the fondant covered cake a better way ? Just remember to put a dab of Royal icing on the tops of dowels which show shouldn’t be much showing good luck ?

Watch Paul’s free dowelling and stacking tutorial. You’ll see the dowels are very easily identifiable once each tier is deconstructed. The dowels can be lifted out with a small pair of bull nose pliers which have not been used for anything else other than food prep.

Stacking Cakes – Overview

Just tell them how many dowels there are in each tier, when they cut the cake they will find them and take them out