Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

I am looking for any advice on creating a cake with the floating tiers. One video showed both a styrofoam tier and a tier made from cake drums but there were no instructions on why you should use one or the other. We have to stack five cake tiers with the floating tiers in between.

Hi tricia722

Both methods can be used for creating floating tiers. Using cake drums on a several tiered cake would pretty heavy and expensive. Styrofoam separators would be a great deal lighter and cost less. With both methods, normal dowelling would still be required when stacking. How deep do you want the separators to be?

1.5″ would work well with the ribbon we want to use. The challenge seems to be getting anything (drums or styrofoam) in the odd sizes like 5″, 7″ etc.

Have you tried Dummies direct? http://www.dummiesdirect.co.uk/dummiesdirect/index.html
This is where Paul gets his dummy cakes. They will make any size you want. If you search in the blog section of this site ‘dummies’ there is more information.

Thank you for the information. We are in the US.

Just wondering whether you’ve had any luck with your cake separators. I’ve searched on various US sites without success. Have you tried these guys http://www.floracraft.com/
America is a big country so ths may not be much good to you. I would suggest ebay and message the sellers to see if they could perhaps cut separtors in the sizes you need. Alternatively you could cut them yourself with a serrated knife or a hot wire foam cutting tool. Floracraft may even be able to cut them for you. A friend of mine in NJ uses Ali baba and its carriage free.

Thank you for the information. We found thick foam core and a cutter that will allow us to create exactly what we need. Cake goes out this weekend so fingers crossed for a stunning result.

Great! pleased you’ve found a solution. Good luck with cake 🙂