Advice please on dowels

samina

I'm making a 2 tier cake the bottom tier will be chocolate biscuit the second sponge. Would the chocolate biscuit be strong enough to support the sponge or should I use dowels just to be on the safe side?

Faith

I've never made a tiered cake, but CBC is solid, so I can't imagine it wouldn't be strong enough.

Kerikosan

Chocolate Biscuit Cake is very heavy usually. if you put the sponge under it, i'm sure it would get crushed. as long as the sponge cake is on top of the Chocolate biscuit cake you should be fine without dowels. Are you going to butter cream the cake and use fondant icing to cover?

seosamh1980

If you're using sugarpaste icing you need to dowel it to protect the icing from squashing, not the cake. If it's only a little top tier and it's only for friends/family you could survive without the dowels, as in if it doesn't matter if the top tier sinks into the icing a bit.

If ever doing a top tier chocolate biscuit with dowels in a sponge/madeira cake underneath it would be fine, won't get crushed. A light fluffy sponge wouldn't be great inside sugarpaste though, too soft to hold the weight.

samina

Thanks for the replies. I'm icing with sugarpaste. It is for family but if I leave it until the last minute to put the 2nd layer on it might be ok maybe?

Madiller29

chocolate biscuit cake would definitely be strong enough to support it