Wedding Cake Depth

I am making a 3 tier square cake that is 12, 9 and 6 inches. The bottom tier is 4inches deep before icing so I expect it to be 4.5 in the end. I was planning to taper the depths as the cake gets smaller to avoid an almost square top. Is it ok to do this and what depth should the top layer be?

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Answer:

Generally the layers of the wedding cake differ from each other in width only with the depth kept uniform to maintain a balanced look.

However, I have seen wedding cakes that have varying depths, adding an interesting element to a traditional cake.

If you decide to have layers of differing depths make the difference between them considerable so that it is obvious it is intentional. You don’t want your guests thinking it was a bad baking job on your part. An inch should do the trick.

If your bottom layer is 4.5 then you taper down to a 2.5 depth for your top layer.



To get a visual of the effect you will receive why not try drawing your cake to scale on a large piece of paper or if you have the correct size tins turn your cake tins upside down and layer them as you would your cake.

Make sure that having the tapered layers will not result in your cake looking as if it has been squashed.

Hope that helps.

Image credits:
Wedding cake: © Karmast | dreamstime.com