As the Product Manager for Buttercream Decorating Tools and Accessories, I am constantly striving to create products that help make decorating easier, so decorators can focus on their amazing vision coming to life on a cake. I love monitoring trends and have noticed the increasing presence of stacked cakes. We love the look of these cakes but realize that they can be quite difficult to put together—and stay together! Working with our engineers, we developed an easy cake construction system using Wilton Support Rods and Caps and Center Core Rods.
Together, these products create a sturdy support for stacked cakes. Simply cut the Support Rods to the size of the cake tiers and place the caps on the rods. The caps are great for maintaining a secure foothold on the cakes. Then, insert the Center Core Rod on the base cake and keep building using the same steps. Our perforated cake boards make it easy to put the next tier over the Center Core Rod for stacking. Check out the detailed instructions included with the products.
Always striving for the best product for our brand, I wanted to test this new system against the existing method of stacking cakes. The existing method includes bamboo rods and driving a sharpened dowel rod through the finished stacked cakes. We evaluated many methods of testing and statistics to prove the new system—the Decorating Room was full of tiered cakes for testing! We know that these beautiful cakes are supposed to be shown off at events and transporting the cake to the event location is part of the challenge.
The best way for us to test this component to the new system was to conduct a driving test with two stacked cakes—one using the new Wilton Method of Stacking Cakes and the other using the traditional method of stacking cakes. The cakes were made exactly the same otherwise—heavy fondant, same size tiers.
The Test Drive
A fellow coworker volunteered to use his car for the test while I rode along taking pictures and notes. We wanted to mimic regular transportation challenges—stop and go traffic, construction and bumpy streets, acceleration and deceleration at different speeds, equal left and right turns, and speed bumps. The drive started out with regular streets and both cakes performed well. After a couple turns, we noticed that the cake using the traditional method of stacking cakes started to lean. We continued the test and the cake continued to lean until it was touching the cake that was built using the new stacking system!
We were concerned that both cakes would fall over because of the weight and I was concerned about the mess we would have in the car! After a couple more bumps, the leaning cake had completely toppled onto the still-standing cake. We continued the drive for ten more minutes to see what would happen. Surprisingly, the cake using the new stacking system remained upright even with the entire weight of the second cake on it!
The test was a great success and a testament to the new system. We feel very proud of this new introduction into the Wilton family of products! Although we are still finding cake crumbs in the car, it is worth it to know that we produce the best products for you.
