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Black Chandelier Cake
Hardware Prep
Before we get down to actually baking the cakes and putting them together, we need to get our hardware ready. You saw all of this in the equipment list, but some of it may not have made much sense without photos. For instance, I mentioned a few sizes of plastic cake rounds. They look kind of like this:
Each layer of the cake will be a hexagon shape, rather than round. As you can see from the photo, the plastic cake rounds aren't exactly round; the edge is cut a little more like a doily. This is why I went with the next size up. It also helps to have a little extra room, because you need to find the center of the round and mark it with a non-toxic permanent marker. Grab a protractor and place a mark every 60 degrees, and then connect them to make a little star. If you started with the 14-inch cake round, then grab your 12-inch cake pan and try to center it over your cake round. Mark off where the edge of the pan meets each line of the star, and then remove the cake pan and connect the points to make a hexagon. And here you thought your geometry teacher was full of it when they said you really would find a use for that. Remember, the 14-inch round goes with the 12-inch pan, the 12-inch round goes with the 10-inch pan, and the 10-inch round goes with the 8-inch pan. Go ahead and cut out your hexagons.
If you want a little bit of insurance for when you transport your cake, you're going to need a hole in the middle of your hexagons. If you feel confident, then you can skip this step. Since you have the middle of your hexagons marked already, this part will be easy. You're going to need a 5/8-inch drill bit and a drill. Since I didn't want to run the risk of marring up my table, I put the cake round on top of a sturdy shoe box. In shop class in high school, I probably would have used a spare piece of wood. Put the hexagon on top of your shoe box or piece of week and drill a hole in the center of each hexagon.
You're also going to need to make some stamps. You can buy the Alice and Wonderland stamps, but the hexagon stamp is a little harder to find, especially in the size that we need it. So I just made my own using craft foam and a spare strip of acetate. You do need a template to work from, and fortunately for you, I'm willing to share the one that I made. Click here for it. You'll need a program that can read EPS files, and print them out however large you want them. I think I printed mine out to be about an inch across. Tape your honeycomb pattern to a piece of craft foam and go at it with an X-acto knife.
As you can see, I started off with a much smaller size before getting fed up with it and moving onto a much more reasonable size. I think the larger size worked out better than the smaller would have anyway. When you have it cut out, you'll want to glue it to a piece of acetate. You could actually glue it to another piece of craft foam or even just a piece of cardboard, but I kind of liked having the ability to see through the plastic to where I'm stamping.
Speaking of stamps, you will want to get nine different images, three for each layer. I went with smaller stamps for the top layer, medium for the middle, and the largest for the bottom. I went with an Alice and Wonderland theme because I wanted very Victorian-looking images, and Stamp Francisco happened to have a surprisingly wide selection. Remember, unmounted.
