Judging a Cake By It's Picture

I make all my cakes the same height – except when the design requires a taller cake. All my cakes are 4 layers of cake – each 1 is 3/4" thick. I fill between each and on top with 1/4" of buttercream/ganache or other filling so my end cake before fondant is 4" high.

Finished cakes should be at least 4" high. And when you have more then 1 tier all tiers should be the same height. Unless the specific design is different heights – then that’s different. This makes the cake look better. More professional like the one pictured above. Hope that helps.

Good Morning MsGF! Thank you for your input! I really appreciate it! Everything you said makes complete sense!

Here is my struggle…just in my head, a 4 inch cake is very reasonable, but it doesn’t look very big sitting on the work bench if that makes any sense. You look at these cake tiers in the pictures online and they look HUGE! I keep thinking…this HAS to be more than 4 inches to come out with this look.

So is this mainly because the cakes are photographed in a specific way to make them look like humongous towering glorious-ness?

Do cakes that are going to be photographed for portfolios etc get made much larger just to get a visual effect?

Is my eye just that off?

Any thoughts?

They do look larger in the photos. I’ve made cakes that look little put together on my work counter but after I photograph them they look taller and larger. Most people cakes are at least 4" tall up to 5" depends on the baker. I stick with 4".

I have one in my gallery that is a 4"-6"-8" tiers so it was about 12" tall in total sitting on a 1/2" cake drum. But it looks bigger in the photo :-) It has orange & purple gum paste flowers.

Beautiful cake!! You are SO right, it does seem like it is much larger in your pictures! Thank you so much for helping me to figure out the problem I was having! I really appreciate it!

I always start with the top tier as reference cos even if u go up one size or down it will still be ur constant guide. Looking at the photo it looks like the height is constant at 4 inches.

So your top can be 6 × 4
Then 8 × 4
Then 10 × 4

If u want a bigger cake then…
You can also start at 8” in diameter but you would need to add one inch to the height so that it wouldnt look too wide and flat at 8 x5, 10 x5, 12 x5.

You can look to the sides and see if the space is even all thru out the layers. If it appears narrower then the increment could change to one inch, and if wider, the increment could change to 3 or 4 inches, but usual increments are by 2s.

My students always ask me about my dimensions cos my cakes are usually taller and slimmer. And my increments are never the same. Its tricky but the cakes come out very modern and photogenic.