re: Stacking

Here is how I do it:

Make sure your cake is completely level to start with, because that will make this whole process so much easier. If your cake is not level, you need to find the highest part of your cake and use that as your starting point. Insert a bubble tea straw into the cake and mark it with an edible food marker, where it meets the top of the cake meets the straw. I then cut slightly below this line, maybe 1 or 2mm. Use this straw to mark the rest of your straws. Insert your straws into the cake – I normally do 4 for really small cakes and up to 8 for larger cakes (I don’t use a straw in the middle, as I use a central dowel right through all of the cakes).
I then take some ganache and run a ring of that round each straw and then put the next tier on top.
Now, assuming your cake was level to start with then there should be either no gap between the cakes at all, or a very minimal gap. If however your cake was not level, then you’ll have to mask that with either a ribbon or some royal icing the same colour as your fondant or pearls etc.

Bubble tea straws are cheap, easy to cut and can hold multiple tiers without any drama what so ever. The ganache, stops the cakes from budging, but you can also use royal icing.

I love this method, but then it’s the only option available to me really as I live in the UK and we don’t have access to all these fabby stacking systems.