Chocolate Ganache Icing For Filling?

by Carolyn

Hi, I love your website. I have a chocolate ganache icing question. I am making a round stacked cake for my wedding in June to serve 150.

I am using the white cake for the bottom tier with a peanut butter cream cheese frosting, red velvet with ? frosting, your carrot cake recipe for the top with cream cheese frosting, and then I'm going to do a final frosting coat with your Italian meringue buttercream recipe for looks.

My friend is a pastry chef and she said cream cheese frosting gets soft and lacks support. I have a great ganache recipe and saw a pastry chef on tv use ganache as filler and they said it was sturdier. Could I use chocolate ganache as a filler for the bottom tier layers, and if so, how thick should the filler layers be?

I saw that you recommend a full-length middle support rod for stacked cakes, but my friend said she had had issues with that in the past. Do I slide the tiers onto the main rod or push it through once their stacked?

She is also lending me her 3" pans, which you prefer 2", and my mom would like 3 layers per tier, so should I make one 3" cake and cut layers or bake separate thinner layers in the tall cake pans? Can that be done well and if so, what thickness should I shoot for? All in all I am very excited to bake my own cake and want to make sure I do it well because people think I'm nuts. Thanks!

Hi Carolyn,

Congratulations on making your own wedding cake! I don't think your nuts at all. Feel free to pick my brain as much as you need to. Yes you can use the ganache as a filling for the bottom tiers. It is a wonderful delicious glue and is firm and very sturdy. So you will not have to worry about your cake sliding or being too

delicate.


You pastry chef friend is correct about the cream cheese filling. If you do use it, pipe a thick ribbon of buttercream around the edge of your cake layers to act as a dam and as glue, then fill the layers with the carrot cake icing.

I have been successful many times doing a carrot cake wedding cake with layers of cream cheese icing using this method.

As far as the thickness goes with the ganache or any filling, just don't overfill or the cake will be unstable. Probably a 1/2 inch.

I used to put one sharpened dowel through the center of the entire cake. I used straws as replacements for the dowels in each tier. lately though I have found a new way with the cake Stackers system, but if you are doing this as a one time thing then straws and the one dowel will do. You can check out the Stackers system and maybe your pastry chef friend would like to take a look at it. I LOVE it!!!

The pans I use are a mix. I do have some taller ones and I have found that if you try to bake all of the layers in one pan the cakes do not bake up enough. Too much batter in the pans is not a good idea, it makes a heavy cake and it might not bake up on the center correctly.

Having said that you can bake a cake that can be split into two layers in the 3 inch pan and then a second cake with a little less batter will be the third layer.

Here is a link to batter amounts that may help you. Batter amounts charts for 2 inch high pans. Add a little more for the 3 inch pans to make a cake that you can split in two and then make the third layer with the normal amount of batter.

The total height of each tier should be about 6 inches.