Portion Sizes

And after two years... : ) 

Have a cake due on Thursday, for a 40th birthday. Approximately 50 guests, so I'm doing  9", 6" and a 4" round tiers. According to these graphics I googled, I should be safe for 50 dessert sized portions:

From www.bloomcakeco.com

I found these graphics at Letthemeatcakesuk especially useful! Exactly what does a dessert portion look like? Previously I had been referring to the Wilton website and to the back sections of my Peggy Porschen books, which have been very helpful but also confusing, as the portion sizes seemed to differ so much when compared side to side. So this helped clarify matters: 

From www.letthemeatcakesuk.com

From www.letthemeatcakesuk.com

Anyway, I'm nervous, as apparently the cake will be the only dessert ... I've been stacking up my tins at home to give me an idea of what the cake will look like, and it looks pretty small! Crossing fingers. 

We Asians don't like cake. I keep telling myself that : ). Pretty much every party I've been to, there's always excess cake. Kids don't particularly like cake either. They like to look at them. And cut them up. And they'll make all sorts of requests - "I want a flower!" "No flowers!" "Green stuff!" "No green stuff!" "The head!" "Eyeballs please!" - and then they'll poke at it politely before getting distracted by the next party game. So. I hope it'll be ok.  

I could have tried a 10-8-6, but I'm a little scared of 10' cakes. My oven doesn't like them. I've had such awfulness coming out when I've done 10" (admittedly, they were squares...) - cracks, domes, soggy middles. 

Each tier will be 4 layers, alternating victoria sponge cake (recipe from Peggy Porschen books - work great for me, highest cakes ever!) and chocolate cake (also using Peggy's recipe, which I don't use that often... but I wanted something a little sturdier than my usual sour cream chocolate cake). Soaking the sponge in a coffee flavoured simple syrup, and layering with baileys buttercream and baileys flavored dark chocolate ganache.. covering cakes with white chocolate ganache and fondant. 

Chocolate 9" cake sank in the middle on me.... it was actually raising up beautifully but burning a little on the top... so I lightly covered the top with aluminum foil, and when I took off the foil to test the cake, I had a sunken hole. : ( Wonder if it was the aluminum foil that did it.