My First Successful Stacked Cake!

Greetings, all! This past weekend, I decided to experiment with stacking cakes. I feel that after making cakes for 4 years, I should be able to make stacked cakes with confidence. Since I haven't had any orders for one, I didn't want to just make a stacked cake and throw it away (I need to befriend more cake-obsessed people). So I decided to make a stacked cake for a friend's birthday as his gift. His ZS name is Firebird, so I went with a phoenix! Here is how I assembled this confection:

First: the board. I hot glued two cake circles together (remembering to cross the grain!) and covered it in gold foil.

Then I iced the 8" cake as I normally would. I stuck 4 dowel rods into the cake in a square pattern, making sure to mark and cut to just about the cake height.

The next step was the 6" top tier, which I placed on a 6" board, traced around, then cut the board to fit perfectly.  I added a blob of icing to the middle of the square, and placed the naked cake on top. I find it easier to ice the cake while it's already on top of the bottom tier. But if I were covering the tiers in fondant, I would definitely cover them separately then stack them.

I iced the top tier with a small offset spatula (which was kind of difficult for me because I actually like using a bucket scraper to smooth my icing).

Then I scored a phoenix design onto the front...

And I filled in with yellow, then orange, then red. For the flames, I pulled one color into the next with my handy little fondant tool.

And now onto the feathers. I must admit, I was never good with drawing animals, especially of the feathered variety. However, I was able to translate the feathers pretty well with a regular Wilton tip 3.

After a lot more feathers...

Tri-color borders. Bam!

Voila! I like how it came out! If I had to change one thing, I would make the feathers longer on the wings. Oh! And I made a little flame cupcake for the birthday guy, which was devoured immediately.

Firebird also enjoyed the cake, and so did everyone else at the party, so I was super excited. And best of all, it survived transport, which makes this stacked cake a success!! I feel like I've gained enough XP to reach the next level in cakery! And to think, I actually pulled this all off on Friday the 13th!