Square Cake Layers - need advice

[mdimaio]

Anyone have a good source for purchasing square cake layer pans? I am making a wedding cake for 200ppl in April and my client wants square layers.

Also, does anyone have any good tips for actually icing the layers? I'm comfortable with round layers on a cake stand, but how do you get the sides perfectly smooth on a square layer?

TIA

[joiei]

try the JB Prince catalogue if there is not a restaurant supply in your town that will get them for you.

[JeanneCake]

I love the pans made by Parrish in Gardena, CA under the name Magic Line. They're excellent; heavy weight, don't warp, square corners and no seams. They come in a range of sizes; but Cook's Dream has odd size square pans (11, 13, 15, etc..) if that's what you need for your design.

Check out the demo thread for pictures by BKeith showing how to get the edges perfectly square.

[alanamoana]

new york cake and baking has squares at a reasonable price...i think they're the standard "magic line" mentioned above. just do a google search for square cake pans or "magic line" cake pans...that should do it.

[MightyD]

to get smooth edges on a square cake, i usually use a plastic bench scraper - works perfectly every time!

[K8memphis]

Also of course, the object of the smooth icing game is to put more icing on then scrape off down to the smooth beautiful finish. So all that to say, spend your time building up your icing carefully. Pipe an extra fat line of icing up each corner too.

[mdimaio]

Thank you everyone for your input. I now have a good starting point!

[dianalane]

Up top on the Pastry Forum there is a section: Pastry & Baking Forum Demo. There is a demo in there on how to do sharp corners on cakes. It might be useful to you.

[K8memphis]

I did not check the demo, but I thought of one other thing that may or may not be covered there. Droopy corners--even if you are eventually rounding them all off--you want them all square before you round them--and to eliminate droopy corners you can sandwich a little bit of cake on each corner and re-level it if they are droopy y'know???

Anyway a fine point for sure, but important nonetheless.

What kind of icing are you using?? Will you have a top border on the tiers???

[mdimaio]

I did not check the demo, but I thought of one other thing that may or may not be covered there. Droopy corners--even if you are eventually rounding them all off--you want them all square before you round them--and to eliminate droopy corners you can sandwich a little bit of cake on each corner and re-level it if they are droopy y'know???

Anyway a fine point for sure, but important nonetheless.

What kind of icing are you using?? Will you have a top border on the tiers???

←

I'm using buttercream icing. We haven't finalized the details on the design, but she wants fresh flowers arranged on each of the tiers, so I think that might be my saving grace if I run into less than perfectly-squared off edges.

I'm planning on doing a trial run using the demo posted above.

[K8memphis]

Cool. You'll do great.