How to make a sculpted Hellboy cake

Step 3 Stacking and carving the cakes

Before I stacked the cakes on the base, I covered the base with plastic wrap, leaving a rectangle of space around the dowel uncovered, so that I could apply icing there before stacking the cakes so that they would stick to the base. The reason I covered the base is so that when I was carving the cake, covering it with icing and fondant, the fondant bas wouldn't get messed up by cake crumbs and icing.

I stacked the cakes, with buttercream in between the cakes. Every 4 cakes I would insert smaller dowels, cut to the same height of the top of the top layer cake, then cut down a carboard cake board, cover it with wrap, and place it on top of the doweled cake, to help support it. I should have done this better, and with every two cakes instead of every four, and used slightly bigger and thicker cardboard. Perhaps using hot glue to glue a few cardboard cake boards together. Still learning about cake support and this was definitely a learning experience!

I ended up using 10 quarter sheet cakes. I also was trying to use up all the leftover icing I had made from my cake decorating class so that's why it's multi-colored. :)

Next I shaped the stacked cakes a little with a knife. I had tons of Hellboy reference photos printed out and layed on the counters so I could look at them easily.