Making A Birthday Cake with Support Issues (the cake lol)

[Deleted User]

OK, my 13 year old wants a Star Trek Voyager (spaceship) Birthday cake.  I have made some fabulous cakes in the past (including a dinosaur cake with scales no one could believe I made myself he he).  This cake will need to have some support for the top oval dish (like https://betweenthepagesblog.typepad.com/between-the-pages-blog/2016/09/fabulous-star-trek-uss-voyager-cake.html and https://technabob.com/blog/2016/04/22/light-up-star-trek-voyager-wedding-cake/.  I can do the windows, detail etc but its the support issues I am not sure how to get over.  I can possibly use a thin cake base on the underside of the dish and possibly use the cylindrical lower part of the ship for some support (with dowels etc) but a large part of the top dish hangs there with no visible support. 
I will make it over a couple of weeks and there's a month to go so I do have time but not sure how to get over this main support issue.  I could make a black base to support the dish so its not so visible but wondering if there are better ideas.

BTW I am not putting any lights in the cake lolol.  I know where my limits lie.

Does anyone have some suggestions?

Islandmaid

Wow - fair play to you for trying, your idea of black is great, maybe with some ‘light year’ lighting ie white dots/stars - the only suggestion I can make is something like this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/HBselect-Acrylic-Display-Showcase-Fixtures/dp/B07QPF1KYT/ref=sr_1_6?crid=2OXPFJZLLIJ1F&keywords=perspex+display+stand&qid=1582235131&sprefix=Perspex%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-6

do post a pic of the cake when you’ve done 👍

Dark_Star

https://www.google.com/search?q=chef-Hub+Quality+Hand+Made+Metal+Swan+Shaped+3+Tier+Wedding+Cake+Stand,+Pack+of+1&safe=strict&client=safari&channel=ipad_bm&prmd=sivn&sxsrf=ALeKk01cq0to_JzKtw1vi-pW-2wk9Rvuug:1582302273982&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiM396nh-PnAhVLQEEAHUdABY8Q_AUoAnoECAwQAg&biw=1024&bih=643#imgrc=RAAE5dYqiXAevM

Sorry for the long link but I cannot get the picture to copy over.
Could you rest the cake on this display stand as they’re circles...

just a thought....😁

[Deleted User]

Dark_Star said:

https://www.google.com/search?q=chef-Hub+Quality+Hand+Made+Metal+Swan+Shaped+3+Tier+Wedding+Cake+Stand,+Pack+of+1&safe=strict&client=safari&channel=ipad_bm&prmd=sivn&sxsrf=ALeKk01cq0to_JzKtw1vi-pW-2wk9Rvuug:1582302273982&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiM396nh-PnAhVLQEEAHUdABY8Q_AUoAnoECAwQAg&biw=1024&bih=643#imgrc=RAAE5dYqiXAevM

Sorry for the long link but I cannot get the picture to copy over.
Could you rest the cake on this display stand as they’re circles...

just a thought....😁

They are circles but a bit more for tiered cake idea and not exactly hideable with the space ship idea I have (and the cyclindrical bottom part of the ship will be difficult to fit, it should be connected to the dish part).  I have found some thin circular cake bases, its the support that is needed underneath I am having problems with.

But thank you for both your suggestions.

I'm looking at a cake decorating course but it doesn't start til April lol.

bouicca21

I am deeply impressed by the skill required to do this.  But I wonder if the upper part of the cake is actually sitting on some sort of disguised board?

CRANKY40

The saucer bit is more likely to be made from rice crispy treats than cake too.....

[Deleted User]

bouicca21 said:

I am deeply impressed by the skill required to do this.  But I wonder if the upper part of the cake is actually sitting on some sort of disguised board?

I'm certain there is a board to support the dish section but there also has to be something suspending it in the air.  You can't see it though hence my question. Rice crispy cakes.., I doubt it.

I think I will have to go with the black supporting base for the dish section.  Make it thicker too (i.e. sliceable cake). Going to be lots of practicing going on lolol. Putting the lettering on it is going to be a real mare as I need to find small numbers.  Lots of try outs ahead.

Callie22

I would hazard a guess that this has a specially made support. It looks to me like there’s a thick black block under the body of the cake which I’m guessing is a wooden support. Then there’s the engine part of the cake which is either going to be cake or moulded rice crispie cake, which is moulded around the support. There’s not a lot of cake there and I’m guessing it’s mainly rice crispie cake and fondant icing. This is used a lot in professional cake baking, especially when you’ve got odd shapes. It looks to me like that thick wooden support is then attached to one end of a flat, oval wooden base on which sits the top cake which forms the dish. If you look the front of the dish is quite thin and the whole top disc section is tilted slightly backwards so that the cake’s centre of gravity sits over the main wooden support, which I think is attached to a big base board that has enough weight to support the cake. I don’t think you’ll be able to achieve this cake using boards alone, you’re going to have to get a really strong base made and you’ll have to be really careful about the centre of gravity otherwise it’ll flip forward - you’ll need to make sure that most of the weight of the cake sits over the support and isn’t towards the front of the disc. Are you sure you can’t persuade him to go for the insignia on a flat cake? That would be a billion times easier ...

[Deleted User]

Thank you for such a detailed answer.., I stand corrected.  I had noticed how thin the dish is which as I want an edible cake won't work. 

He's 13, he wants the ship lolol.  I think I can do it with a black cake base but will use icing for the curved edge of the dish and hopefully improve my cake sculpting skills by many times.  The dinosaur cake definitely produced Wows but wasn't as smooth as I'd have liked. It was a simpler shape of course.  I have produced a Thomas the Tank Engine cake in the past, took a week lol. Time will tell.

Thank god for Youtube.  I'm looking at different ideas of making things do-able.

[Deleted User]

I managed to solve the problems I could forsee, and created a few I hadn't forseen lol.  After a week, the cake has been made and decorated but I am afraid I'm too embarrassed to put a photo on here, professional cake maker I am not lol.  In the end I supported the large dish of the ship with some white plastic dowels and covered them with black icing so they didn't show so much against the black iced cake board.  My son loves it (and confessed yesterday he didn't actually expect me to create it, the rat).

I learned so much from making it.  Definitely need to learn more lol.