8"
The plan that I had for this cake was to make it shaped like a corset, where it would look cinched in at the "waist", in the middle. Instead of making the tier like I usually do, which is 2 cakes with filling in between, I added an extra cake and filling so it was cake/filling/cake/filling/cake. This made it taller than usual and I loved that! So I went about carving in at the "waist", which I've done on cakes before, but because this one had 3 layers of cake and 2 layers of filling, I was having issues getting it smooth and perfect. The dam that I had piped to keep the filling from coming out kept being taken out in chunks by my knife. I put the cake in the freezer for a little bit so that it could firm up and make my carving a little easier. After I finished the carving, I iced it and then covered it in fondant. I could see bumps under the fondant here and there but I knew that the zebra stripes would cover them. Well, the more I decorated the cake, the more the base fondant bulged and bubbled. There was no way that the decorations would mask all of the flaws that kept popping up now! Grrrrr! I made up my mind that I was going to throw the cake in the trash and start over completely...but then I decided to just strip all of the fondant off of the cake, carve the sides straight and leave out the cinched waist part and then go from there. So that's exactly what I did! So my 8" round turned out to be more like a 7-7 1/2" round instead. Haha! So in this case, I needed either a sturdier cake or a better knife. Or both...
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