Cake Serving Chart Guide - Popular Tier Combinations

As cake decorators, we all need basic cake serving charts, cake portion guides, and popular tier combinations. They are necessary when conducting a cake consultation. Being prepared and having these charts on hand makes you look professional and gives you more confidence to conduct business with customers. These charts come in handy for me when I need a quick reference and I hope they will come in handy for you too.

Have you ever wondered

• How much does an 8-inch cake serve?
• How many slices in a 7-inch round cake?
• Or are the servings for round or square cakes the same?
• How much cake do I need to serve - 56 people? or 100 people?
• Which cake sizes can I stack together?
• What are the most popular cake tier combinations?

These are all great questions and ones you need to be asking if you plan to make cakes or become a cake decorator.

Preparing for cake consultations 

A very professional approach is to do your homework before the client comes for a cake consultation. This means having your cake sizes ready so you would know how many people does each cake serves. Plus, it gives you a better understanding of how much you need to charge, especially if you charge per serving like me. You can read more about cake consultations on my post - How to conduct a cake consultation 

Cake Consultation - Tips and How To

Any cake decorator; new or in business for a while will need to conduct cake consultation. It get easier and fun over time; but it can be a difficult experience, sometimes truly anxious or nervous if when you are new or unprepared. In this post I share some tips and resources to make things easier.

Here are some basic chart guides that I find handy when I am doing my cake consultations. I do hope you find them useful too.

Reference, measure, serving size

These charts are based on a wedding cake servings size of 1" x 2" portion.  It is different from the party size serving a portion of 1.5 x 2 " or smaller.  So, these are wedding cake serving sizes. These are 4" to 6" tall cakes, which means each layer is 2" tall x 2 or 3 layers for each tier

Cakes from 3" to 6" high decorated as one cake would give the same number of servings because they follow the same pattern of cutting. So, yes whether a cake is 4 inches tall or 6 inches tall you would still serve it as one slice. You don't usually split the slice. So while you use more cake, it's a tall slice of cake and does not contribute to extra servings.

Anything smaller than 3" tall would give only half the number of servings.
For example:
An 8" round cake - 3" / 4 " /6" tall will give you 24 servings but
An 8" round cake - 2" tall will give you only 12 servings.
An 8" round cake - party servings - 9 servings

Popular tier combinations

Additional information to keep handy is the most popular tier combinations.  So you know which cakes work best together. Cakes stacked from the border to narrow to the top are aesthetically more appealing. For example, a 12, 10, 8, 6 look more appealing than a 12,11, 6, 5  - just saying.

50 + Layer cakes

see all layer cake recipes here

40 + Coffee Cakes

See all coffee cake recipes here

30 + Frosting recipes

See all buttercream frosting recipes

15 + cake filling recipes

see all filling recipes here

70+ Cake decorating recipes

See all cake decorating recipes

Resouces

see all resources here

Start a Cake Business from Home

Have you wanted to start your own cake business from home but don't know how? This step by step guide shares everything you need to know on how to have a legal home-based cake business. Divided into four sections each section is well explained so you can understand what to do to start a cake business from home.

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Hungry for more?

Cake Flavor Combinations Decorating Square Cakes 101 Cake Consultation - Tips and How To 50 Plus Layer Cake Recipes What are Double Barrel Cakes How to advertise and market your cake business?