Wedding cakes you can make/ Nutella Cake

A few months ago I got this book from the Library and I LOVE it. It's Wedding cakes you can make by Dede Wilson. And it is great. The cakes really do seem do-able and beautiful.
I attempted one on Sunday when we had company over and it turned out great. It was my first time doing tiers. I skipped the cake boards and dowels just because it was so small. Next time I will probably get them. It is obviously not as beautiful as the ones done by professionals, but I was proud of it for a first timer.

I took a few short cuts,

• I make the cake from a box and not from scratch
• I made the top tier with a large cookie cutter. I cut it out of the bottom tier and filled the whole with a foil wrapped can of tuna to keep the cake from falling.

Some of my problems/things to change for next time:

• because of the hole in the center, the bottom layers all broke into pieces and I had to piece them back together. That is why the sides of the bottom layer are so slanted.
• There are chocolate covered hazelnuts around the edges, but I think that we could come up with something better. this is because the Hazel nuts were expensive and didn't taste all that amazing to me. I'd say replace them with Chocolate covered raisins because I LOVE them. But I think they are too small to make an impact on such a large cake.