I walked with them to the long table where a large three-tiered cake sat, weighted down by more candles than I could count.

The three-tiered cakes with white, pastel or chocolate fondant icing and exquisite sugar paste piping and flowers always go to the Robert F. Wagner Middle School on the Upper East Side for an annual honors awards ceremony.

The adjacent supper room held a three-tiered cake iced with pink roses in her honor.

A stage above finally came into its own when a tribe of go-go girls in toe shoes primped on a facsimile of a huge three-tiered cake, which was "carved" into slices.

CAKES COMPLETED IN A DAY: One to five; a three-tiered cake takes about 12 hours to decorate and 36 hours total.

Nicole Richie was given an elaborate party, complete with three-tiered cake, when celebrating her "dirty thirty" in late September.

The three-tiered cake, shaped like a temple, is the familiar Wedgwood dusky gray-blue trimmed with white neo-classical motifs.

Maybe we'll do it big with the long white wedding dress and the three-tiered cake and enough champagne to flood the club.

They were followed, a few minutes later, by a pair of white ponies pulling a cart with a three-tiered white cake, out of which popped a girl in a skimpy red bathing suit.