Practice
If you haven’t made a cake like this before - even if you think you’re a good cake-maker - it’s worth practicing with a smaller project to develop your skills and confidence. Also, bear in mind that it will take several days to make the cake and you’ll need to assemble it on the day of the wedding, so don’t be afraid to ask for help from family and friends. Perhaps you could bake the cakes and someone else could decorate them?
wedding cake
What kind of wedding cake?
Is the wedding cake going to be traditional or something a little different like cupcakes or macaroons? Spend some time searching for wedding cakes in a search engine and put together a mood board of cakes that you think the bride and groom will like the look of. There are certain things you need to decide:
Round or square? Bear in mind that round wedding cakes are easier to cover with icing. You’ll need to either hire or buy the necessary cake tins.
How many tiers? A three-tier wedding cake is traditional and will feed about 100 people (that’s for a round, 15cm/6in, 23cm/9in and 30cm/12in cake). If you’re catering for a large wedding, you can also bake an extra tier and leave it in the kitchen for cutting and feeding more people. This guide is useful for working out portions.
Which flavours? Fruit cake is traditional and has the benefit of being made in advance, however vanilla, chocolate and lemon are all popular choices. (Dousing your cakes in sugar syrup will help them to stay moist for longer.) Think about having different flavours for each tier to suit everybody’s taste.
Which recipe? It’s best to use a recipe specially written for a wedding cake as it will be in the correct proportions and also give you tips on how to assemble the cake. We’ve got lots of wedding cake recipes on the BBC Food site, including this fabulous recipe by baking expert Dan Lepard.
Filling and icing the cake
Ready-to-roll fondant icing is the easiest option for covering a wedding cake to give it a smooth, white finish. For best results, you need a cake with a level top and straight edges. If you’re making a fruit cake, the best way to achieve this is to cover the cake in marzipan first. For sponge cakes, you can cut the cake into layers, then fill and ice it with buttercream before covering in fondant icing.
Decorating the wedding cake
There are many options for decorating a wedding cake. The simplest is to wrap ribbon around the bottom. You can then use fresh flowers (your florist can provide these) or crystallised rose petals for easy, yet really pretty decoration. For advanced cake-makers, sugar paste flowers or piped designs will make the cake look really impressive.
Source bbc.co.uk