Make Your Own Wedding Cake

Making your own wedding cake is a very rewarding experience, but certainly not a decision to be taken lightly.

You’ll need lots of time, energy and patience to create a wedding cake, but often it’s easier than you think. Here’s some helpful hints and tips to make your baking easier:

Get the right equipment
Beg, borrow or steal! I don’t really endorse stealing, but ensure that you have the right equipment. You’re embarking on creating a cake to feed a lot of people, so that will entail lots of whisking and beating. Having a good food mixer is a must, so if you haven’t got one, borrow one or buy one. It will really help you out.

Make sure you also have all the baking tins, cooling racks, cardboard stands and cake tins you need for all the layers you’re planning on making. Often specialist cake shops hire out baking equipment so you can create to your heart’s content.

Enlist the help of friends
As I mentioned above, you’re going to be doing a lot of whisking and beating. Having some help will make your baking a lot easier and certainly make it more fun. You may also need some help with the finer points of baking, icing or decorating, so having some friends around will ensure you get some sound advice.

Make sure you’re familiar with the kitchen you’re using
To bake a three tier wedding cake, you’re going to need lots of space. If you’re using a friend or relative’s kitchen, make sure you familiarise yourself with the area and especially the oven.

I’ve had many baking disasters at friend’s houses as I’m not familiar with their oven. If you’re not familiar with the kitchen make sure the owner of the oven is around as they’ll know the ins and outs of their kitchen.

Do a trial run
About three months in advance of the wedding, make sure you do a trial run. Make a small practice cake and taste it. There will be nothing worse then cutting the cake on the wedding day to find that it tastes awful! This way you’ll have enough time to find another recipe or refine the one you have.

It will also give you the opportunity to practice icing and decorating the cake too, so you can iron out any tricky problems.

Always use the freshest ingredients
When baking cakes, you’ll get the best results if you use the freshest ingredients. So make sure the eggs, sugar and flour are as fresh as possible. You should also make sure that you use the same batch of ingredients for the different layers of the cake.

Make the wedding cake all at the same time
Don’t be tempted to make a tier here and a tier there. By making and cooking the cake all at the same time, you ensure that there is a consistent quality and flavour throughout the cake. If you don’t have an oven large enough to cook all the tiers at once, don’t worry, you can cook them separately.

Storing your cake
A fruit cake can be made up to a month in advance, but follow the recommendation in the recipe as you need to feed the cake with brandy to make it really rich. Fruit cake also stores well and can be kept in an airtight container until it needs to be iced. The icing can be done a week before the wedding and the decoration on the day if necessary.

For sponge cakes, the best place to store them is in a cool, dark place, again in an airtight container. A sponge cake will easily last for at least 2 weeks if stored correctly.

The icing for a sponge cake can also be done a few days before the wedding and then the cake should be kept in the fridge. If using cream, leave filling or decorating the cake for as long as possible before serving as it will quickly spoil.