Claire Elizabeth

birthday cake

A year ago, one of my work collegues Sarah, kindly asked me if I would make her wedding cake. I had secretely been hoping she would ask me but I never thought that she actually would! I am no professional cake maker and decorator, but I decided that I was certainly up for the challenge. After all, I had a whole year to prepare for it! We decided that the completed wedding cake would consist of four tiers: fruit cake, victoria sandwich, chocolate fudge cake and a special surprise cake for the top tier (which will be Sarah's only!). Sarah was looking for something very simple and contemporary; no fancy decorations, no flowers and definitely no 'man & wife' ornaments! This certainly made my job easier, although I was still feeling rather nervous about the whole thing, especially after my mum's words of 'its quite a big thing making a wedding cake you know....'

Well, the time is finally here. Sarah is getting married this Friday and so I'm a very busy bee right now as you can probably imagine! This week I thought I'd write a few blog posts on my progress, and give my advice to all you others out there who may be making a wedding cake for the first time.

As the bottom tier of the cake is fruit cake, I have been able to make this in advance. I used a recipe for rich fruit cake from Leith's Baking Bible, but I changed the recipe slightly by reducing the dried fruit content as I wanted the finished cake to be slightly lighter than usual. I have been soaking the cake in a little rum over the past few weeks and last week I covered the whole thing in marzipan and roll-out icing.

Today I have been baking the other three tiers, and tomorrow I plan to sandwich the layers together with butter icng, before covering each one with roll-out icing. It is really important to trim each cake so that it is level before filling the cake layers together with your chosen icing. I am using butter icing to sandwich my cakes together, along with some jam for the victoria sandwich tier. Before covering the cakes in roll-out icing, I will cover the outside of each cake in the butter icing to ensure that it sticks to the cake. Covering a cake in roll-out icing can be quite a challange for the beginner. I have made many mistakes in the past so here are my tips for getting it perfect:

1. Use enough icing- you will need to roll it out so that it is quite a bit bigger than the cake board
2. Don't rush, but don't take too much time rolling out your icing- it dries out fairly quickly!
3. Remove any dry hard bits of icing as they will cause the icing to tear and create holes in the finished cake
4. Don't roll out the icing too thin because it is more likely to crack and tear. About 5mm is fine, although I have been able to get away with it being slightly thinner than this.
5. Try not to use too much icing sugar when rolling out the icing as this will cause it to dry out
6. Remove any air bubbles with a pin prick and carefully push the air out with your finger tips

I hope that helps!