Wedding Cakes

To date, I have made two cakes I would consider proper wedding cakes. I’ve made many other cakes for weddings, but on a much smaller scale. Coincidentally, these two wedding cakes were made for weddings on the same weekend one year apart. Both were assembled on site with minimal equipment and much love and input from friends and relatives wishing the best for the couples.

The first cake was for a good friend of mine from University, I’ll call her O, and her now husband, who I will call S. While they were in the early stages of planning their wedding, I had a chance to speak to S about it, and I asked about the cake. He said it was the one thing he was in charge of, and I immediately offered to make it as a gift, adamant that it would taste good but might not look professional. This idea went down well, and we began brainstorming. We decided to keep it a surprise for O that I was making the cake. Then I went home and googled how to make a wedding cake.

As it turns out, there is a lot of plastic involved to keep so many tiers stable. This was news to me, and I did not like the sound of it one bit. Far too fiddly, and who wants plastic in a cake? Maybe I'll revisit this at a later date, but right now that sort of sh*t is way above my pay grade, and it contributes nothing to the taste of the cake. I would be making this in my home kitchen and somehow transporting it to a church, and this just would not do. So I began to look at cake stands, and I found a very basic and elegant cake stand that would support three different cakes. This seemed to me the best and most practical way forward, so I bought it. It has since had multiple outings and can also be used for cheese, meat, cookies and sandwiches.

I asked S if I could do something a bit unconventional, a bit different. I wanted to dye the inside of the cake, so that on the outside the cake looked like a nice classic wedding cake, but then on the inside was brightly coloured. S was supportive of this idea, calling it the ‘cake of defiance’ against the traditional white icing on white cake. So I set about making it, and spent a small fortune on food dye.

We decided on three different flavours, and a basic vanilla buttercream for all three. The top cake would be lime, the middle almond and the bottom vanilla. I made the cakes in advance and froze them. Looking up how to freeze cake was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done for wedding cake. Turns out it’s pretty easy, and it means you don't have to make three cakes in one stressful day. Partially frozen cake is also a lot more portable, which is handy when you have to transport them from home to venue. Making such a large amount of icing was not so easy, and I lost the use of one beater in my handheld mixer half way through the process. I powered through and finished with the one remaining beater, but the mixer was a gonner, may it rest in peace.

The day before the wedding I took the cakes to the venue at the appointed time and found myself locked out. Not being able to get a hold of S, I called O, and asked her to put him on the phone. Needless to say, she was very confused having no idea that I was making the cake, but I had six cake layers and three batches of buttercream in the hot sun so time was of the essence. While I was waiting for S to arrive to let us in, S’s mother arrived, and was similarly fuming. Once let in, I, another bridesmaid A (hero of the day), and S’s mother began angrily and lovingly assembling the cake. In a church kitchen with no equipment but a spatula and a bread knife, we iced and decorated three two layer cakes and put them in a safe place for the next day.

Below are the three cakes.

The wedding was wonderful. When it was time for cake the happiness it brought O to cut the cake, find out that it was made by a friend, and that it was multicoloured, was clear to all present. Much of the cake was eaten and enjoyed at the time, and plenty taken home by wedding guests.

Below are photos of the finished product and cake interiors. Pink is vanilla, multicoloured is almond and purple is lime. The three cakes are on the bottom.

O sent me a picture recently of her and S eating wedding cake on their one year anniversary.

The next cake was for my friends J and A. The finished product of this cake is the photo on the homepage of this website. When they announced their engagement, the first thing I said after congratulating them was 'can I make the cake?!' I wanted to do something different and unique. I knew that structurally I would do the same thing, three two layer cakes on a cake stand, assemble the whole thing on site. Initially, I had planned to do three white cakes, with brightly coloured interiors of one vibrant colour each. Then a month before the wedding I had a totally different idea. I told J, the groom that I had a much better, much weirder idea. I asked if instead I could make three different cakes, the bottom cake chocolate with chocolate icing to represent dirt, the middle vanilla with green icing to represent grass, and the top lemon with blue icing to represent the sky. He agreed, but asked for the bottom one to be banana instead of chocolate, so that is what I did.

Having done this before, I was feeling distinctly more confident in my abilities. Again, I froze the cakes in advance, and made the three batches of icing the day before. Thankfully I’ve upgraded to a stand mixer in the last year, which I am pleased to say withstood the arduous challenge of making so much icing. I drove to the venue with cake layers and three bowls of icing and went to work on arrival. After I had iced the banana and chocolate cake, I excitedly asked J if he minded gummy worms on his wedding cake. He was not sure, but the bride signed on for it. So, I decorated the bottom layer with jelly snakes and mashed Cadbury Twirl as worms and roots. I decorated the green cake with leaves and sugared animals, and the blue cake with butterflies.

The individual cakes are below. It should be clear which dirt, grass and sky.

Prepared and assembled in the large kitchen of a farmhouse/hostel, this cake came together very easily. The colours were vibrant, and the flavours were strong. Once again, the cake was very well received, and the layers were distinct in taste and appearance. Much cake was taken home by wedding guests and shared around various offices and families on the following days.

Below are pictures of the completed cake and sliced cake.

Although a lot of work, making wedding cakes has been extremely rewarding. It is a great sense of accomplishment producing something on such a grand scale. It has been really wonderful to make such a significant contribution to a momentous occasion for people I care about very much. Perhaps they’re not fancy looking, or traditional, but they’re tasty, unique, made with love, and have been thoroughly enjoyed.

Getting to the tiered ones...