Wedding Cake

On the 4th of April 2013, my good friends James and Laura finally tied the knot and became Husband and Wife on a freezing cold snowy day... bet that didn't come up when planning an April wedding. I had the great honour of being one of James's Groomsmen and signatory to the marriage. As you have already probably gathered I had the even greater honour of making the wedding cake.

 Laura sent me some guidance and suggestions to the cake she wanted but my general brief was: 2 tier plus 150 cupcakes in the colours of white and dark green, easy enough....

So the problems, 1. I'm untrained and my skill at sugar craft is very low, 2. I don't drive so it had to be transported on a train. 3. equipment, I don't have loads of sugar craft equipment to create intricate designs plus see point 1.

To combat these problems, I kept the actual cake very simple, with ribbons and simple icing. The decoration you see on the cake is bought because something of that intricacy is currently beyond me, maybe one day.

The cupcakes were another problem in how to decorate and present them, I spent several hours looking at fancy cases, wrappers and stands. Fortunately a solution came along from the staff bake off where one competitor made a large teacup with cupcakes made to look like a bunch of flowers.

So the final design of a simple two tier white cake with several small bouquets of cupcakes had been settled, the final cupcake flavours were; chocolate sponge with green mint buttercream icing and lemon sponge with lemon buttercream.

Now just the small matter of making, transporting and assembling to do.

The actual making was the easy part, two fruit cakes are simple enough just time consuming and because I have two 24 mini silicone cupcake trays, making 150 cupcakes took only a few hours from start to finish.

Transporting however is a different matter, two heavy fruit cakes, 150 cupcakes, 4 bowls of butter cream icing and 6 floral oasis balls plus usual stuff for a weekend away are a 'insert swearwords here' to transport, but with the two of us we got it down there.

Assembly was done at the venue, the cake was smoothed down and the floral spray attached, then 150 cupcakes were attached with toothpicks to four floral oasis balls then iced with the two icings, leaves and butterflies were attached and voila my first wedding cake was complete.

To the Bride and Groom. Cheers