Icing for wedding cake

[ineedaholidaynow]

I am making my first ever wedding cake. In fact it's the first time I have had to ice a fruit cake. I am currently planning to use Waitrose ready to roll fondant icing. Would this be ok or are there better brands? There is only one tier, luckily, so don't have to worry about stacking.

I am making some flower decorations to go on top using flower paste. I am also going to make some cupcakes with similar flower decorations. What should I use to make these decorations as the flower paste sets too hard to eat, which will be fine for the wedding cake, but not for cupcakes?

Wedding is in a few weeks and I am beginning to panic

You need to spread the cake with a sticky jammy type substance first. I used honey mixed with gingrr, nut traditionally its apricot jam.

Then add a layer of marzipan - more sticky jammy stuff & then you can add your rolled icing - no idea if its any good or not, but I would expect it to be okay.

Expect air pockets - pop them with a clean pin & smooth over using cake smoothers

As its your first attempt, expect it to look less than perfect in places. A coating of edible fine glitter dust & pearly glitter sprays can hide a multitude of sins & make good any smoothed out damages. They look good too.

Use edible glue to attach flowers etc. Again a dusting of edible glitter dust or spray can give them a bit more of a professional looking edge - don't forget leaves too. YouTube is your friend here - tons of sugar paste flower tutorials on there

Good luck

You need the marzipan layer, or the fruit cake will give a bumpy finish to tge icing, too bumpy to hide with glitter

I'd make sure the bride & groom like marzipan before you use it. Both DH & I can't abide the stuff. We'd have been disappointed if we couldn't have had a slice of our own wedding cake.

If the bride & groom don't like marzipan, then maybe they shouldn't be going with a traditional fruitcake with regal ice, nor expecting a non professional cake maker to make a decent job of it!

Its the easiest way to get a reasonably decent finish

I wouldn't use fondant icing - I'd do marzipan and royal icing personally.

But for fondant, you can buy embossing sheets to roll out on, or 'stamps' that you press into the fondant - that will give you a pattern that you can then pick out with iridescent dust or similar.

Will you cover it in one piece or two (top and sides)?

For the cupcake flowers, just use sugar paste.

Missed a bit there - because if you do two then you'll pipe the join and can use any spare royal icing to attach your flowers.

I was going to do apricot jam and marzipan layer, but good call to check with bride and groom that they actually like it. It is the only bit of a fruit cake that I like

I have done quite a few practice fruit cakes, so they could choose the recipe they like best. I have also been practising the sugarcraft flowers but have been putting off icing the actual cake!

I have got one of those dummy polystyrene cakes which I have started to practise on. I am also making a spare fruit cake which I can practise on. My last attempt had a few small cracks in and I also managed to leave a few dents in the icing from my fingernails

With respect to the flower decorations I have found that the flowerpaste results in a much more delicate flower which hopefully will look good on the wedding cake. I am going to attempt a very simple flower spray which will tie into the bride's bouquet (and possibly hide any imperfections in the icing!) But the flower paste dries too hard to be edible. So will need to use sugarpaste for the cupcakes, just probably won't be able to match the colours exactly.