Wedding Cake - Am I crazy to make my own?

[Finn10]

Wanted a little guidance from the group mind - I am thinking about making the cake for our big day.

Getting married in 6 weeks and my cake maker has let me down. I have a couple of options, either expensive or a bit underwhelming! I floated the idea to make the cake for our wedding with DP and I got a cautious thumbs up.

I am a pretty good baker, not great with cake decorating. Thinking about a 3 tier naked cake.

Am I crazy to attempt this?

We are making our own. Multiple allergies here in our house and nobody was brave enough to do it. So I've found a hack online where you use a packet cake mix and a can of fizzy drink and you have an easy vegan cake ! We are going to try it this afternoon and see how it works out !

I have no vegans to cater for (that I know of) however i have previously made this cake, which just so happens to be vegan and is dead easy and tastes amazing :

www.nigella.com/recipes/dark-and-sumptuous-chocolate-cake

No, not at all! I made mine. Just make sure you leave enough time (took me 3 days, though I was doing some fiddly stuff with fondant icing).

If you're not so good at the decorating side of things, I'd recommend ordering a load of fresh flowers from a florist. They look great and will hide a multitude of sins.

Definitely make or buy a couple of cakes to practice icing first though - you tube makes it look easy and you'll need to get the feel of using a side scraper.

Good luck!

I personally wouldn’t because I don’t feel anyone needs the extra stress of making a wedding cake just before they get married. You don’t want to start the day tired and stressed because you’ve taken on too much over the days running up to the wedding.

But if you’re super organised and/or super chilled and have factored in lots of time for last minute jobs, then why not.

I made mine. Plain white icing with small sprays of flowers that matched my bouquet and a coordinating ribbon.

Have a look at www.instagram.com/p/CXI5wdaIl1q/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

(Because the girl loves cake)

She made her own wedding cake and recommends a particular good housekeeping recipe

What sort of cakes are you thinking? I would be prepared to make my own if I could do cakes that either don't mind or improve over a few days. How many does the cake need to serve? Are you thinking of doing them as "naked" cakes, if you aren't a keen icer?

How much decorating of the venue etc will be required/can this be delegated?

I have a good chocolate cake which keeps happily for about a week and improves for about 3 days - so I would be happy to do that. I think I'd also be happy to do a 9 inch Victoria sponge as I can knock one out in about an hour. I'd have to work out what else I could do as a top one though.

We also have a craft shop in town which hires out cake tins for something like 50p a day?! Which is ridiculously cheap and makes it much more feasible.

A semi naked cake will be easy to do if you're a good baker in general.

Get yourself a turntable if you don't have one already. A cake leveller. A scraper (lots of people prefer metal but I prefer plastic).

And you'll be fine. Good luck x

Having got married a few months ago my initial thought is to say yes you're crazy, because the last few days leading up to our wedding were stressful enough, but then I'm not a habitual baker so it depends how much of a hassle you feel it would be for you.

We were almost without a wedding cake in the end due to supply issues, and by 48 hours before I genuinely didn't care, if it hadn't arrived we'd have just done without.

I did my sister's cake for her two wedding parties. I just did a really simple 3 tier cake covered in white fondant with a hessian ribbon and fresh flowers. I was trying to persuade her to have a naked cake but she wasn't having it!

It was very straightforward. Not sure if like the added stress of that on top of the wedding stress though.

Could you make it far in advance and freeze?

You get the plain cakes in M&S or Waitrose, they come with the dowel kits if you want to their them and decorate with fresh flowers.

If you have space in your freezer, you can bake the tiers in advance, wrap very, very well on clingfilm, then take them out a day or two before and decorate either frozen or once partially defrosted. A cold cake is much easier to decorate and cake keeps well in the freezer.

If it’s a simple one tier cake I would go for it. Tiered cakes are a bit trickier due to scaffolding required.

Could you visit a local cake decorating shop for ideas on what you can hire, such as tiered cake stands, and see what decorations you can easily buy?

or check out buying a plain white iced cake and sticking ribbon and flowers on it?

Do you bake often? Have you considered when you will do it, and also how will you transport it, and assemble it?

I'm considering this myself! I bake and sell cakes professionally so I'm more than capable of doing it myself rather than paying out £500+, but I'm not sure I fancy the stress of it in the days leading up to my wedding, when I will already have enough things to do 🤦‍♀️

I would say you absolutely could do it, but I wouldn’t go for a naked/semi naked cake as they will dry out unless done at the last minute. If you covered the cake it would keep happily for a couple of days so could be made further in advance instead of the day before/of the wedding.

if you haven’t made a tiered cake before then you need to make sure you understand how to stack it safely and I’d advise taking it to the venue as separate layers and stacking it there. You’ll then have to add flowers etc but if you have them ready cut, the stems wrapped and you know where you’re putting them, that shouldn’t be a huge job.

Definitely do a trial run soon to iron out any issues before the real thing. Plus you get to eat more cake!

I used this cake recipe for the cake I made. lindyscakes.co.uk/2009/12/17/baking-the-perfect-madeira-cake/

And for the top layer I made this recipe as my kids have allergies.

www.allrecipes.com/recipe/16779/vegan-chocolate-cake/

This. I made mine for our wedding - like you, good baker, not great with the decorating but with practice managed a semi naked cake. I made all the layers in advance, one every few days or so, wrapped in cling film then froze them. I literally took them out the day before and iced while frozen, much easier than fresh anyway. Tasted great.

In terms of stress I think it depends entirely on you as a person/bride and how stressed you are. I personally didn't find getting married stressful at all and enjoyed making the cake and having something to do the day before.

Baking a great tasting cake is easy. I really recommend baking in advance and freezing. The layers are easier to work with anyway.

assembling a tiered cake is a bit tricky, but YouTube is a great teacher.

decorating a tiered cake well is a nightmare. That is a stress I honestly wouldn’t want before my wedding.

If you want to diy, I would think about just doing that for the actual cake people will eat so you don’t have to do fancy decorated tiers.

For the cake that will be cut, check if your local supermarket does tiered cakes and order a small one. Another option is to make one yourself with foam layers instead of cake and just have a fake triangle in the back where you cut out a piece of cake. That way you can decorate the cake far in advance instead of right before the wedding.

This is great advice, I'd do this, and practice with the tiered cakes to make sure its achievable.

I wish I'd made my own. It was made by a work colleague of DH and it was rubbish. She kept typing to get us to do it a certain way, ie the only way she could do cakes and instead of telling us she couldn't do what we wanted just did a shit job. Yes it was free, but she could've said no, she offered because she did everyone's cakes apparently!

We'd invited them to the evening and they didn't come, says it all really. I'm an accomplished baker and could've done a much better job!

Yes why not!
However I wouldn't do a naked cake. They go stale quickly because the cake is exposed, so you would have to make it the day before when you'll be pretty busy. If you make one wit fondant covering it the cake will stay fresh longer.

This
you cdd as n buy all sorts of ready made decorations to go on it

I did. Very small wedding, just the five of us. I made a Victoria Sandwich with fresh strawberries, put ready made fondant roll over it and one of thise plastic bride and groom figurines on top. It tasted much nicer than most wedding cakes because it was freshly made so the cake didn't have to be really dry to make it keep.

This. I could not have coped with making a cake for my own wedding.

I thought we would be chilled in the lead up as we were so organised, but it definitely wasn't! Things come up that you need to deal with/ sort out at the last minute.

There's also so much to remember on the day, I wouldn't have wanted to worry about transporting a cake to the venue on top of everything else.

Having said that, I suppose it depends on how big your wedding is - if it's a smaller and more relaxed affair you might be fine! Even then though, I would recommend you don't plan to do anything like this the day before - way too much stress!

I did as another lady mentioned, brought plain iced cakes from m&s, you can choose fruit, chocolate or plain sponge or mix different ones on each layer if you want too. I then brought ribbon, cake glue and cake flowers from eBay and constructed it myself. To be honest it looked and tasted just as good as any other cake I've had but it was much cheaper than having it made and not stressful as making from scratch