I wanna wedding cake - do I make my own?

Sarahsaver

I cannot believe the extortionate price of wedding cakes! It's the same cost to have a chocolate fountain - including the staff!!! about £350. What a rip off. Been to a wedding fair today, in the venue for our acrtual reception, and the room was all set out, nearly cried :rolleyes: it looked so lovely, but I am determined NOT to pay that much for a cake. Anyone here made their own?

hjb123

My sister is getting married in July and we are getting my Aunty to make the cake and a family friend to ice it! Saves one hell of a lot of money.

code-a-holic

Shop around a bit for prices - we found a bakery that made a 3 tier for £150. made the bottom tier sponge to help reduce the price! Also tescos sell wedding fruit cakes. buy 3 sizes and make a 3 tier. They are plain so you can decorate yourself with trailing fresh flowers or fancy cake toppers from ebay. Or ice it if you think you can!
Or find the local cookery classes - maybe they have a star student that would love to do it for a small price and cost of ingredients!
good luck!

Katie_Bell

We had cakes from M&S. They are pre-iced in either white or ivory (or chocolate iced if having a chocolate cake). We had a medium sized fruit cake, a large chocolate sponge and an extra large plain sponge all with white matching icing. I made a cake tiara thing that are very popular at wedding fairs and we hired a three tier cake stand. PM me and I'll send you the piccys

across

what we did was buy the three tiers uniced from the wedding cake shop then they also sold us the amount of icing required and my sister iced it she went to night class and learnt how to make iced flowers just in time for the occasion! it was lovely the bottom two together then pillars and a top tear. it had a bouquet of iced flowers on ive still got them! so much cheaper i think the tiers were about approx £20 each (cant remember exactly)
so remember the cake shops will sell you uniced tears whatever size you want,a slab of icing whatever weight you want and marzipan.
remember for the cake to look in proportion you need to get the thickness same on tiers and correct sizes diameter plus it needs to be flat so unless youre really good at cake making i would say for what it's worth buy them from good cake shop and it will look proffessional and you'll still save a packet!
a relative made 3 tiers for us at first but they didnt stick to the measurements asked and it wouldnt have looked right so we went out and bought tham in the end. good luck!

car_chick

Hi,

They can be really expensive as we found out. Rather than have a traditional tiered fruit/sponge cake we had a belgium chocolate cake it was pretty big (meant for 70 people) large bottom and tall 2nd tier(if you like) but it was all one cake with lots of individual layers inside a very thick white flake like choc coating with thick white flake bars all around the bottom.

Because it was chocolate we didnt have a dessert at the wedding just the cake and it fed all wedding guest (bout 70) all evening guests (bout 45) and we took half of the top bit home!!

This was just under £200 but it was a real novelty and we didn't have to pay for 70 desserts.

pavlovs_dog

i suppose it depends on several things, like whether you want fruit cake, or sponge, or a combination, do you have your heart set on a traditional cake, or are you open to more quirky ideas? and also, how many mouths it has to feed. i know you say your kids love their fruit, but im sure after eating wedding leftovers for weeks they'd loose their taste for it slightly

i think for my wedding i'd buy a medium-large plain fruit cake, which i would decorate myself, and then as my official cake, i like the idea of making tiers/a mountain out of individual fairy cakes, which would be decorated appropriately

that said, my ideas for my ideal wedding are, so im told, rather wacky and off the wall, so how much help they will be to you i dont know !

all the best anyway. when is the big day? and did you sort out the problem with your dress?

cheekymole

Describe an ideal cake, Sarah (i.e. one that you would like to appear on your wedding table)

Becles

Sarahsaver wrote:

Anyone here made their own?

How bizarre reading this!

I just baked my own fruit cake this afternoon. It's just a small wedding, so I'm just doing one 8" square cake. I can post my Great Nana's fruit cake recipe if you need it!

I will do the marzipan, flat icing and piping myself. I can make sugarcraft flowers and stuff but they are really time consuming to do. There's a shop nearby that sells them ready meal and they are reasonble prices, so I can buy them if I run out of time.

nadnad

i got my own (chocolate) weding cake from the local bakery - it was three tier and has chocolate sticks the wholes way around the outside and chocolate curls on the top - they only charged me £95. so try local bakers that dont necessarily specialise in wedding cakes. the same cake done by a specialist wedding cake person would have cost me £350 -£400 - thats what i was quoted and was disgusted.

Sarahsaver

Big
Heavy fruit cake, with a little one 'just in case'... to save for the baby if we have one, you never know...
Icing not too thick, not too thin.
NO ribbons, no pink. I did try a bit of a choc. fudge cake but mr. saver to be doesnt like chocolate unless it's unadulterated.
I did think about one big fruit cake to cut then a lot of fairy cakes in a pile which would be easier to distribute.