Making your own wedding cake?

svjenni

tadaa - yes that should be fine

Taadaa

Thanks svjenni, I will decorate it on WEds morning, leaving the afternoon to do the flowers with my mum! Yay! x

BenEvans

my mum made mine (a four teir traditional fruit cake) and it looked great. homemade always taste better than shop brought too. Fruit cakes also keep well (infact, like xmas cakes they are better if kept for 6 weeks or more) so you can get it all ready before, and just ice it a few days before the big day, taking away SOME of the stress!

gingerbeer

Hi, I have decided to make my own, i'm having Fruit on the bottom , carrot on the middle and madeira on the top. I'm going to do the fruit cake weeks before, the madeira, the week before and the carrot about 4 days before. i just need to master icing round cakes. I've been practising but not on a round one yet. i'm going to start this weekend.
PS i got my fruit & carrot recipes from a Maisie Fantasie book i borrowed from the library, they have gone down so well and are gorgeous. (she charges over £1000 for her cakes! :eek:)
Do you all put marzipan under the icing?

how do i insert a pic straight onto this i can't insert them?

Al1x

I'd only put marzipan on first if i'm using royal icing.

My sister is making me 3 tiers of Nigella's fruit cake for our wedding - http://www.nigella.com/recipe/recipe_detail.aspx?rid=13509

She make it for christmas and it was lovely and I don't normally like fruit cake

svjenni

You only need marzipan on the fruit cake as the fruit can seep through the white icing and stain it- its a good idea to do the marzipan smooth it and then leave it a few days - this means yo will have a harder base to put the icing on which will make it much easier. (you will need to brush the marzipan with vodka to make it sticky before putting the icing on)

for the other sponge based cakes, you wil need a sticky layer of something to help stick the icing to the cake. Buttercream works or you could use chocolate spread or jam, depending on what is in your cake


tips for icing round cakes:
use a thick layer of icing - at least 1-1.5cm thick
smooth the top of the cake first
use a cupping motion to ease the icing down the sides - the slower and gentler you work the less likely you are to get cracks and folds

Taadaa

What's a cupping motion?

I had my second practice decorating with sugar icing, you can see it here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/baking_making_and_creating/4372706072/

Ginger beer I have used Maisie Fantasie recipes, they are fab, but i also have Romantic Cakes by Peggy P and her recipes are out of this world. You cannot just have one slice, they are like nothing i have ever tasted before. I have made the chocolate, lemon and the vanilla sponge so far. Definitely worth investing in for budding cake makers. x

Forgot to say, agree with the icing thickness comment from svjenni, i am not a great fan of thick icing but if you look carefully at the photo you will see it stretched a little when i was rolling it out onto the cake. The sides aren't as need as i would have liked, but it was only a little 6" thank you cake so i think it's good enough! x

Taadaa

gingerbeer wrote: »

Hi, I have decided to make my own, i'm having Fruit on the bottom , carrot on the middle and madeira on the top. I'm going to do the fruit cake weeks before, the madeira, the week before and the carrot about 4 days before. i just need to master icing round cakes. I've been practising but not on a round one yet. i'm going to start this weekend.
PS i got my fruit & carrot recipes from a Maisie Fantasie book i borrowed from the library, they have gone down so well and are gorgeous. (she charges over £1000 for her cakes! :eek:)
Do you all put marzipan under the icing?

how do i insert a pic straight onto this i can't insert them?

I can't get the hang of the picture thing on this forum either, just gone for putting the links in! x

dizziblonde

Brother's girlfriend's doing mine - no idea what it's going to be as she does those novelty cakes that look like things (she did a hamburger one recently!).. so I'm probably getting a cake in the shape of a three-legged cat or something.

Getting a second plain cake done by the caterers to bring home and cut and share among work colleagues etc... will probably be destroyed by a rabid pack of Brownie Guides!

Evansangel

Taadaa wrote: »

I can't get the hang of the picture thing on this forum either, just gone for putting the links in! x

Just upload them to a photo sharing site, such as photo bucket. Then open a new reply, copy the URL from photobucket and paste it into the little box that looks like a yellow square with mountains in.

HTH