making my own wedding cake

polr

I'm planning on making my own wedding cake which I will decorate the day or so before. My plan is below and it's a fruitcake (My Xmas cake recipe) laced with booze (need 3 tiers).

Can't face making them one after the other so thinking of leaving it a few weeks between each but does this look reasonable or do you think the cake would br a dried up mess come Aug?

End June - First Tier
Two weeks later - second Tier
Two weeks later - last tier
End July (well, few days into Aug) wedding

becs

With fruit cakes they're actually better the longer you leave them. Many cake makers will make 2 Xmas cakes at a time so they keep the second one for the following year. I assume you will be icing and decorating near to the wedding though?

augustsmummy

They should be fine, just remember to keep feeding the cakes with alcohol to keep them moist .

polr

Thank you both :-) Yeah, I was thinking of icing maybe the weekend before then whacking it all together the day before. Perhaps icing the day before depending on the style I end up going for.

Making it in advance will make such a differnece to the stress pre-wedding I reckon and hopefully save me quite a whack of money.

Another question....if I make the cake, ice it then don't use it all (only really need 2 layers) can I de-ice it and feed it more ready for Xmas?

Squeekyclean

Hi polr
I wouldn't leave the decorating and assembly to the day before, give yourself some more time to make sure everything is coming together the way you want it, the fruit cake will be fine if it's covered.

I have re-covered fruit cakes that were 7 years old, not that I recommend this, it was what my clients wanted, most kept them in an air tight container, so keeping a fruit tier for a couple of months and using it at Christmas should be fine.

RLH33

Of course you can stagger baking the cakes but they will need to be made at least 3 months in advance of the wedding.

I make celebration and wedding cakes and a fruit cake that hasn't 'matured' will not cut right and could crumble.

As for decorating them, you can marzipan and ice them a week or even two weeks in advance, the icing won't go off and neither will the cakes as they are fruit.

Keeping any leftovers for Xmas will be fine! Good idea actually:D

daisiegg

The lady who is making my wedding cake says she makes the fruit cakes more than three months before the wedding, and sponge cakes about three days before. She decorates about three days before.

I usually make my Christmas cake in September - so as others have said, as long as you keep feeding it booze, you can make it months in advance and it will only get better

polr

Thanks again - I might make one this weekend then since I'm dying to get started!

Squeekyclean - I feel i have to as the wedding is in York and we've to travel down two days before, worried it'll get damaged. However, I was thinking (and this needs more thought) of doing it up to the icing stage then just finishing it the day before.

I'm thinking of a tall thin cake, all the same width etc so it's like a tall cylinder if that makes sense? So I was thinking I could cover each layer in marzipan and either do the stacking if it looks like it wil be secure or just do that and the final bit before. Worth saying that a friends of mine (bridesmaid) will be there then and she's far more knowledgable than me with these things.

RLH33

I made a wedding cake for a friend last month that then needed to be transported from the South West to Glasgow by car.

As I was attending the wedding I stacked it up, put it in a special box I have, and then just added the flowers and ribbon on the morning of the wedding.

polr

RLH33 wrote: »

I made a wedding cake for a friend last month that then needed to be transported from the South West to Glasgow by car.

As I was attending the wedding I stacked it up, put it in a special box I have, and then just added the flowers and ribbon on the morning of the wedding.

Good to hear! I've now made them and plan on marzipanning them then doing the rest in York (handily ther e is a kitchen area in our room!)

Can I ask what 'special box' you have? All I've seen are those flimsy big white ones and not sure it will be stable enough. I was thinking a strong cardboard box might do the trick? Or Sweet tins (you know, like Roses)?