Wedding cake help

FutureGirl

I really need some help with a wedding cake!

We only want a plain sponge cake, perhaps with a little cream or jam in the middle - no fruit. But all the cakes I see seem to have marzipan within them.

I am allergic to sme nuts, and cannot have marzipan. Does anyone know if it's possible to have a cake with the white icing, without marzipan? Otherwise I won't be able to eat some of my own cake!

Ms_Chocaholic

Of course you can have sponge cake. I'm unsure whether you plan on getting a bakery to make you a cake but M&S do wedding cakes that are reasonably priced, different sized tiers available.

http://www.marksandspencer.com/traditional-wedding-cake-large-tier/p/pb940042?prevPage=plp

FutureGirl

Our venue has a wedding cake supplier who can supply the cake, or we can choose to have the cost deducted from the invoice and do the cake ourself (which I'd prefer).

I am just unsure on the best way to go, as we can't have marzipan on the cake.

benjus

The traditional wedding cake is a fruit cake with marzipan under the icing. However, lots of people nowadays prefer something different.

This was our wedding cake - chocolate sponge with dulce de leche filling and iced with chocolate ganache and white fondant. The person who made it is a friend who runs a cake business, and she put it on her blog (there's also a link to a video of it being made).

Last year my wife's cousin got married, and she opted for vanilla sponge, again with dulce de leche filling and white fondant icing. I baked her wedding cake and my mother-in-law iced it. I used this recipe, which worked very nicely.

Anyway, the point is that sponge wedding cakes are very popular now and there's no need to use marzipan. Any wedding cake maker should be able to make one.

daivid

If your having it made for you no problem, it would be a poor cake maker that couldn't/wouldn't cater to such needs (unless the mention of a nut allergy scares them off completely).

Have you considered baking your own? Icing can be bought ready to roll and decorations to put straight on the cake. If it's something you would consider I'd recommend one of Mary Berry's cake books - mine is her "New Cake Book" from 1989, cost £2 from a charity store and has excellent recipes for a good range of cakes. Many of her recipes are available for free on the BBC recipes web-page too.

xxlouisexx56

I'm having a 4 tier cake.

Red velvet, plain sponge, lemon and chocolate.

No marzipan in sight!

megaginge

Options above (Esp. M+S) are good, but consider if you really NEED a wedding cake as well?

You could always make up a desert table, perhaps with brownies, cupcakes, a cream tea, which would be interesting, different for guests and certainly come in much cheaper than a traditional wedding cake offered by the venue directly.

That said I've been to 3 weddings in the last 2 years and 2 of them had Victoria sponge style wedding cakes with fondant icing. Only one was a marzipan fruit cake... It's quite common for suppliers to be able to offer this these days!

TBagpuss

If you are having sponge cake rather than traditional fruit cake then I would not expect any marzipan, but as others have said, a baker should have no trouble or (depending on the severity of your allergy) consider making the cake yourself - if you are not confident about decorating you can buy fondant icing which can be rolled out.

M&S do sponge as well as fruit options - their sponge cake comes with jam and buttercream filling, no marzipan. (or if your allergy is less sever and you think you guests would like it, you could have one tier of fruitcake with marzipan and one layer of sponge, but you may feel that the risk of cross-contamination isn't worth it.

arbrighton

Marzipan is only usually on fruit cake, under royal icing. Most wedding cake makers do more sponge and buttercream or fondant than fruit cake these days. We ended up having the really traditional fruit cake with marzipan and royal icing (I hate fondant and my mum hates it, I wasn't having a cake that I didn't want to eat!!) and just had to say to our one nut allergic guest to not take a piece. But it was definitely not the usual request judging by the cake shop and most of the websites I looked at in the run up.
My mate who makes wedding cakes mostly does sponge and fondant or cupcakes these days

glentoran99

friends of ours had a "fake" cake on show and for the pictures, then just cut up an ordinary cake and shared it around