I did a lot of reading on how to do the support of a wedding cake or tiered cake seeing as they are popular not only for weddings but for birthdays and other special occasions. There are a few methods, but the one I used was supported with wooden dowels sticks, inserted in the bottom and middle layer.
So with all the information I could gather and a lot of hope I set out to bake my first wedding cake...
Here is the process:
First I made a drawing of what I wanted it to look like more or less:
Then on Friday I baked the 3 layers of a 23cm Chocolate Coffee cake, after they were cooled I wrapped them in cling wrap and placed them in the freezer. I also baked 3 layers of a 20cm Lemon Vanilla cake and proceeded with the wrapping and freezing. I made the flower topper from fondant and placed it in upright containers so that it could dry resembling a flower – this was done by cutting 5 different size flowers with a cookie cutter (cookie cutter set from @home) then rolling/frilling the ends out with a skewer – very easy and effective.
On Saturday evening I baked the 3 layers of a 15cm vanilla cake or Madeira cake, wrapped and then to the freezer. I made the smaller flowers also from fondant and my cookie cutter set. I made extra flowers in case some of them broke.
Here is the Fondant I coloured and wrapped in plastic
It was used for the flowers and for covering the cake.
Sunday evening I started to fill the cakes then iced them and covered them with the fondant.
It was used for the flowers and for covering the cake.
Sunday evening I started to fill the cakes then iced them and covered them with the fondant.
The three cakes filled/covered in icing and then covered in Fondant, you can see the dowel sticks protruding from the bottom cake –
This cake takes the most weight so it really needs the support the Orange middle layer also has dowel sticks
Inserted, the top layer is left unsupported.
Next I started to do the decoration, for the top layer I printed a design and then traced it using a pin and then just followed the design with Royal icing and some silver dragees. For the Middle layer I placed a white fondant strip around it and attached the flowers with royal icing – some fell off and I just re-attached them until they stuck. The flowers are a bit big, next time I will get a smaller cookie cutter. I also decorated the bottom layer using the same technique as the top layer.
Here are the top and middle layer before and after decorating, don’t know if you can see the pin marks
On the bottom left hand picture?
Then came the scary part – after all the cakes were decorated it was time to stack them hoping everything doesn’t cave in...
And guess what it worked it stayed on top of each other without sinking in or falling off. I finished at about 2am with the borders and was very tired after that.
But generally I am pleased with the end result, there are a few things I would do different next time, but this was a pleasant experience thanks for sharing it with me...Only thing is I don’t know what I am going to do with a cake enough for a 100 people...
