Wedding Cake - Cascading Roses

So here it finally is, my first ever wedding cake!

I decided to go for the cascading roses style, as that is quite popular at the moment; and it was quite handy as the decorating theme for the reception was roses too, as you can see from the table! I had already known the colour scheme was red, but I hadn't known about the roses theme, so it was quite lucky really. :-)

I originally made the (49!!) roses on cocktail sticks, with the intention of using them to stick them to, or rather in, the cake. But because there ended up being so many of them I felt uncomfortable with the idea of so many cocktail sticks being stuck in there; it seemed a bit unprofessional; so I took them off the cocktail sticks and stuck them on with royal icing instead. I was terrified that they wouldn't stay stuck and would fall off during transport, but the cake was well packaged in a box bought from www.craftcompany.co.uk (expensive for a box, but well worth the money), so they were all OK and the cake made it to the reception in one piece!

I was especially proud of the fact that I manage to cover all three cakes with icing on the first attempt without any tears or folds, and on the bottom tier I managed to cover both the cake and the board in one go! Yay me! :)

Here is a close up for you:

I have to say I thought I'd lost interest in cake decorating, until I made this cake and heard the reactions of all the people who were impressed by it. I know there are much better cakes out there, but I can't help but feel a little warm glow when I look at this one.

PS. Apparently it was delicious too.

Wedding cake

So I finished the wedding cake, after a week off work and several moments of panicky 'I can't do this!!'

The wedding is today so I won't be showing any pictures until later ;-) but I can tell you I made nearly 50 roses in the end! I ended up buying a 5 petal cutter to make the job slightly quicker, but it still takes time! The trouble is, I can't cut out all the petals at once as flower paste dries out so quickly, so it's a fiddly process of rolling out the paste mega thin (I bruised my hands doing that!), cutting petals, frilling them, wrapping them round the cone, then back to rolling out more paste. Sounds a quicker process than it actually is.

This was also my first experience of stacking cakes - as it was a 3 tiered job I had to put dowels in the bottom cake to support the two above it. As the middle tier was a dummy cake I didn't have to put dowels in that, apparently. If that had been fruit cake as well then I'd have had to use dowels in that one too.

The cake itself was Delia's own rich fruit cake recipe, found here.

After hours of watching YouTube tutorials on how to ice a cake, I managed to get the icing on all three without it ripping. I even managed to ice the bottom cake and board in one go! Yay me!

The bride's reaction was apparently good, although I didn't get to see it, but I'll see her later so I'll know then. :)

All in all, a bit of a confidence booster in the end.

More on this cake, including pictures, later this weekend.

Coming soon...

I spent an hour and a half making roses out of flower paste today. 90 mins of work gave a grand total of four roses. *Sigh*

I can understand now why people charge so much for cakes. If they've handmade a whole cascade of roses, that's going to be several hours of their time! It's not just about ingredients (although flower paste is expensive and all!)

Anyway, today's rose making exercise was the start of my latest project - I've got a wedding cake to complete by the 22nd September. Actually, that wasn't the start, I've already baked the top and bottom tiers - the middle being a dummy cake, else they'll have more fruit cake than they'll know what to do with.

So this is my first attempt at a wedding cake, and I must admit I'm cacking it slightly... I need more practice at roses! I've been given pretty much free rein on the design too, with just a colour scheme to work towards, so I'm still not entirely sure how the end product is going to look.

So I will try and keep you all updated with my progress, but without giving too much away at the same time. I want to keep it as sort of a surprise. Not that I think the recipients read this, but anyway.

Wish me luck!