The Road to the Wedding Cake

My husband is very down to earth and practical and after adding up all my costs for this declared ,

"Never was there a more expensive wedding cake!"

I needed first of all a new oven/cooker. My cooker was quite old; good enough for us but not equal to the task.

Step 1

We bought a new cooker for a few hundred pounds.

Step 2

My youngest son booked himself and me on a cake decorating course. This was the best money we spent.  The lessons were done by a baker and she only takes up to a maximum of four pupils at a time. In our class there were just the two of us. My youngest son was keen to help make his brother's wedding cake.

Our first efforts were doing proper decorating on cupcakes. Here are my efforts. The teacher taught us how to fill them with jam, how to do a tall 99 swirl and how to do a rose and then how to bi-colour a rose and how to dome the fondant.

I have done so many of these since doing the course.

See the pictures for my efforts. I had never even attempted this before and there I was committed to doing a wedding cake! For my son!

This was a long way though from decorating a wedding cake but I had to start somewhere.

Step 3

I had to have the right equipment. Well I couldn't make it without the right tools, could I ? The purchase of everything I would need was quite substantial.

I now have every size of rolling pin, embossed rolling pins, icing nozzles, cake lifters, icing bags, food colouring gels, cake boards, boxes, edible icing dust, cutters.

Step 4

Next we made a simple celebration cake. We learned how to cover a cake, colour the icing and make roses.

My son is very clever at making things and is a perfectionist. Here he is making his celebration cake. He coloured the icing grey and made white roses for the top and trimmed with red ribbon. The roses are made of fondant icing. They look real though don't they!

Step 5

Once the course was finished we needed to practise. And we have done as we didn't want to forget and lose our newly gained skills.

 The first main practice though was for the Christmas Fair at Church. I did "Guess the weight of the cake " and we made a winter wonderland cake.

In the space of a few months, we had gone from being beginners who had never done proper cupcakes to icing a winter wonderland.

I covered the cake and my son coloured the icing and made the Santa hats, leaves, snowmen everything. It was a huge hit at the Church Fair. I could not believe how far we had developed.

My son then made his son's birthday cake. My grandson loves cars and Lightning Mc Queen  is his favourite. My son therefore made him a  Lightning McQueen cake, colouring the icing , moulding the cake for his boy.

We have done two practice cakes now and are confident about what we want to do for the real wedding cake two tiers. I have bought everything I need .

Here are the practices. We have made lilies, roses, daisies and chrysanthemums out of icing for the practice cakes.

When the wedding is done in three weeks time, I shall post a photo of the actual cake as it would be unfair to the lovely bride and groom to do so beforehand.

Here's the practices though, a labour of love of course. But see how far I have come in 8 months.

Watch out for the real thing in three weeks !

Will I manage it ?

My youngest son, who helped make the sugar roses pointed out that as we were transporting the cakes 240 miles, that we should decorate 2 identical cakes in case of mishap. We didn't have a mishap;  but we had two gorgeous cakes.

See below the final thing.

I am in great demand now! Hot on the heels of my son's wedding cake 2 weeks ago, my cousin asked me to do the Baptism cake for his grandson's Baptism tomorrow.  I have just finished it.

There are 12 big stars for the 12 Apostles and 12 roses for the 12 fruits of the Spirit, footsteps to follow the Way.

Who would have thought that about 12 months ago I had never done any icing?

My niece/god-daughter asked me to do her wedding cake  similar but not the same to my son's. The wedding is tomorrow and she is delighted with her cake. I did two chocolate ganache cakes for her too.

Time for a break from cake decorating though I hope. The thought of messing up and spoiling someone's day is too stressful.

I hope you like my cake styles.

Today, we have decorated a Baptism Cake for my new baby granddaughter's Baptism on Sunday.

It is decorated with butterflies made out of sugar as butterflies are a Christian symbol of the Resurrection with the cocoon being the tomb and the butterfly emerging into something beautiful.