Everybody loves a wedding!

Long time no blog! I've beendocumenting my travels over at my Where's Jane blog but now that lifehas become relatively more settled it is time to start posting backhere now. So what have I been up to then?

Well for a start I got married. Russand I had a lovely relaxed English summer wedding over here inTeddington in June of this year.

Apart from the awesomeness of theactual getting married part, it was a great chance for us to get tocreate as many things as we were able for the wedding itself, whichmeant that we got exactly what we wanted and weren’t paying anyoneto do things that we could do ourselves, which frankly just bugs me.Weddings are supposed to be about love and making a commitment to theperson you chose to spend your life with not spending £500 onfavours and the same on cake. Don’t get me started on the cost ofinvites.

 

Russ, being the artist of the familydrew our invites we agreed on the design together and got themprinted up at the local printers with envelopes to match. We thenhand tied ribbon to them for decoration and they were done. Idesigned my wedding dress and my mother in law made it for me. Russpicked out our music and I, of course, made the cake.

What follows is the story of how Iapproached it and some things you might want to consider if you'reattempting your own wedding cake or a celebration cake for a largegroup of people.

 

The decision making process:

Ah wedding cakes, now they are becomingmuch more individual but when I was growing up, all the wedding cakesI knew of were fruitcakes with layers of marzipan and royal icingwhich didn’t really fit with the idea of a summer wedding for me.

I knew I wanted layers of differentflavours because I wanted there to be something for everyone's tasteand it feels that little bit extravagant. When I started out in theprocess, I envisaged a 3 or 4 tiered cake, each with its own flavourand decoration but after speaking to the restaurant that was hostingour reception and realising how much space that cake would take up inour fridge let alone theirs I opted instead for cupcakes. Russ wantedto do the whole cake cutting thing, so we went for a top tier wecould cut and then cupcakes that guests could take themselves. Weneeded something we could store, something that was fuss free that guests could help themselves torather than having to wait for someone to cut it for them andsomething that looked awesome as well. We also didn’t want atraditional cake topper, the whole bride and groom on top of the cakedidn’t really fit with us so in December, we went to Brighton forour annual weekend away/last minute Christmas shopping trip andhappened to find an “All you need is love” cake topper which wasmuch more us.

 

The testing phase:

And so began the testing. From aboutFebruary onwards, nearly every week I was heading in to work with anew flavour or decoration style. I wanted to go for light flavoursthat reflected the season and avoid anything too heavy so in the endI went for orange blossom with a blood orange buttercream, lemon withlemon buttercream, vanilla cupcake with fresh raspberries baked intothe centre and a vanilla buttercream and a vanilla vanilla cupcakewhich was as it sounds, vanilla.

Each one had their own colour thoughall were decorated with the same swirl and a little edible lustrespray.

 

The top tier we jumped around onflavour choices for a while, we talked about carrot, chocolate andcoffee, chocolate and peanut butter buttercream, but we eventuallydecided on chocolate with a banana buttercream filling and vanillaicing on the outside.

Being summer we wanted to go for anatural outside kind of theme to the decoration and so the top tierwas white on the sides with a simple beaded border, the top was greengrass piped from buttercream with royal icing daisies and our caketopper.

 

The testing phase wasn’t just aboutdeciding on flavours and decorations, once we had gotten the flavoursdown, I needed to test out how to best store the cupcakes, how longthey would take to decorate from start to finish, quantities ofingredients and how much time we could allow between creation andconsumption and I needed to be mindful of the fact that it was goingto be summer and possibly quite hot when I was baking and decoratingeverything. All of this was key as I was making everything myself andwe wanted people to be able to have more than one cake if they wantedit so I ended up making about 100 cupcakes and the top tier was a twolayer cake as well. I also needed to figure out how to transporteverything and store them in the restaurants fridge in the easiestway possible that would ensure that they didn’t get crushed beforethe wedding day.

 

Implementation Phase:

 

During testing I established that itwould take me about 2 hours including cooling and decorating time tomake each flavour of cupcake, given that we had four flavours thatwas 8 hours total just for the cupcakes. The top tier took a bitlonger, it takes longer to cool and the decoration required a bitmore precision and therefore less speed so in testing it came out toabout 3 or 4 hours. That meant unless I wanted to be bridezilla onthe last days before my wedding, I had to split things out. We couldfit the top tier in our fridge when it was fully assembled so thatwas no problem, I could make that on the Tuesday before the wedding(which was on the Friday) and then wrap it in cling film to protectit and keep it fresh before boxing it up to take it to the venue onthe Thursday morning.

I made 2 layers of chocolate sponge andthen a batch of buttercream, flavoured a third of the buttercreambanana and then used the rest to cover the cake and pipe decorationcolouring where needed for the grass. So it was four hours of easybaking and decorating and I was a happy bride.

Wednesday was the cupcake marathon so Istarted out early, sent Russ out for a massage at the Lush spa inKingston so he was a relaxed groom and I had the place to myself andthen I baked. I used the same base recipe to keep it simple and thenjust added the flavour variations as I went. Vanilla, raspberries,Orange zest and orange blossom extract, lemon zest and lemon oilextract et voilà.

Once the last batch of cupcakes wasbaked it was time to start decorating and so continued the productionline. In the end, having the momentum helped and it actually took meless time than it normally would have, I think in the end it onlytook me about 6 hours.

I found suppliers on the internet thatsold deep cupcake boxes that held 24 cupcakes in cupcake inserts madefrom thick corrugated cardboard which made them stackable and keptthe cupcakes fresh. In test phase the cupcakes were still good afterabout 4 days being stored in the boxes in a cool dry place but Iwanted mine to be as fresh as possible so it was only 48 hours maxbetween creating and consumption. I also found a simple perspex 7tier cake stand that we could use to display everything on the net, Ithink it set me back about £60 and worked out cheaper than hiringone of the same size, its configurable too to you don’t have to gofor the whole 7. We only went for 6 on the day but you could just aseasily only use a couple. We printed out a cupcake menu for theguests so that they knew what was what and framed it in a cute littlevintage looking frame I got from one of the local charity shops. Allin all, I probably spent about £120 on ingredients, the stand andboxes, the topper and all the little tools and gels I needed fordecoration, the time was my own and I probably saved at least 50% onprice if I had of gotten someone else to do them.

 

How did it turn out?

 

Great! Everyone loved them, at the endof the night there were very few cakes left and those that were leftwere taken by the last remaining guests so we had no left overs tocart home. I couldn’t have been happier. The process worked wellthough I did get sick of making wedding cakes by the end of it butthat’s natural when you do a lot of one particular thing.Definitely recommend it for anyone out there who wants to make theirown wedding cake or special occasion cake to feed a crowd. I wasworried about the weather, as all brides do before their wedding,baking brides doubly so. The day before the wedding was particularlywarm but by then the cakes were made and happily stored in the fridgeat the venue by then and they had been kept in their boxes in thecoldest part of the house the night before that. I did however lookat hiring a fridge to store the cakes on the off chance that it wasincredibly warm and if you live in a warmer climate I'd definitelyrecommend it if you don’t have air-conditioning in your house andare planning to use buttercream like I did.

Think about how your flavours matchtogether, its definitely easiest to have a common base recipe thatyou can adapt to your different flavours with a few additions muchlike the Italians have a tomato based “mother sauce” that theyadd variations to, to make all different kinds of meals.

I've given you mine before but ifyou're interested in a specific flavour, comment and I can give youmore detail if you need.

Simple is the key but simple is alsorelative, the way I did it was simple from my perspective but mightnot be from yours or alternatively you might have a higher thresholdfor simple. Think about what you're capable of doing in the timeframe that you have and go with it. Use commercial decorations orfresh flowers and ribbon, use boxed cake mix if you feel like itseasier. Its your creation so do what you like.

 

Want to see some pictures, here you go!

Next up: Post wedding baking or Mama'sgetting crazy with the colours now.