Baking a wedding cake
I was asked to do a wedding cake for my housemate's sister. This was a little daunting as although we've met a few times it felt a little more like a job than a favour for a friend as was true with the last time I helped on a wedding cake. The below account includes some of the stuff I learnt which will hopefully be of use if I ever have to do this again, or if anyone else is trying it.
It turned out she actually wanted a fairly straight-forward Victoria sponge, or three of them stacked up anyway. At first I was almost disappointed at the simplicity of it, but gradually some challenges presented themselves. Although mostly logistical rather than culinary.
The challenges
The cakes
The recipe I used was based on 3 eggs to 175g of flour, butter and caster sugar and 1 teaspoon each of vanilla essence and baking powder for the two layers of an 18cm diameter cake. This made each layer 3-4cm resulting in each cake being about 12cm tall) I used reasonably heavy spring form tins, greased (I use baking spray, it's not a great flavour, but I couldn't face doing it by hand) and then with a circle of greaseproof paper at the bottom. (I don't line the sides as it gives a rough texture to the cake sides when you pull it off).
Cream the butter and sugar together (I would start this by hand until combined and then use an electric whisk), then add the eggs very gradually. Do not skimp on the whisking! Finally sift the flour and baking powder and fold in, being careful to not overmix, but also look out for flour pockets. Put in tin, smooth it out a bit (it'll settle so don't stress too much about it being perfect) and bake in oven at 180 until the edges of the cake start to pull inwards from the edge of the tin (15-30 mins depending on size).
One thing that I did find very useful was to be able to adjust the recipe by working out the ratios of radius squared. This meant I could scale the recipe up and down for the individual cakes (4 eggs for each layer of the 28cm, 1.5 for the 18cm and 2/3 for the 12cm), but also do a big batch of mix all at once and divide it into different size tins. This also helped avoid trying to measure 2/3 of an egg.
Just as an example, one of the batches I did was 1 large layer, 1 medium and 2 small ones:
Once all that is mixed you need to divide the mixture appropriately between the tins. I did this with maths again:
Calculate the weight of the mixture (ie subtract weight of bowl, I actually have the weights of my bowls recorded for just these occasions). Then it needs to be divided according to area of tin, so radius squared:
Total of all radiuses squared = 14*14 + 9*9 + 6*6 + 6*6 = 349
So the weight of the mix to go in the largest one = weight of total cake mix * (14 * 14 / 349)
That all make sense? The maths really really helped out to make the process more efficient. I only had one each of the larger cake tins so would have been there all day if I had to do them all separately. I did have some complexities with baking different sizes at once, because they all needed different cooking times, but if you take care to be quick and not jostle the still cooking cakes, it seemed to be ok.
The logistics
I made all the cakes the day before the wedding. I think it took 5 or 6 batches. I was nervous about leaving the mixture sitting out too long, so did a new batch for each round in the oven. Making the actual mix didn't take too long (15 minutes? Less?) and then baking, cooling and turning out was about ½ hour. So I got through the batches relatively quickly. It's a lot of washing up, takes a lot of space for cooling racks and uses a terrifying amount of ingredients. It took me a few attempts to get a 'perfect' pair of the smaller cakes, and one of the largest ones collapsed, oh, and I dropped one of the small lopsided ones, but all in all, pretty disaster free.
I wrapped each of the layers in cling film and found some large boxes to store them in (god bless Really Useful Boxes!). It was a little tricky as I didn't want to stack too many on top of each other for fear of squishing, but they just about all had a home.
The day of the wedding I washed all the fruit for filling and decorating. I could probably have gotten away with not bothering, but I was being a bit paranoid. It takes a long time to wash (and dry!) 2.5 kilos of raspberries. I tupperwared them all up and labelled everything. This included deciding which cakes were going in which layers and labelling them up, easiest done at home in the calm rather than a kitchen in a panic. I boxed everything up, ticking things off my list as I went. I took absolutely everything I thought I could possibly need, not just things like the whisk for the cream, but right down to kitchen roll, clingfilm and spoons. I was very happy I'd done that!
The biggest stumbling block of the whole day turned out to be completely nothing to do with the cake and all to do with the M25. The wedding was in East Grinstead and when I checked the travel time on Google Maps one evening it was 75 minutes. When I switched the satnav on however on Friday at 2pm, it was 100 minutes and in the end it turned out to be more like 150 minutes. Fortunately I'd left plenty of time, intending to arrive at the reception with the guests, as it was I turned up just as they were all about to go in for dinner. Not the best time to be arriving in a kitchen, but the caterers were a well-oiled machine and didn't seem too put out by my appearance.
The assembling
The cake cutting was planned for 7.30 with the meal starting at 5 and concluding at 6.30ish, so I snuck out just before the speeches and spent 45 minutes assembling the cake so it could be taken out while people were eating their pudding. This worked for me as I wasn't that connected to the wedding party itself, but would've been frustrating if I'd been actually interested in the speeches. An alternative would have been to assemble the cakes and put them in the fridge before dinner, but that's a bit more risky and fridge space was quite limited.
I commandeered a corner of the kitchen out of the way of the caterers. I whipped the cream (I used two parts double to one part single) spread it over the top of one cake to about 1cm deep and then arranged the raspberries in concentric circles. It needs a LOT of raspberries for a 28cm diameter cake! Pointing upwards makes the cake very tall, but gives it more stability (I did a practice cake with slices of strawberries and it just slithered all over the place). I'd then put a layer of cream on the bottom of the other half of the cake and carefully plonk it on top. There's no easy way to do that, you just have to manhandle it in to position. With the largest cake… it was pretty hairy but they all held together.
To stack them, I used wooden dowel which could be cut to size with normal scissors (sanding the ends off a bit and washing the splinters off!) and the thinnest cardboard cake boards I could find. I built each layer in situ on top of the previous and put thick dustings of icing sugar between each cake and the next to avoid sticking (I also icing sugared the tray before the first cake went on). Once assembled I decorated it with fruit and flowers, I used lavender because it worked well to hide the slight gaps between the layers of the cake and pretty much just distributed strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and red currants randomly over the cake.
The topper went on... and the little leg of the banner promptly snapped! That's probably the biggest disaster of the whole thing, but it looked ok as a flag instead of a banner. Then it was just a matter of making the somewhat perilous journey moving it from the kitchen to the main room. Miraculously nothing fell off, I have no idea how. It was admired for about an hour and didn't collapse and managed to get ceremonially sliced without oozing cream and strawberries everywhere! And it didn't taste too bad either (although due to being full from dinner, I don't think much of it actually got eaten, I certainly ended up taking home the spare middle layer.)
The Cost
The ingredients came to just shy of 60 quid, The cake ingredients themselves were about 25 quid (mostly butter and a big thing of expensive vanilla, I also got expensive eggs, but they were on special offer), then 25 for the raspberries and cream and 10 for the other decorations. I also had to buy a couple of extra tins and the doweling and cards to support it. I did it for cost on the friends and family discount which made the whole thing a very reasonable (I think) 80 quid. If I'd factored in time I'd likely have at least doubled that, possibly even tripled it given having to travel to assemble it on site.
Overall - Cake!
All in all, I was really very happy with it and the bride and groom were too, which was the main thing! I don't think I'd want to make a career out of it, the hourly rate would be pitiful and it's a bit stressful, But if you're also factoring in the good will factor of helping friends out on their big day, then it works out a bit better, I've been feeling very pleased with myself for well over a week, and that ain't nothing.
It will however be a while until I can bring myself to make another Victoria Sponge.
It turned out she actually wanted a fairly straight-forward Victoria sponge, or three of them stacked up anyway. At first I was almost disappointed at the simplicity of it, but gradually some challenges presented themselves. Although mostly logistical rather than culinary.
The challenges
- First issue - Victoria sponge doesn't really allow for any mistakes. A chocolate cake or something fussy in many ways can cover a range of sins. These sponges are naked, you can't cover up holes, or trim off burnt bits. Still, practice makes perfect and I decided that it would be a good idea to actually make twice as many cakes as needed with the added bonus of being sure there would be enough cake to actually feed 120 people)
- Second issue - Victoria sponges when done right aren't really known for their solidity. Stacking them (the idea of a separated cake stand was dismissed by all parties as looking a bit too much like a Star Trek chess game) required some construction. Still, a few bits of cardboard and doweling solved that.
- Third issue - The fillings requested were raspberries and fresh whipped cream. That gave the cakes a very limited life span. As the temperature rose as we got closer to the wedding date I kept decreasing the shelf life until I wasn't really happy leaving the cake out for more than an hour. I concluded that the best option would be to bake the cakes at home the day before, but do all the assembling at the venue, bringing the cakes out just an hour or so before the cutting.
The cakes
- Top tier - 12cm diameter - this was about as small as I could go without things looking silly. Even at 12cm the cake was taller than it was wide! I had a hell of a job trying to get these ones to rise level and ended up cooking 7 of them.
- Middle tier - 18cm diameter - the cake was being decorated with fruit and flowers which forced a fairly wide 'step' for each tier. 3cm was just about big enough to balance some strawberries
- Bottom tier - 28 cm diameter - I'd never made a Victoria sponge (or actually any cake) this big and I had a few problems with sinkage in the middle. I had to be pretty paranoid about disturbing the cake. It seemed fairly resilient to the oven door being opened, but any jiggling before it was finished led to the middle collapsing very badly.
The recipe I used was based on 3 eggs to 175g of flour, butter and caster sugar and 1 teaspoon each of vanilla essence and baking powder for the two layers of an 18cm diameter cake. This made each layer 3-4cm resulting in each cake being about 12cm tall) I used reasonably heavy spring form tins, greased (I use baking spray, it's not a great flavour, but I couldn't face doing it by hand) and then with a circle of greaseproof paper at the bottom. (I don't line the sides as it gives a rough texture to the cake sides when you pull it off).
Cream the butter and sugar together (I would start this by hand until combined and then use an electric whisk), then add the eggs very gradually. Do not skimp on the whisking! Finally sift the flour and baking powder and fold in, being careful to not overmix, but also look out for flour pockets. Put in tin, smooth it out a bit (it'll settle so don't stress too much about it being perfect) and bake in oven at 180 until the edges of the cake start to pull inwards from the edge of the tin (15-30 mins depending on size).
One thing that I did find very useful was to be able to adjust the recipe by working out the ratios of radius squared. This meant I could scale the recipe up and down for the individual cakes (4 eggs for each layer of the 28cm, 1.5 for the 18cm and 2/3 for the 12cm), but also do a big batch of mix all at once and divide it into different size tins. This also helped avoid trying to measure 2/3 of an egg.
Just as an example, one of the batches I did was 1 large layer, 1 medium and 2 small ones:
- Number of eggs: 4 + 1.5 + 4/3 = 6.83, make it 7.
- Amount of flour/butter eggs: 175* 7 / 3 = 408
- Amount of baking powder and vanilla = 2 1/3 or 2.25 and a bit (my spoons do quarters not thirds
Once all that is mixed you need to divide the mixture appropriately between the tins. I did this with maths again:
Calculate the weight of the mixture (ie subtract weight of bowl, I actually have the weights of my bowls recorded for just these occasions). Then it needs to be divided according to area of tin, so radius squared:
Total of all radiuses squared = 14*14 + 9*9 + 6*6 + 6*6 = 349
So the weight of the mix to go in the largest one = weight of total cake mix * (14 * 14 / 349)
That all make sense? The maths really really helped out to make the process more efficient. I only had one each of the larger cake tins so would have been there all day if I had to do them all separately. I did have some complexities with baking different sizes at once, because they all needed different cooking times, but if you take care to be quick and not jostle the still cooking cakes, it seemed to be ok.
The logistics
I made all the cakes the day before the wedding. I think it took 5 or 6 batches. I was nervous about leaving the mixture sitting out too long, so did a new batch for each round in the oven. Making the actual mix didn't take too long (15 minutes? Less?) and then baking, cooling and turning out was about ½ hour. So I got through the batches relatively quickly. It's a lot of washing up, takes a lot of space for cooling racks and uses a terrifying amount of ingredients. It took me a few attempts to get a 'perfect' pair of the smaller cakes, and one of the largest ones collapsed, oh, and I dropped one of the small lopsided ones, but all in all, pretty disaster free.
I wrapped each of the layers in cling film and found some large boxes to store them in (god bless Really Useful Boxes!). It was a little tricky as I didn't want to stack too many on top of each other for fear of squishing, but they just about all had a home.
The day of the wedding I washed all the fruit for filling and decorating. I could probably have gotten away with not bothering, but I was being a bit paranoid. It takes a long time to wash (and dry!) 2.5 kilos of raspberries. I tupperwared them all up and labelled everything. This included deciding which cakes were going in which layers and labelling them up, easiest done at home in the calm rather than a kitchen in a panic. I boxed everything up, ticking things off my list as I went. I took absolutely everything I thought I could possibly need, not just things like the whisk for the cream, but right down to kitchen roll, clingfilm and spoons. I was very happy I'd done that!
The biggest stumbling block of the whole day turned out to be completely nothing to do with the cake and all to do with the M25. The wedding was in East Grinstead and when I checked the travel time on Google Maps one evening it was 75 minutes. When I switched the satnav on however on Friday at 2pm, it was 100 minutes and in the end it turned out to be more like 150 minutes. Fortunately I'd left plenty of time, intending to arrive at the reception with the guests, as it was I turned up just as they were all about to go in for dinner. Not the best time to be arriving in a kitchen, but the caterers were a well-oiled machine and didn't seem too put out by my appearance.
The assembling
The cake cutting was planned for 7.30 with the meal starting at 5 and concluding at 6.30ish, so I snuck out just before the speeches and spent 45 minutes assembling the cake so it could be taken out while people were eating their pudding. This worked for me as I wasn't that connected to the wedding party itself, but would've been frustrating if I'd been actually interested in the speeches. An alternative would have been to assemble the cakes and put them in the fridge before dinner, but that's a bit more risky and fridge space was quite limited.
I commandeered a corner of the kitchen out of the way of the caterers. I whipped the cream (I used two parts double to one part single) spread it over the top of one cake to about 1cm deep and then arranged the raspberries in concentric circles. It needs a LOT of raspberries for a 28cm diameter cake! Pointing upwards makes the cake very tall, but gives it more stability (I did a practice cake with slices of strawberries and it just slithered all over the place). I'd then put a layer of cream on the bottom of the other half of the cake and carefully plonk it on top. There's no easy way to do that, you just have to manhandle it in to position. With the largest cake… it was pretty hairy but they all held together.
To stack them, I used wooden dowel which could be cut to size with normal scissors (sanding the ends off a bit and washing the splinters off!) and the thinnest cardboard cake boards I could find. I built each layer in situ on top of the previous and put thick dustings of icing sugar between each cake and the next to avoid sticking (I also icing sugared the tray before the first cake went on). Once assembled I decorated it with fruit and flowers, I used lavender because it worked well to hide the slight gaps between the layers of the cake and pretty much just distributed strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and red currants randomly over the cake.
The topper went on... and the little leg of the banner promptly snapped! That's probably the biggest disaster of the whole thing, but it looked ok as a flag instead of a banner. Then it was just a matter of making the somewhat perilous journey moving it from the kitchen to the main room. Miraculously nothing fell off, I have no idea how. It was admired for about an hour and didn't collapse and managed to get ceremonially sliced without oozing cream and strawberries everywhere! And it didn't taste too bad either (although due to being full from dinner, I don't think much of it actually got eaten, I certainly ended up taking home the spare middle layer.)
The Cost
The ingredients came to just shy of 60 quid, The cake ingredients themselves were about 25 quid (mostly butter and a big thing of expensive vanilla, I also got expensive eggs, but they were on special offer), then 25 for the raspberries and cream and 10 for the other decorations. I also had to buy a couple of extra tins and the doweling and cards to support it. I did it for cost on the friends and family discount which made the whole thing a very reasonable (I think) 80 quid. If I'd factored in time I'd likely have at least doubled that, possibly even tripled it given having to travel to assemble it on site.
Overall - Cake!
All in all, I was really very happy with it and the bride and groom were too, which was the main thing! I don't think I'd want to make a career out of it, the hourly rate would be pitiful and it's a bit stressful, But if you're also factoring in the good will factor of helping friends out on their big day, then it works out a bit better, I've been feeling very pleased with myself for well over a week, and that ain't nothing.
It will however be a while until I can bring myself to make another Victoria Sponge.