Wedding Cake (Volume 2)

Having decided on everything for the wedding cake I then had to wait, months (well three or four) before putting any of it into action. The nature of the cake being that it is a last minute thing. But I did want to test out the cake tins and see if I could cook the cakes in advance and then freeze them thus saving myself any last minute dramas. Work were very happy with me in the months before the wedding, they all got to have chocolate Guinness cake on a regular basis. The 14in cake was the one I was worried about most but it proved very easy.
I used the Cakeometer to size up and down from the recipe, a great tool for any baker. It also turns out that the cooking time for a 14in cake is not that much different from a 9in one (the original size in the recipe), who knew? Well, lots of people really! It cooked for about 10 minutes longer in the end. I cut this into quarters, half made it's way into work, one quarter went in the freezer and then went to a friends house and the last quarter.....well I had to check that it was ok! I made the 10in one too and froze it for two weeks, my testers at work couldn't tell the difference so I knew that I could do some advance work. The 14in wouldn't fit in my freezer so that had to be made a couple of days before but I made the other two layers two weeks before.
In the month before the wedding I assembled all the extra things I would need: cake boxes, cake boards, ribbon, food colours, lily forming set etc, everything was ready. The week before the wedding I iced the cake boards and made the calla lilies for the bottom two layers.

I chose calla lilies because I was having them in my bouquet, they are so simple and elegant. I followed instructions on the Wilton website for these and used the forming kit to make three different sizes. They were very easy to make and looked rather lovely, even if I do say so myself. I made the 14in cake three days before the wedding (picture above) and took the other two layers out of the freezer 24 hours before I iced them.

So all was ready, just the hard part to do now!
We got married on a Saturday and had to deliver the cakes to the venue on Friday afternoon so started the icing on the Wednesday to give me some time in case of disasters. Well, you never know and it would have to be perfect given that 90 odd people would be looking/photographing/eating it! As it turned out it was fairly easy and stress-free. My mother had arrived the night before so she was my able assistant and between us we were finished by lunchtime on Wednesday! Iced, be-ribboned and boxed ready for delivery on Friday. This meant we could go for afternoon tea on Thursday (at the British Museum) and have a fairly easy run-up to the big day.

We delivered the cakes safely and then I had to trust the hotel to assemble it all correctly, but they are used to that sort of thing....sometimes you have to relinquish the control!
The cake looked fantastic on the day and the bottom two layers were finished (people left with lots of goodie bags the next day!) and we have the top layer in the freezer. There is a tradition, apparently, of keeping the top layer of your wedding cake to have on your one year anniversary. So we shall see if it holds up to a year in the freezer! Although it was a lot of work and planning I wouldn't have had it any other way, I'm glad I could make my own wedding cake. I never thought in a million years I would ever do something like that but, as they say, never say never.