Guest blog by B-Twin
How to make a wedding cake.
It is well established, I suspect, that I like making cakes. I dabble a little in the decorating side of things as well. Consequently all of my siblings have had wedding cakes that were made by me.
For some reason I was aware that Robin would be on the lookout for more Guest Blogs. (!) This topic will take more than one entry but here is a little insight as to what goes into making a fairly simple wedding cake (in case you wondered why they are so highly priced…)
Part 1A: The Cake – Baking
For a really successful cake (and lower stress levels) preparation is everything. So before you start to actually mix the cake you need to have a few things ready. I measure out all ingredients and have them ready to be mixed prior to starting the mixing^.
Then I line the cake tins (pans) with baking paper. The observant ones will notice that I have in fact greased the tins first. This is because I hate it when the paper moves everywhere when I am putting the mix in. I’m funny like that.
When I will be covering the cake with fondant I also custom fit the paper as much as possible to avoid wrinkles that will transfer to the baked cake. I want my cakes smooth for decorating.
Once the tins are prepared, the oven is pre-heating and all my ingredients are measured and laid out then I begin to melt and mix as appropriate to the recipe.
Isn’t it pretty? Shame my camera was too blown away by the brilliant red!
This particular cake is a fruitcake^^ and I am making quite a large quantity^^^ so to ensure my sanity I mix in a large tub.
Here’s a tip – life is a lot easier when you have a bigger spoon.
On the right is an ordinary wooden spoon. On the left is one I found and only use for fruitcakes^^^^. It’s absolutely brilliant.
Once you have the mixture thoroughly mixed (fruitcakes are stirred, not beaten – they don’t need a lot of air) then it is time to fill the cake tins. This I do carefully to try and reduce the number of holes and gaps – the presence of which make the whole task of icing more work. If there is more than one tier of a cake then measurements need to be taken (even if a little crudely) to try and have all the tins at the same level. If you were to watch me do this you would observe that I not only spoon (with a dessert spoon) the mix into the tin in batches, smoothing it into the corners, but I also do dreadful rough things like whack the base of the tin firmly onto the bench a few times to help force the mix to settle. (Actually, I do that with all my cakes.)
Try not to eat too much of the mix before you start filling the tin*. Below are a couple of examples (not wedding cake) that show the process I use to fill the tin.
Example 1: Filling a cake tin - layer by layer
Example 2: A cake tin ready to be put in the oven, filled to the correct height and smoothed off.
Important rule for fruitcakes – slow cooking is better! I protect my cakes by having them sit on cardboard and wrap foil or brown paper around the outside of the tins. (This is one reason why I can get away with only having one layer of baking paper lining the tin – most recipes say to line with 2-3 layers.) If necessary I will cover the cake with foil part way through cooking. Make sure that if your oven has a fan that it is turned off. If you can’t turn it off then have it on slow or you will have to cover your cake with foil. And turn the temperature down some more.
After the requisite number of hours the cake is removed from the oven and wrapped in a towel**. Not only should fruitcakes cook slowly you want them to cool down slowly – in the tin. (And the towels smell nice and cakey afterwards. Hehehe)
Cooked cake ready to be wrapped in towel
Once the cakes are cool they can either be wrapped and stored until you are ready to decorate them or you can decorate straight away.
In this instance fruitcake was used due to the fact that it creates a slightly more flexible timeline for the decorating – other cakes such as chocolate mudcake*** need to be decorated all in one go and just prior to the event.
Part 1B: The Cake – covering will follow shortly… :-)
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^ I’m not quite so pedantic about this every time but when I am making cakes for other people I am very methodical. It’s also less likely I will forget an ingredient when I do it this way. Like when I was cooking a chocolate cake for the Show last year and forgot the eggs….
^^ The range of recipes out there is amazing when it comes to fruitcake. Please note that there can be a vast difference in what is called a fruitcake in the UK/Australia compared to USA. Here in Australia a fruitcake is a cake (flour, eggs, sugar, spices etc) with a lot of dried fruit added. I’ve noticed the USA tends to have recipes that involve more candied fruit and less cake.
^^^ This recipe uses 2lbs of fruit per mix (20cm/8” tin). I was doing a double mix. That’s 4lbs of dried fruit plus about 4lbs of everything else.
^^^^ Let’s just say I was not happy when I discovered my sister-in-law using it to stir soup that was liberally seasoned with turmeric. My spoon hides in my cake decorating cupboard now (and is labelled FRUITCAKE ONLY!)
* Did you know that a lot of fruit cake recipes, especially the ones with brandy or sherry added, keep very well as raw mixture in the fridge? Usually they don’t last long in my house… haha You can freeze the mixture as well.
** Robin asked at this point “Why don’t they get SOGGY????” My answer is “The towel breathes.” If I was to wrap them in foil I suspect it could be a different story…
*** Dense chocolate cake traditionally covered in either melted chocolate or ganache.
Eg:
Chocolate mudcake covered in ganache and fresh flowers.
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