Exhibits, Shows and Displays - How hard it it for a complete beginner to make their own wedding cake?

How hard it it for a complete beginner to make their own wedding cake?

OK looking at the prices £300 for a cake - I dont think so. How hard would it be to make my own wedding cake? I am not a hot shot in the kitchen or anything like that, but it does seem really expensive just for a nice cake. If I buy the stands, ingredients, icing etc how hard is it really for me to make the cake? How much in advance could I make a fruit cake & ice it? Thanks

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How hard depends on the person. Have you baked cakes before? This would just be larger cakes. They have 3 tiered cake pans that you can use (not sure in the UK but check out eBay for the 3 tiered cake pan, it looks like 3 cakes one on top of the other but it isn't. I would try to to create smaller versions and ask family and friends to taste and rate the decoration or designs. My friend took 3 different sized supermarket cakes and put them on tiered cake places with fresh flowers around them and we didn't know the difference. She had them looking so nice and even had a cute topper (from Angelkind Creations) and a fountain near it. It was beautiful. http://weddings.about.com/od/weddingcakesfoodmenus/a/weddingcakedeco.htm
Seriously? A "Fruit Cake" for your wedding? NO. I would not suggest trying to make your own wedding cake. Don't you think you will be under enough pressure with the wedding ceremony without adding the pressure of trying to make and decorate a cake and get it to the reception and all. It's not that easy. Spend the money!
Don't risk it! Find out who amonst your friends is the best baker and ask them to make it for you as a wedding gift. It will mean so much more and the last thing you need to be stressing about is a cake when there's so much else to do. Good luck!
It is a lot harder than you think, I would not attempt it myself.
I wouldn't make it any further out than the day before... I am sure you can make it like a couple days out, but I would say the day before is the best case senario. I made my own cake for my bridal shower... a two tier round that was a white cake (from scratch) and I put mango jelly in between the two layers on each cake and then stacked the two cakes together. I would say fondant is the way to make the cake look the "nicest" - most professional. We used three different colors of fondant for the cake, one was the color that we covered the cakes with and the other 2 we used to roll out and used two different flower cookie cutters and made flower shapes for the cake... on a wedding cake this could look really nice, just even all white because the different cut-outs will add dimension. My mom helped me make the cake, because I really trust her in the kitchen and she knows how to deal with me when I get stressed. We both watched like 10 instructional videos on youtube first. Some of them were REALLY helpful. Whatever you do, if you decide to make your own - CRUMB COAT :) it is a lifesaver
It's not as easy as you might think -- I made my niece's wedding cake about two years ago because she asked me to. At the time, I was honored and was very flattered. I sampled lots of scratch recipes for cakes for about two months before the wedding. Two weeks before the wedding, I started making the layers: two 14", two 10" and two 6". I leveled each cake to 2 1/2 " and wrapped well in plastic wrap, then froze them. On the morning of the wedding, I prepared the frosting -- a had to quadruple the recipe. I arrived at the reception site 4 hours before the wedding and assembled the cake. First I crumbcoated the layers, assembled them and frosted. That took quite a while. It took the whole 4 hours. Now, do you really want to be stressing over a cake on your wedding day? It's more work than I realized, probably more than you realize. It's a time consuming task, and you need to be focusing on lots more things with your wedding than the cake. If you don't want to pay all that money, perhaps you could ask a close friend or family member to handle that task for you. Congratulations and best wishes!
it all depends on how eleaborate you want the cake to be. if you have the time, and extra money, try doing some test runs on the weekends leading up to the bid day. make the cake and check its flavors, practice smoothing out the icing on the cake (or foam rounds etc), practice doing some boarder work. making cakes to come out good is something that takes time, patience, and practice. you can make bake the cake ahead of time and freeze it. just make sure there are no odors in your freezer and wrap it really well. when you defrost it, poke some holes in it with a screwier and brush some simple syrup over it. this will give it some moisture inside the cake. good luck!
It is much cheaper, you control the cost and it's very doable. For a beginner, I suggest make a simple 3 tier cake...buy nesting pans to make it. Decorate this with ribbon, fresh flowers, however you like. Make it your center piece cake....the one you cut from for pictures and whatnot. Then make several large sheet cakes for guests. Use dental floss to make perfect indents in the icing as a cutting pattern. Then, your cake cutter just follows the lines and you have perfectly even squares. Perfect a rosette out of icing you like, and put on on each square for a fancier look.
hi, you could buy some ready iced cakes from somewhere like m&s and then pay someone to make the decorations then assemble it yourself. some of the higher quality pre-made cakes are just as good as home made ones and it would save you alot of stress for your wedding good luck x
Firstly I must make you aware that you MUST NOT PUT FRESH FLOWERS DIRECTLY ONTO A CAKE - a lot of flowers and foliage are poisonous and health and hygiene regulations do not permit it. You would not want an unsuspecting guest at your wedding becoming ill, would you? I agree with all the other answers that it is quite a task to take on from scratch and you will not want to add more stress unnecessarily. So my advice would be to buy ready made fruit cakes that are marzipaned and iced from say M&S or Tesco etc and decorate them yourself if you are up to it. Alternatively you can purchase ready made decorations from local specialist cake decorating shops. Often they are made by very experienced and clever cake decorators and you will be able to obtain a colour co-ordinated set of sugar flowers and then place them on the tiers with matching ribbons. An alternative website that also sells cake decorating items that are unusual is: http://www.squires-shop.com/ibf/index.php?p=catalog&parent=35&pg=1 Good luck with what ever option you choose - but please, no fresh flowers!!
am a chef, have been for 10 years now, and i wouldn't tackle my wedding cake, this is what i did though my now wife saw in a wedding mag, a cake made from lots of tiny iced buns with different coloured icing on and sweethard sweets on them and flowers made out of sugar this is known as sugar craft (should be able to get these at a cake makers or party shop) even the college, the mini sponge cakes can be bought in any supermarket, and it looks fab especialy if ya can arrange them on different layers like a traditional cake, use ribon and fresh flowers, if you would rather a traditional cake ask the college ?? may be able to help?
I looked into this for my wedding (aug) and found that by the time Id bought all the ingredients - fruit, nuts, flour, eggs, etc - hired / bought the tins, bought marzipan and icing, bought cake topper and cake stand, it worked out about £70 more to buy it (we paid £375 for ours). Another option for you is Tesco and other supermarkets sell fruit cake quite cheaply so you could buy those and roll out icing and marzipan. A 3 tier cake would cost you about £75 this way. Good luck huni, hope all works out well for you. xx
As long as it isn't elaborate it won't be too hard. And to the comment about the fruit cake - This is very common in the UK and it isn't like our nasty fruit cake here in America.
Baking the cake itself wouldn't be the main problem here, icing it would be. That's when it gets complicated and the icing is what makes it look really professional and good. So, two suggestions... 1) My mum got her wedding cake from Marks and Spencer 2 years ago. It was absolutely amazing and no one knew it wasn't a "professional" cake. For a fruit cake prices start at £22 for a medium cake, £38 for a large and £55 for an extra large. They have so many options, fruit cake, chocolate, sponge, different colours and styles, it's so reasonable and much cheaper than a specially ordered one. Here's the website link: http://www.marksandspencer.com/gp/node/n/72561031/ref=sc_iw_c_2_72525031/278-7106439-6727335 You can order online and collect in the store. 2) If you really want to make your own, it's quite popular to make muffins and hire a stand to display them on. Hire may cost £20- £30 depending on the type of stand. You can chose the colour of the cake cases to match your theme and do lots of creative things when frosting or decorating them. There's some good ideas on this website: http://www.cakes4fun.co.uk/weddings/towers.php Hope that helps, have a lovely wedding! Jx
Deb Perelman, an experienced baker and the author of the phenomenal food blog Smitten Kitchen, made a small wedding cake for a friend, and she documented the entire process on her blog. You can get a complete, honest picture by reading it. Here's the first installment: http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/06/project-wedding-cake-an-introduction/.