Wedding and Events Cake Advice
We are committed to ensuring that everything (as far as your wedding or event cake is concerned) goes as smoothly as possible. below are our top tips, tricks and advice that we have gathered over the years.
Servings - Is your cake going to be dessert? Maybe it’s a light bite with coffee. However you’d like your caterers to serve your cake it’s really important that we know how many people you would like it to serve and how you will be serving it. This means we can advise on the best size cake for you without leaving anyone out or having any waste.
Marquees - We love an outdoor wedding as much as the next person, but sometimes this could be a problem for your cake. Buttercream cakes and semi-naked cakes can be particularly troublesome in the summer months (we really don’t recommend them for marquees) and it’s also worth thinking about where the cake is to be set up. It will need a stable and completely flat surface, especially if you have chosen a tiered cake. We will be unable to assemble a tiered cake on an uneven surface as we wouldn’t want anything to happen to it whilst you are enjoying your special day. Good ventilation is essential no matter what finish you opt for. And we recommend hiring a mobile AC unit or standard fans. It is a good idea to speak to your marquee provider.
We will ask you to sign a separate ‘Marquee disclamer agreement’ that will outline exactly what is required to make your dream cake happen if your dream venue is a marquee.
Fresh flowers - Flowers are our favourite thing (after cake) and we have a wealth of knowledge about what flowers are edible or cake safe. It would be great if you could put your chosen florist in touch with us before the delivery or let us know what flowers and foliage you are hoping to have so we can avoid any sitution where we may have to refuse to use certain flowers or foliage to finish your cake with. Many flowers regually used for floristry are actually toxic, and the FSA are reviewing their use on cakes.
Vegan cakes - We offer vanilla or chocolate cake as vegan. We can also do ‘ultra low’ gluten, lactose and dairy. We can’t say 100% ‘free from’ as we only have one kitchen and oven. But we work very hard to prevent cross contamination.
Naked cakes - These are the cakes you will see with no icing on at all, not to be confused with the semi naked cakes. We don’t do fully naked cakes as experience has taught us that they dry out too fast and can be unstable. If you want that rustic look then think about a semi naked cake instead.
Lead times - We are often asked how far ahead should a wedding cake be ordered? The simple answer is as soon as possible after booking your venue. We get booked up fast, and months in advance. So get in touch as soon as you can to secure your date with us, even if you don’t know exactly what you want yet.
What we need to know from you - The first thing we will ask you will be the date of your wedding and the wedding venue. We need to know these before we can get you booked into the diary as we need to be sure we have avaliability. Then how many the cake will be serving and how you want to serve it (see above). Once we know the size we will ask you for your initial thoughts about the style and look you have in mind. With this information we can start to get a quote together for you and start the design process. Another thing it is helpful for us to know as early as possible is if there are any dietry requirements.
Dummy or fake tiers - These are used a lot by cake designers. If you’ve ever been to a wedding fair and seen the cakes, they will actually be fake under the icing! It’s magic. But they are very useful for actual wedding cakes too. If you want a 5 plus tier cake but are only having 50 guests for example, then having fake tiers means no wasted cake. You can also have the whole cake as fake tiers and have cutting cakes for the cateres to serve. This is especially good if you want a really complicated and elaberate design that will take us many days to create. However, despite some misinformation out there, having fake tiers won’t save you any money as the same amount of time goes into making them look like the real thing.
Sugar and wafer paper flowers - These are one of our favourite thing to make! They look stunning on cakes, and can be made to reflect the flowers used in your wedding. The two types of edible flowers we make are sugar and wafer paper. Sugar flowers are great if you want the flowers to be as realistic as possible, but they take many hours to make and cost accordingly, they can also add quite a bit of weight to the cake. Wafer paper flowers are slightly less relalistic but super light weight and far more robust. Often we will use a mix of the two but the choice is yours. Side not, if your’e having the cake in a marquee we recommend wafer paper.