The Wedding Cake

After seeing the cake I made for a family friend's birthday (see below), my sister asked me to make one for her wedding to sit alongside the Cheese Wedding Cake (stacked whole wheels of West Country cheese - yum!). To be honest I was a bit worried about it as all the ingredients work out quite expensive so there was no real chance for a trial run. And I hadn't actually eaten any of the one I made before! So there was nothing for it but to just hope it worked out OK.

As my mum is Irish she assured me that as long as I followed the golden rules it should work out fine - soak the fruits in brandy for weeks beforehand, add some extra brandy, then once the fruitcake is made feed it with more brandy and if in doubt add more brandy!

The cooking all went fine, and the marzipan went without incident - the icing was another story. The first batch of icing kept cracking and after spending over an hour covering the first cake I had to admit it looked awful, remove the icing and resolved to fight the icing battle another day. As time was running out the second attempt was equally stressful - for the first cake I made the icing too thin. Then by over compensating for the top layer I ended up with super thick icing - I knew that while this looked smoother it meant that the desired size difference between the layers was no longer going to happen. Oh well!

I had a vague memory of seeing stacked silver stars on top of a Christmas cake in a magazine and had decided this would fit in well with the purple and silver wedding theme. However as I was cutting out the icing stars and adding edible glitter I realised that not only did I have no idea how to attach them but I wouldn't be able to drive an assembled cake down to the Cotswolds and I'd actually have to assemble it on the morning of the wedding! As a bridesmaid with plenty to do on the morning of the wedding already, having the stress of assembling the cake with only a vague idea of how I wanted it to look was indeed quite daunting!

I'm not sure how the venue staff moved the cake from one side of the room to the other as the stars were balanced on top with only a few stuck down but it survived. I definitely think I'd practice some more icing before doing anything as important as a wedding again!