Time to talk about wedding cake and how, honestly, it's not that difficult to do it yourself - or at least keep it inside the family, if you have a good home baker to help you out.
This is the next in an ongoing series this summer on wedding food. We told you that we were going to give tips on DIY wedding meals, catering planning, and more, but there's one thing we didn't tell you...
... which is that I (Faith) am recently engaged, and getting married in mid-September. I promise this won't turn into a wed-blog (no way!), but I do want to draw on my experiences as things move forward. I'll share any tips and ideas that come out of being a fully food-obsessed person dealing with the perils and pitfalls of planning a wedding.
Today I want to look at wedding cakes.
But first, a step back. It just about kills me that I can't make all the food for my wedding. It feels so right to feed and nourish your guests yourself on the day when you are officially becoming one with the person you will set up home with. We want to have a home where people are nourished physically, emotionally, and spiritually for the rest of our lives, and what better way to start off than to feed people with your own hands at your wedding?
Alas, our idealism didn't survive the practical considerations, so no back-room cooking for me on my wedding day. (Read: family put their collective foot down.) So we are working with a splendid caterer who happens to be on the board of Ohio's ecological and organic farmers' association, and who shows every sign of creating a seasonal meal we'll enjoy enormously. (Also, he fed Barack Obama lunch last week so, you know, good vibes all round. Oops - wedding AND politics. Will try to be more careful.)
But I had to do something. Food often seems to be an afterthought in today's weddings - somewhere after the flowers and dress. I want to not only protest that, but also offer some sort of homemade hospitality at this rather special, rather big, party.
Wedding cake and ice cream seem to be the answer. So I am planning on making our wedding cake with my own two hands. Hey, if Molly of Orangette can do it then I can too!
The plan is to have two kinds of cake: a simple fudgy chocolate cake - again, rather similar to Molly's own wedding cake - and a Meyer lemon olive oil cake from Gourmet's recipe. We'll pair it up with a honey ice cream (perhaps with a touch of lavender?) and an herbal sorbet.
Now, here is where we return to the subject at hand. Wedding cakes are simply not that difficult to do yourself (she says in over-confident tones). If you are going for a more rustic or simple look, a wedding cake is far more economical and probably better-tasting when baked at home.
Here are a few tips for keeping it simple and accessible. If you want to have a culinary hand in your own wedding (or any big party you're planning) some of these tips may lend some confidence.
Glazed angel food cakes at Martha Stewart Weddings. Another good way to keep decoration easy but pretty - pour glaze over top.
• Choose your favorite flavor - don't feel bound by the traditional white cake. For me this is chocolate and Meyer lemon. I realize I am rather disregarding seasonality; Meyer lemons are my one guilty splurge for this wedding!
• Find a recipe you're comfortable with - There's something meaningful to me in serving a cake that I often like to serve at home. Both recipes are also ones that I am very familiar with; there aren't a lot of surprises there.
• Spread out the work - Making cake for 150 sounds like a huge task, but that's only about 15 batches of a normal cake recipe. Do two each night for a week, or use larger baking pans, and you're done.
• Use your freezer - Many cakes actually improve with a little aging. Wrap your cakes in many layers of plastic, then foil, and freeze until the day of the wedding. Let defrost at room temperature. Be sure to do a test run with one cake before the wedding so you know exactly how long it will take for each layer to defrost. Both cakes I am planning on making will do well in the freezer for a couple weeks.
• Forget the frosting - Wedding cakes look so intimidating because they are usually swathed in fondant and artistic icing. If you dream of a sleek, fondant-draped cake with elaborate decorations, we can't help you. I'm all thumbs with a pastry bag, so I'm sticking with the rustic look I prefer anyway. Besides, that frosting and fondant hardly ever taste good! You could dust powdered sugar or cocoa over instead for a simple and more modern look.
• Whipped cream! - Even if you're ditching frosting you can still get that stacked look. We're planning on baking several sizes of each cake and stacking them with stiff whipped cream between the layers. This takes almost no skill - just slather on the whipped cream for a soft, rustic look. I'll make the whipped cream the night before and stabilize it with a little gelatin. Any reasonably experienced friend or relative can be delegated to stack and assemble. 1-2-3-done.
• Splurge on the decorations - A wedding cake with just whipped cream or powdered sugar can go over the top with just a few decorative touches. Check out Wendy Kromer's handmade confections for a treat to dress up your cake.
• Keep presentation simple - Unless you're just stacking layers simply by themselves or with whipped cream, forget the pillars and plates and expensive custom building materials. I would far rather buy a few pretty cake plates or stands and serve the layers separately.
• Think seasonally - fruit is your friend - And finally, I really think that all the fancy icing in the world will never be as pretty as an in-season strawberry. (Or apricot, or fig, or plum...) Consider topping your cake with fruit and a little powdered sugar. You're done!
So that is my list of tips, ideas, and reasons to make your own cake - or do it for a friend. And I haven't even mentioned budget considerations. The average price of a wedding cake today is $543. Cake-cutting fees and any little extras can raise that considerably. I estimate that cake, ice cream, and sorbet for 140 people will run under $100. And no cake-cutting fees; our "cake cutting ceremony" will be us cutting and serving our guests ourselves. At least a small nod to hospitality of the table and of the home, which is what we hope our wedding is all about.
Have you ever made a wedding cake or a wedding meal, and do you have any tips or ideas to share?
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Comments (29)
well congratulations Faith! Good for you for taking this on.
Congratulations, Faith.
Orangette's chocolate cake is a go-to favorite of mine for special occasions. Yum!
Congratulations, Faith! I'm looking forward to seeing your wedding posts here. I've always imagined that I'd want to cater my own wedding, too, but I can also imagine how that would be logistically impossible. Every year, I have a potluck to celebrate my birthday--I wonder if I could make that fly for my wedding. I think my friends would understand. A cake-luck could be fun, too. ;)
I've done a few wedding cakes, and they're a lot of fun because I was allowed to get really creative with it! Sketching what I hoped the cake would look like was one of the funnest parts! Don't forget the beauty, ease, and simplicity of edible flowers, from elegant orchids to comfortable English daisies.
Also, I agree--fondant is overrated. I prefer the edible look (and edible taste) of Swiss or Italian buttercream! Both are a little sturdier than American buttercream, which can be important if the cake will be in warm weather. Temperature also has to be taken into consideration if you're using a perishable filling, like your whipped cream.
Also again, cakes definitely freeze well! I just wouldn't recommend filling them before freezing them.
Oh, I'm so glad I'm not the only one who wants to bake her own cake (I'm currently very single, but a girl can dream!). I adore that photo of Molly's cakes.
I don't think you necessarily need to skip the frosting, just make a good butter frosting. My favorite recipe works like so: cream butter, powdered sugar and cocoa to taste. Add milk until it's the right texture. Frost the cake. I always get a ton of compliments on it (and why not? Chocolate butter is hard to beat, hehe)
I made my own wedding cake. We tried, but no one would make us a fun-fetti wedding cake! So I made it myself. Three graduated layers of Pillsbury Funfetti, Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip frosting, with red flowers set into the base of each level all around. Made it the day before and set the flowers morning of. I had fun and it tasted great!
Congratulations and Good Luck!! I, too, had hopes of making my own wedding cake but being that I am the least organized person that I know and my wedding was in another state, I let my dream go. Alas, my culinary school education has yet again failed me!
congratulations!!
OMG! that's my cake! (the one photographed by lisa lefkowitz)
Making a traditional tiered cake is hard work. I wouldn't recommend it to any bride; who is not an experienced pro; there are just too many other things going on. I did a 4-tier cake and a 2-tier grooms cake for my brother's wedding. I had great recipes, but it took tons of research to find recipes for cakes and frostings that were strong, stable, and tasty enough for the job. It was very stressful, and I don't think it turned out looking nearly as pretty as I'd hoped (a little crooked, mostly). But it was delicious.
Tips from my experience:
Avoid uncooked butter-based if the cake has to spend any time outdoors. Research the right icing for your climate. Fillings can also run and bleed out of the icing.
If you're not really comfortable with a piping bag, plan on flowers, etc., for decorations.
It's not an inexpensive undertaking. Butter, sugar, eggs, flour, etc.-it adds up.
Rose Levy Beranbaums The Cake Bible is priceless for the cake, filling, and frosting, plus assembly and a little decorating. It's full of amazing cakes, but especially valuable here because she has everything you need for a variety of wedding cake: charts to figure out servings and tier sizes, scaled recipes, tips on which components suit which kind of situations, etc. I borrowed it from the library, but it's definitely worth the price.
Here's a great video on putting it together:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/video/LEMON-RASPBERRY-WEDDING-CAKE-238192
But I didn't end up using any of the recipes for the final cake.
Maybe if you only have 50-60 guests tops and are an experienced baker, it could be worth it. But if you have to make something for your guests, consider a less pressured occasion, like the rehearsal dinner.
On my wedding, I did make a huge jicama/orange/melon/tomato salad. I had to do it right before getting dressed. It wasn't the best idea.
Heh, I'm not getting married anytime soon, but I've been obsessed lately with making pseudo-wedding cakes. Granted, I wouldn't be able to make the same kind of cake for 150, but I've been doing it for my classmates of 80. I love experimenting with all the different styles and decorations that are unique to wedding cakes. Maybe I'll attempt it at my own wedding if I get enough practice now!
no seriously . . . that IS my cake . . . i'm totally tripping that it's on this site! it was a total pleasure to make and it was the only time leading up to the wedding when people weren't bothering me!
i guess my advice would be to not expect perfection and have a sense of humor. really, you have to just surrender. for me it was watching the cake slowly start to lean right! but it had character and love and guests where going back for thirds!
so if you're thinking about making your own . . . i say go for it! get a good friend to keep you company and a great bottle of champagne (or two).
good luck and congratulations!
Congratulations Faith! I am sure you will have an amazing and lovely wedding; hope you share all the details here!
We made a wedding cake for our friends...
We used the recipes out of Martha Stewart's Weddings book
(http://www.amazon.com/Weddings-Martha-Stewart/dp/0517556758) which although over 20 years old, still has some Good Things...
We made the Whipped Cream cake, a recipe for which I have never found elsewhere -- the whipped cream is in the cake batter, not sandwiched in the cake or covering the cake. It is the most lovely and delicate white cake I have ever tasted. We made a raspberry buttercream for the filling.
Then we made the underbaked chocolate cake, which uses almonds as a base -- fabulous and fool-proof too. Both cakes were stacked and covered with her 2 types of chocolate ganache -- a whipped undercoating and a shiny topcoat glaze. Delicious (if a tad more crooked than a professional would do).
Congrats Faith!!
I couldn't agree with you more on your ideas, I hate fondant, and most frostings too. You seem to have a great game plan and it's great to serve cakes you already love.
I can only say I've had a few homemade wedding cakes, usually grandmother contributed, and they tasted so much better than the $500 professional ones. Even if the decorations weren't as fancy, I think the personal touch means much more.
My wedding cakes were all homemade. I contributed one 8-inch 2-layer cake, and friends contributed 6 more. It was fun and the cakes were delicious. I was delighted that my friends baked my wedding cakes. All I asked was that they have light-colored frosting.
I love wedding cakes! They're so over the top and ridiculous. I made a tiered cake for a couple's wedding shower and it was incredibly easy and super duper delicious. It's a Jacque Pepin Almond Cake with Berries cake, you just need to follow his directions for the large cake (it probably serves about 20-25 people):
http://www.kqed.org/w/jpfastfood/recipes3.html
I made my own cakes because I am baker/cake decorator by trade - but a $100 budget seems way too low. You forget about all the incidentals like the pans, cake stands, rentals (if you would rather) and flowers. Butter for a 150 person portion of buttercream can easily run $60 alone. I would estimate the actual cost somewhere in the $300 range when all is said and done if you are using top-notch ingredients. It's still more affordable than buying a cake, but understand that there are lots of incidental costs.
By the way, Renata your post is right on the money. The Cake Bible is invaluable. I made my own for a party of 65 guests and even being an experienced baker, it was a challenge.
By the way - MEASURE your refrigerators!!!! If you make a 14" cake and your freezer is a side by side with only 11" of clearance you've got a lot of trouble!!!!
Make sure you think of how you are going to store 3 gallons of buttercream or whipped cream SAFELY so as to not make your guests sick. I cannot stress proper food handling enough when it comes to cooking for this many people on such a wonderful occasion.
Renata, your post is right on, by the way. The Cake Bible is the best book to have. I've also found that Martha Stewart's recipes are pretty foolproof, although there are lots of extra steps. And again, you're right about biting off what you can handle. I am experienced and even making my own cakes for a party of 65 was challenging (but very worth it).
A couple of tips: MEASURE the depth and width of your refrigerators, freezers and ovens. If you are making a 14" base cake and your side by side freezer door only opens 11", you've got trouble. If you have an old timey stove like I did and can't get proper venting around your pans, you've got to go smaller and higher.
Also, figure out ahead of time what you are going to store 3 gallons of whipped cream or buttercream in and how you're going to store it. FOOD SAFETY is soooooo important when you are baking for for 2 people nevermind 150 at a wedding. It's important to keep things at the right temperature at all phases.
Thanks for the kind words everyone! I am looking forward to cake-baking and ice-cream churning, and I'll be sure to share any interesting things along the way. It's great to hear about all of your experiences - keep the stories and advice coming!
And ejdiamond! Your cake totally inspired me - and I didn't even know it was homemade. How wonderful!
Making your own wedding cake is a lot of work. If you just want to make numerous 8" or 10" cakes and serve them separately or in short stacks, it can work. But if you want to make a cake with large layers, or stack more than 3 layers, be very careful.
The batter for a 10" cake will not always work for a 14" or 16" cake, and the results can turn out gluey, for lack of a better word. The baker who made my cake told me that the batter they use is a cross between a poundcake batter and a regular cake batter so it has enough structure to support itself. I was at a wedding with a homemade cake and it was not very good, the cake hadn't fallen, but it was gummy, they must have used a recipe that didn't scale up well. So don't think that you can just use a larger pan and the cake will turn out the same way.
Cakes themselves really aren't that expensive, especially if you don't want a lot of decoration or fondant. It is the fancy decoration (look at the prices on Wendy Kromer's site, some of her sets are over $300) and inticate icing that drives up the price. I think our baker charged us around $350 for a cake for over 200 people and it had fondant (which was delicious, we wouldn't have served it if we didn't like it) and fresh fruit filling. It was just plain fondant, no gumpaste flowers or intricate piping work, and our florist provided flowers to decorate the tiers. I don't think you save a lot of money DIY when you add it all up in the end, especially if you want something really simple. (Piling up strawberries on a cake may be easy, but they get more and more expensive everytime I go to the store).
And if you don't like the frosting a baker uses, find another baker. There are plenty of good ones out there who make delicious cakes. Many people think cake is little more than a vehicle for frosting.
If you're going to do the 4 layer/whipped cream filling, drive wooden skewers through the cake. I made a 4 layer cake with a chocolate mousse filling for my nephew's first birthday and once the cake sat out for a little while the layers started sliding. We stuck the skewers in and that kept it together, but if we'd tried moving it without the skewers we would have had a mess.
Making the ice cream and sorbet seems like a wonderful idea. You don't have to do anything the day before or the day of the wedding. If I'd had to worry about assembling a cake the day before or the day of my wedding, moving and assembling it, I'd have had a breakdown. Too may other things go wrong.
Many of the scale issues liz100 raises are covered off in the various Martha Stewart wedding cake recipes. For example, wedding cake recipes all state the number of cups yielded, which then corresponds to information as to how many cups of batter are required for which size cake pan, etc. In the wedding book that I have, she discusses which cakes stack well, which don't, types of icing that work best, etc. None of the cakes in that book were covered in fondant, although many of her later cakes are.
The gummy cake sounds like it was underbaked, probably an instance of someone scaling up a recipe and not adjusting baking time to reflect the larger amount.
What is great about baking your own wedding cake (well, having someone in the wedding party bake it) is that you can have the cake you want -- so many professional bakers I have encountered have their set cake recipes, and are not willing to make anything different.
The real difference is in the decoration of the cake -- most home bakers do not have the equipment or skills (honed from years of experience) of decorating a cake. Fresh flowers are lovely, but for the most part, you can't eat them, and they have to be removed.
We used sugared edible flowers to decorate another wedding cake we made -- the cake itself was covered in plain Italian meringue buttercream, with a simple smooth finish, and then strewn with edible Meadowsweet flowers -- just lovely!
http://www.candiedflowers.com/
I got married last September and while the reception was more casual than a lot of people plan, some of the ideas might transfer well to other situations/settings. We did a lot of the reception ourselves, including food. We rented out part of the city park and held it there, so we grilled (my in-laws actually did all of the grilling and most of the carting around of food). We bought a big "100-pounder" pack of mixed meats from a local butcher. We also had cookies and cupcakes from Sam's Club, since they are generally considered to be great (and also inexpensive), and the people setting up the reception put them out on plates.
The big attraction, however (which relates to this article, I promise), was the Twinkie cake my husband assembled. You can see a picture of it here. Everyone loved it. I realize that for lots of functions it wouldn't work, but maybe someone can use the idea (which wasn't ours originally, so we can't take credit for it). Pictures of the rest of the food from the reception can be found here.
We did some other money-saving things, and I'd be happy to share if anyone was interested in a more down-home DIY wedding.
Another point worth mentioning regarding "simple" homemade cakes: simple icing (clean and smooth) is very, very difficult, and there's little/no room for error. In my experience, the more I tried to smooth it out, the less I succeeded, and the more time I spent staring at the cake, the more aggravating the nicks in the frosting were. Since then, though, I've noticed that most cakes are not perfectly iced. And nobody notices.
I think the worst candidate for attempting a homemade cake is anyone bordering on a perfectionist temperament.
I made my own wedding cake but I had the caterer (my employer at the time) decorate it. But I made mine because I LOVE fruitcake, and I couldn't find anyone else who was willing to 'feed' it booze every week for 4 months.
We were married in August so I used lost of tropical fruits. I made sure that it had a bit more batter than traditional cakes so that it was lighter in texture, and I used white rum so the colour was lighter as well.
I also made a fruitcake for my best friends wedding, as well as a few more traditional cakes for friends and family.
I made my own wedding cake... and have made others...
It really isn't the stress that it needs to be. And that's not just an experienced baker speaking.
As long as you take your time doing it and it's not a 24hour start to finish job... you'll be fine and it will be fantastic.
Having catered a ridiculous amount of homemade ice cream last year for an ice cream social for an upscale store in town... my suggestion is right on with your cake... and make it ahead of time.
This is going to sound ghetto, but I swear it's not... we use the Blue Bunny plastic ice cream tubs (some we ate, some we had family over and let them eat it!) to store homemade ice cream in. They really seal the air out and are a perfect size for thawing ice cream that has been made ahead of time.
It also allows you to keep it in different parts of your freezer... or your families freezer as I am sure yours will be filling up quickly with cake.
For my own reception we had a different ice cream flavors, and then had a build it yourself bar of small mismatched china bowls I had picked up along the way. There were also cups and caramel sauces in squeeze bottles... it was super fun. (I digress)
We were able to thaw the containers two at a time every 30 minutes to partially thaw before switching containers. We had made large ice cylinders from 5 gallon buckets that had something representative of the flavor inside it. So one had lemons frozen into it, one had mangoes, one was made with green tea.... exc.... The buckets worked out FANTASTICALLY and we were able to rotate the ice cream in as the people scooped it out!
Best of luck, baking for the guests at my wedding was the best thing I ever did, and if I had it to do all over again, I would just have a big get together and cook... and forgo all the formalities!
I am not a baker but went super old-school for my wedding with a croquembouche that wasn't held by spun sugar but arranged and drizzled with chocolate sauce. I had a tropical wedding and it is not super easy to bake near the equator so this was an easy and delicious option for us along with grilled pineapple for dessert.
Now why didn't I see this post before I made a wedding cake last weekend!? Actually, it all worked out pretty well. I used an Italian buttercream recipe and tips I got from a helpful local baker. Not the prettiest wedding cake ever, but it was dark and no one noticed (or at least pretended not to) the completely amateur trim. The bride loved having a cake to cut and the subsequent photos of them feeding each other, and I was able to redecorate and incorporate her grandmother's top tier (63 yr old fruitcake, it was) as her top tier.
I made my own cake (only to feed our bridal party) along with 2 "fakes" to create a stacked look on a tiered cake stand. The actual cake was chocolate with peanut butter (hubby's fave and his grandmother's recipe), but since the look of peanut butter icing didn't exactly "go", we covered it (and the other 2 fakes) in fondant... beautiful result, but awful tasting and a b**** to work with. Not at all worth it! But the cake itself was lovely, and the fakes were able to be made about a month in advance; the real was made and decorated a day or 2 before. I would say you don't need to be a pro, at all!, but you do need to know your limitations and don't underestimate how crazy busy you'll be the week of. Enlist someone(s) to help (one of my bridesmaids went to vocational school for baking and worked at the bakery of a grocery store, so she knew the basics), have a backup, and be willing to use it if things aren't working out or you get overwhelmed. Currently, I'm helping put together a 60th anniversary party, and I'm desperately hoping I can help make a beautiful (simple and rustic) cake, instead of just buying a sheet cake!
I made my own wedding cake. I couldn't bare to see someone else make it. http://maggieandartsebelskivers.blogspot.com/2011/05/long-overdue-post-wedding-cake.html