The Bohemian Bakery: My first wedding cake....

A few months ago (whilst at Glastonbury festival, randomly!) good friends of mine asked me whether I would bake their wedding cake. My first reaction was WOW, what an honour. My second, holy cow, what if it all goes wrong! My third, definitely yes (my confidence boosted no end by the amount of cider sloshing around my body!)

As an amateur baker, I was quiet daunted by the prospect of producing a tier wedding cake. With nearly 200 guests, the cake needing to be pretty large, and as the wedding was being held in Winchester (and I'm in Manchester) would need to be easily transportable. Gulp. I had a vision of being asked to create something on the scale of the other major wedding of the year - after all, who wouldn't want what C Middy has, right? Thankfully, no. The bride requested a beautiful, simple and elegant cake, topped and based on fresh flowers. Simply gorgeous. I only hoped I could do it justice.

And so the challenge commenced, two months before the big day. Step 1. The fruitcake. A 30cm, 7cm deep, glorious cake. At these times, there is only one way to turn, and that is to Mary Berry. The matriarch of the baking world, I always use her trusty fruit cake recipe. I had to enlist the arm power of my other half (rugby players do come in useful sometimes) to do the final mix. Arm ache from baking, who'd have thought it?! Anyway, I digress. The cake took nearly 5 hours to bake, and much to my relief, came out of the oven a beautiful golden colour and smelling delish. Phew.

The cake was then tightly wrapped in brown paper, cling film and stored away. As any bakeaholic would do, every week I fed my fruit beauty with brandy. Ooh the smell. Heaven.

The other tiers of the cake were lemon syrup cake filled with home made lemon curd and buttercream (middle) and a vanilla cake (top). There was also a separate cutting cake of chocolate with dark chocolate ganache. The trouble with sponge cakes is timing. I decided that I would prefer to make them from fresh in the week leading up to the wedding. This ensured freshness. It also ensured I nearly had a breakdown - a full time job and a four tier cake leads to a very busy (but happy!) me. Once all the cakes were baked, filled, iced and dowelled it was time for the piping of royal icing dots and attachment of ribbon and pearls.

To cut a long story short, I managed to get the cake done by the Wednesday night, leaving time for some last minute changes and additions. It was all boxed up and transported to the venue in one piece (relief) and I assembled it on the morning of the wedding.

For my first wedding cake I was really pleased with the end result. The hard work was definitely worth it and I was chuffed to bits with the comments it received, both in terms of taste and decoration. Those type of comment are why I love baking so much.

Here are a few pictures of the finished result....