My favourite part of being a cake designer is meeting couples and hearing all about your wedding plans. It’s a great idea to have a Pinterest board full of gorgeous cake inspiration for when we meet (whether that’s in person or via Zoom!) but it can be hard to ask for what you want if you’re not familiar with the terminology used. I’ve compiled a little guide to wedding cake coverings and some examples of what they look like.
Iced wedding cakes
Iced wedding cakes are covered in fondant, sometimes called sugar paste.
Each tier of my wedding cake are made of four layers (Lairs if you’re Mary Berry!!) of sponge with three layers of butter cream sandwiched in between.
The cake is then covered in a delicious coat of white chocolate ganache. The ganache not only tastes incredible but it gives a fabulously even finish on which the fondant icing is smoothed for a modern contemporary look with super sharp edges.
Using fondant as a cake covering opens up hundreds of options for your wedding cake design. You can add shape (your cake doesn’t have to be round!) ruffles, waves, texture, hand painted colour, marbling, flowers, stencils, edible lace and piped details.
My passion is for sugar flowers and I strive to make them as realistic as possible – I’ll even chat to your florist and find out what you’re having in your bouquet so I can replicate them in sugar.
All the decorations on these cakes are made by me…
Naked Wedding Cakes
Perfect for a relaxed summer wedding. The naked cake is just that! Not even the tiniest shred of covering, just delicious sponge cake, butter cream and fresh fruits or flowers for decoration (please take care when selecting fresh flowers for your cake, some varieties are toxic!).
Many brides who opt to make their own wedding cake go for this style, my advice would be practice. You don’t want to be dashing to Tesco for icing sugar the night before your wedding.
Semi Naked Wedding Cakes
Layers and layers of lovely sponge covered in a thin skim of butter cream. This is a slightly more sophisticated take on the naked cake and looks beautiful covered in edible flowers, macarons, meringues or drizzled with caramel or chocolate for the ‘drip cake’ effect.
Butter cream wedding cakes
The butter cream cake has risen in popularity since Meghan and Harry chose a delicious lemon and elderflower sponge for their guests. It’s worth considering that butter cream is usually slightly yellow in colour, if you want a white coloured cake it may be best to opt for Swiss meringue butter cream or frosting made with white vegetable shortening.
Faux tiers
Fake cake may not be something you’ve heard of but it’s a great way of adding height and drama to a wedding cake without having oodles of cake left over.
If you love the idea of a show stopping 5 tier centrepiece but only have 100 guests to feed I can insert ‘dummy’ tiers.
These are made from polystyrene and decorated with real icing to blend seamlessly with the real tiers of cake.
Don’t forget!…
If you’ve spent hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pounds on your dream wedding cake then think about how and where it’s going to be displayed. Please don’t “put baby in the corner”; your cake deserves to have a beautiful back drop and even its very own menu – I can highly recommend Amie at For Keeps for all sorts of wedding signage! I have a range of gorgeous cake stands available to hire, they just need a fabulous place to sit and show off your cake.
If you have any cakey questions just give me a call, I’m not only here to help design your cake but also to offer advice. After all it’s not every day you order cake for 100!
Love, Amber x