If anyone ever says to you "Oh a Wedding cake is just a big cake, it can't be that much more difficult?" then you have my permission to hit them. Any wedding cake takes weeks of planning, even I bet if you are a professional, but as I always think about planning and list making, nothing would get down without it!
For this wedding cake, I have been working with the couple since summer last year, when we first met in a pub garden to discuss their ideas. I drew out a few different designs, and they loved the idea of using Hundreds and Thousands to decorate two of the tiers. I did a trial of this using cupcakes that were also used for their tasting, and I was happy to see that they stuck well to the buttercream. However, everytime I have thought about this cake it is the part that has made me the most nervous.
So to settle my nerves, my first day on the cake was the planning section. This included getting out all of the paperwork and designs, double and triple-checking the tins sizes and quantities, making a timetable for the rest of the week and doing a separate ingredient shop to ensure nothing got mixed up with our weekly food shop.
Marking up recipes, planning my days, lists...oooh I do love an excuse to get my stationary out...
...even down to the smallest details of which size of circle would look best, there's 3mm in it!
However first, a little crafting. The happy couple decided they loved the idea of a hand stamped and stitched cake topper with ribbons to go with the colourful theme of the cake and their wedding. I made a fabric cake topper for my grandpa's birthday cake one year, but this one needed to be much more colourful to stand out at their wedding.
I cut out strips of calico that were higher than the individual stamps I wanted to use...
...then stamped each letter separately, leaving enough space to cut round each of them using pinking shears so they didn't fray.
Once all of the letters were cut out, I placed them on double-faced satin ribbon, checking the spacing and then pinned them in place.
Once pinned I was originally going to sew them on using standard cotton, but I decided embroidery floss in contrasting colours would look much prettier and decorative.
I used a simple backstitch with three strands of floss to hold each letter in place.
Once the letters were attached, I took two thick wooden cake dowels and tied the ribbons in knots to each dowel, putting a few stitches of white cotton through the knots to keep them secure.
I had raided my ribbon pots for different types and colours, and tightly knotted the thinner ribbons around the existing knots to keep everything in place. All of them were tied in bros with some of the tails left long so that they can trail over the cake.
I have deliberately tried to pick some colours that weren't included in the hundreds and thousands to add a little contrast, and hopefully this will show up when the topper is added to the top tier of the cake.
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