wedding cakeWhen choosing a Wedding Cake Designer you should give at least 6 months notice. Not only does this give time for your fruit cakes to be matured but good cake designers do get booked very quickly. Some take bookings a year or more in advance. During your initial consultation your cake designer should be able to offer you a tasting of wedding cakes in order for you to choose whether you want fruit, sponge, chocolate or something different like carrot cake or a flavoured sponge. Next you need to decide how many portions you need from your cake. This will depend on number of guests and whether you wish to keep your top tier [traditionally for the Christening of your first child] As for decoration - you should take with you any pictures you may have found in magazines along with colour swatches of your bridesmaids dresses if you want the colour incorporated into your cake. If you want hand made sugar flowers on your cake ask your florist for the names of the flowers you have chosen in your bouquet so that your decorator can reproduce them in icing. Your chosen decorator should be able to show you pictures of their past work and NOT just pictures in magazines or books. Also thank you letters or cards from satisfied customers are always a good indication of the quality of past creations. You should also discuss whether your decorator will deliver and set up your cake for you at your reception venue. Be very careful if a well-meaning friend or relative offers to make your cake. A wedding cake is a lot different to making the odd novelty cake here and there. Disasters can happen for instance when the cakes have not been cooked for long enough or the other extreme been cooked for too long and are burnt and dry. Or icing that hasn't had time to set. Cakes set up without dowels can collapse - and you don't want to be featured on TV's Wedding Video Clip Disasters!! Source www.countywedding .co.uk

Traditional or something more unusual?The traditional wedding cake is a tiered affair where white icing covers a moist fruit cake. The number of tiers may vary but generally it will be three or more. But there are other choices you can make if you are trying to decide what kind of wedding cake to have. Some couples feel the need to have the traditional fruit cake, but if neither of you actually like fruit cake it makes perfect sense to have something else instead. You can still have a traditional looking cake without actually having the fruit cake inside for example. Why not opt for a simple sponge cake or a chocolate cake instead? Of course you also have to decide what the exterior of the cake will look like. The best way to start thinking about what to have is to go to a few websites to see what designs are available. This can inspire you and give you some ideas that will help you make your own decision about what would work the best. One thing you will notice about tiered cakes is that most of them now sit one on top of the other, instead of being separated by small stands. This is more versatile in many ways because additional decorations can more easily be draped over the different tiers. An example of a traditional looking fruit cake that appeared on one website had white icing over three tiers. It was decorated with white butterflies and silver gems, and provided a classic look with a modern twist. This is an interesting point to bear in mind, because it is perfectly possible to blend the traditional with the modern in this way if you want to. It is also a good idea to speak to a professional wedding cake maker so you can get some more ideas of what is possible. This is particularly true if you want something more modern and you are wondering what you can do. For example wedding cakes don’t have to have white icing; they can have virtually any colour icing you can think of. So if you have a themed wedding that uses the colour red quite heavily, why not go for a modern twist on your cake and have red icing on that too? It will tie in with your theme and anything else might actually look out of place. If you want a chocolate wedding cake you need to consider whether you want the exterior to match the interior. Dark chocolate icing certainly does look very tempting, and the majority of your guests will be more than happy to receive a slice! But you can still decorate a chocolate cake in much the same way as a traditional cake. If you want white icing you can have it, or you can go chocolate all the way and have chocolate flowers in milk, dark and white colours as well. In the end your choice of wedding cake is yours to make and yours alone. So make sure you choose something you will both love. Source: www.countywedding .co.uk