In Training For My First Wedding Cake

I have always loved cake. As a child at family weddings, I was always eager to run ahead for a look at them (though the frilly 80s wasn't the most exciting time in cake-history) and I looked forward excitedly to see what mam had chosen for my birthday each year (invariably a plain cream sponge but I lived in hope that she might get me one of the lurid, fondant-iced Bart Simpson head cakes from the window of The Upper Crust on Main Street. Alas it was never to be *cue violins). Cake means good times, happiness, celebration. What's not to like?

A three tiered fake cake with gumpaste peonies, orchid and rose I decorated in a recent class (dent down to Mr Taxi Driver).

Cakes and Sugarcraft are something I keep coming back to. I completed a pretty basic City and Guilds online course a few years back and have recently completed the PME Professional Diploma in Sugarcraft.  It is like an itch I have to scratch . And that is what I have decided to do over the next few months -  the time has come to see how well I can improve and where, if anywhere, it takes me.

A carrot cake from the PME Diploma, covering some basic techniques

I haven't been baking as much as I would like recently. That is mainly down to the issue of waste and my hatred of it. Keith isn't a big cake eater and I will and have ended up polishing off wedges of cake to save it going in the bin which is all noble enough until your jeans start to feel tight!

A cake I made for a colleague 

But I now have something very exciting to work towards. My good friend Anne is getting married on New Year's Eve and has decided to set me loose on her wedding cake.Cheers Annie! In preparation, I have decided to try to bake and decorate a cake for any occasion I can up to then.

30th Cake

A cake should taste as good as it looks. I (and I'm sure you) have sampled enough dry tasteless sponges over the years to know that. It also has to be quite solid to give the cake structure/take a bit of abuse. An am still very much in the process of finding the perfect recipes. For example, the (chocolate) ones above and below were yummy but very soft. So the search goes on.

Hen Party Cake

I am hoping to document my ongoing experiments here. I am sure some will be better than others but hopefully there will be an overall improvement and I will learn more and more techniques as the months progress. (no doubt spending a small fortune on tools in the process). Hopefully I will then be at least ready for my first wedding cake. Will it be my last? who knows!?

Because sugarcraft is basically playdough for adults -  And whats not to love about that?!