These are not perfect photographs unfortunately as the light was poor and I did not have time to mess about. I do not have decent pics of the toppers which is a shame. The first photograph was supplied to me by a guest who attended the wedding which was very kind of her. Some of you know that I was very short of time to do this on account of several projects on the go (not cake) at the moment, so this is now commonly referred to as my miracle cake! (eg.. still making the toppers the night before delivery …. which was at 7.00 am…pushed the stress boundaries a bit!).

This couple asked for a simply decorated classic style cake in keeping with the colours of the wedding theme. The bride and groom asked for toppers to be made wearing the horse riding and motor bike outfits as shown and I worked from photographs. The bride has long curly hair and wanted the topper to reflect this without a riding hat as well as holding the bouquet of blue and white flowers with a touch of red in. Although the groom is in the military he is a very keen motorcylist.

They also wanted horseshoes round all the cakes but I decided to put them on the bottom 15" dummy tier with a sugarpaste bow and made some some small blue sugarpaste roses instead. She also wanted to have the lace pattern of her wedding dress piped onto the cake. This was my first attempt at brush embroidery and I had 2 1/2 hours to do the whole cake so it was not a perfectly neat performance but she was very happy with it just the same. I had doodled the idea of blue pipework for contrast but they preferred the white on ivory. I had made the little pearls for the lace work in advance (most nights while watching tv, sitting rolling tiny little balls of sugarpaste … as you do!).

The flavours of the cake were:

12" fruit cake which was aside as a cutting cake from the four tiers on account of weight and transport issues.
12" Victoria Sponge with buttercream and raspberry jam
9" Victoria Sponge with just buttercream (one of the guests had an allergy to fruit).
6" Chocolate Fudge Cake

All the cakes (apart from the fruit cake) were smoothed with white chocolate ganache prior to applying the fondant.

The cake travelled already stacked (the topper in a separate box) in the back of a van with the mother of the bride and had to be delivered to the venue in advance of the wedding day because I was going away (it was the Easter weekend) and so I could not assemble it onsite which I really wanted to be able to do but they were storing it in a separate place until the wedding day. It was quite nerve-wracking relying on the hotel to safely manoevre it onto the stand (it was really, really heavy even with the dummy base!) and put the topper on without damaging anything, but as you can see, they did not let us down. I had secured the toppers to a 6" cake board (also covered in fondant and lacework) but was worried about it being dropped or knocked off a table etc…. you know how it is!

Anyway, ramble over… thank you for looking! The only downer was the venue did not return the dummy cake with the horseshoes.. the bride is livid as they were going to be kept as a keepsake! I am making some more but it’s not the same.. We still don’t know what happened to it. I am guessing the hotel tried to cut it by mistake (despite my clear instructions!).
xx