Wedding cake Help!

Do you have a photo of the cake she wants?

I pipe/decorate before stacking. Use thin icing for piping small thin lines scrolls/wavy. Stencilling can be tricky and time consuming too. If using royal for stencilling you need to let each section dry before continuing, if the stencil needs to overlap to be continuous.

If a large cake is going out Saturday, I bake, level, tort, fill, ice and cover in Fondant on Thurs. Friday I decorate and finish the cake. Saturday is photo and delivery day. I photograph all my cakes before they leave. Monday through Tues I make all icing, filling, ganache, ready the cake board, make sure I have all cake ingredients required. Wed I organise all cake ingredients that way baking day goes faster. Weighing measuring and figuring out cake ingredients can be a real time sucker so I do it all the day before. Then on baking day I just grab the ingredients and just focus on mixing and baking.

Hope that helps.

Hi Sarah.
It’s always such a responsibility to take on someone’s special cake and it’s lovely that your cousin has faith in you to produce theirs.
It would be great to see a photo of the style of cake so we could maybe be more specific with the advice.

All I would say is plan your time very carefully. Don’t rush and don’t panic. You’ve got this!
You can cover a cake and stack cakes. You could always make up a batch of royal icing and practice at getting the right consistency, tip to use and pattern work.
Personally with royal icing details on the tiers I would even start baking on the Monday and chill in the fridge. Stack and cover with ganache on the Tuesday and chill again. Wednesday I would cover the cakes with fondant and make sure I do my best to cover them perfectly. You could also use the Wednesday to start decorating the tiers if you want to. With the fondant soft you could maybe emboss the pattern onto the tiers to help you or wait until the fondant has dried and start on the Thursday.
At this point, if something has gone wrong or you’re not happy with anything, you still have plenty of time to correct it. If everything is going well then great! Take a breather and really concentrate on that icing work.
If the cake requires stacking before decorating then you can do this on the Thursday. Then you have the Thursday and Friday to complete the decorations and have enough time for everything to dry and set into place.
Good luck and I’m sure that it’s going to be lovely 😊

Guys you’re a font of knowledge!!

This is the cake she wants. I can do the roses and small flowers in advance (and make spares too) running up to the week prior to wedding. It’s the piping that’s causing sleepless nights!!

I always stack up cake dummies the size of the actual cake. I wrap each dummy with a piece of parchment cut to size so it goes all the way around in one wrap. I use flat head pins to hold them in place. Now you can have a trial run or practice the piping on the “cake” and scrape it off. I also use this method to make templates for the real cake. Draw with a pencil on the parchment the vine for the flowers, once you have it the way you would like it, you can easily wrap this piece of parchment gently around the real cake and trace over your lines gently with a tool to leave marks in your cake to pipe over. You don’t want to press hard just enough to give you a guide. I like to do this because I’m a planner and don’t like to fly by the seat of my pants LOL :) I like to be organised and know exactly how I will accomplish the cake properly.

Hope that helps. It is a beautiful cake and I’m certain you can pull it off. You could start the flowers very early as long as you store them in a dark place to stop the colours from fading.

Good Luck

You’ve been given very good advice here Sarah. Like Teri beginning of the week, or even a couple of weeks ahead, make my icing and fondant. I cover the cake board and make any flowers or any other embellishments.
I bake my cakes ahead of time and freeze them. Makes them moist. Take them out 2 days before, thaw. That would be Thursday. I crumb coat, cover in icing, put in my dowels and cover in fondant. Rest overnight.
Friday I decorate. Take pictures.
As far as the royal icing piping, I’d make a couple of batches, different recipes, see which ones you like. I practice piping on a overturned bowl. As far as piping on the cake, I would attach your flowers first with melted white chocolate. Then pipe the lines to join. You could actually practice that on a fondant covered dummy.
Take your time and enjoy this. You will be fine.

That’s lovely!
I agree with the pencil transfer as a guide. A soft 2b pencil is advised as it’s easier to transfer without a lot of pressure and again this technique is advised on fondant that is dry and not freshly covered.
Looking forward to seeing the finished cake 😊

Wow, you guys are awesome, thank you so very much. I am sat with pad and pencil, writing out shopping lists and planning a time table. Fingers crossed all goes according to ‘plan’ lol!

Having a good plan and time line is half the battle. I look forward to seeing the cake – it will be awesome. :)

How did your cake turn out?

Working on it! It’s due Saturday!!!