6. THE NAKED-ICING TECHNIQUE:
The naked icing technique is pretty simple. There are many video tutorials online (like the one below) that can help you with this – practise makes perfect. But then again perfect imperfection is just as lovable. We found that having a good quality off-set palette knife, a long dough cutter and cake spinning table helps a lot for creating that smooth finish!
Secrets to a perfect semi naked cake – tips, tricks, hacks:
7. THE RIGHT TOOLS:
Having the right tools will make the job so much easier. Before buying anything ask around to see if you’re able to borrow from friends/family. Especially the more expensive equipment such as a stand mixer! You can order a lot of equipment online too. We hired our cake tins from a local cake shop which saved some money. Here’s a short list of equipment we found invaluable:
- Stand Mixer (for making big batches of buttercream and cake mix)
- Off-set Palette Knife (for the icing and filling)
- A wide Dough Cutter (for smooth icing)
- High-quality Cake Tins
- Non-stick Baking Parchment (for easy cake tin removal and smooth cake base)
- Cake Boards (for the tier building process)
- Cake Display stand (for finishing touces)
- A turning table would have made the icing process easier (but we had to make do without)
- Cake Dowelling (for the support)
8. THE STACKING:
If you stack cakes on top of each other without support they will eventually sink into each other. Therefore, you will need to use some dowelling. We ordered 20 x 12” plastic cake dowelling from Amazon which was more than enough. You will need to insert dowelling into the bottom two tiers. For the top tier, we inserted 1 down the middle to support the stack of sponge and the décor going on top. Check out the video below by Kiss Me Cake By Julie which gives a thorough explanation of how to insert your dowelling – there is method to this magic!
Stacking 3 tier cake tutorial 001:
9. THE FRESH FLOWERS & DECOR:
We hand-made and hand-painted regal icing roses for our cake. Check out this useful video on how to make them:
How To Make A Beautiful Sugar Rose:
We also used a bunch of fresh flowers that were in line with the wedding’s floral theme – we just used spare. Your flowers will need to be food safe to stick into the sponge which you can check with your florist. But just to be safe, you can buy green floral tape to wrap around the ends. We also brought some floral diamantes for the centre of the roses and made some wire embellishment for the centre of the gerberas. Both of which were focus flowers of the wedding. We also had some left-over strawberries from the filling which we used on the cake. Rather than going with traditional (and now out-dated) figurines for the top of the cake, we used 3 floral butterflies to symbolise the couple and their child.
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10: THE CUTTING:
Cutting a multiple tiered cake is a bit different to cutting a standard cake. There are a few well-known ways to do so. This video is a short and sweet explanation of one way.
Short and Sweet: How to Cut a Wedding Cake:
So that’s our top 10 pieces of advice for making your own wedding cake. We wish you the best of baking luck and hope you have a beautifully magical day!
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Check out this video of the cake assemble and decorating on the day of the wedding. Excuse the PJs, tired eyes and hair rollers – it’s all about multi-tasking!
