All About The Cake.

It is all about the cake this week for me. I have the week off from work so in between relaxing, meeting up with family, friends and catching up with life, I am cracking on with the wedding cake for my niece.
She wants tiers and a mix of fruit and sponge cakes.
A huge and heavy 12" fruit cake, a 10" and 8" sponge cakes and then the cake topper is on a 6" base. I used recipes from these books.

The sponges will be Madeira sponge cake recipes, using the Cakes to Inspire and Desire book I borrowed from my friend Abbie. The Madeira sponge will stay fresher longer than sponge cakes. It will also be denser to balance in tiers, successfully. I hope.
I made the fruit cake a while ago, using the recipe from my Sweet and Simple Party Cakes book and have since added a bit more brandy to keep it moist!
I have been buying bits like cake boards, ribbon, icing, marzipan, edible glue (as I am nearly all out of glue), some essential cake boxes to transport the cakes to the venue and an edible writing pen to write a small personalised plaque for the big day.

The flowers will be fresh roses in a variety of sizes and shades of white and lilac: avalanche, ocean song and akito. I will lay them on top of each cake layer in between the pillars.
Pillars.
The bit that gives me nightmares.
I imagine doing a cake "toppler" and it all ending in tears and not a cake "topper" at all.
For the cake topper, the bride to be wants a bit of a surprise for the groom.
You might remember, she wants him to be wearing a football kit in his favourite team, West Ham United. Their colours are claret and blue. I have been worried that if I did a claret groom that it would clash with the purple and lilac theme, so I am using a little artistic license and using a purple shade of icing.
I have been working on the cake toppers.
The bride was lots of fun and I am very pleased with her.

I added a few blue flowers to connect her to the grooms colours.

The groom has been a challenge for me. Ideally he would need to remain upright (at least for the photos, right? and for the speeches, traditionally, eh?)

I made him in pieces, adding denture fixative powder to the icing for his body. This brilliant idea came from Sheila, who led the cake decorating course I did last year as evening class. She was full of cheap and practical tips like this one! I left him to dry for a week or too and he really is like porcelain!
The pieces are then sturdy enough to stick together. In theory. The arms seemed to go on OK, but the legs attaching are a bit of a cross your fingers and hope, thing. I have him balanced upright against a jar of jam at the moment, to encourage his legs to adhere to his body!

I just have to fix the happy couple in place, with all the lettering, spelling the word "UNITED" and the plaque with their names and the wedding date and add the football team emblem on the front. I keep making one, painting the castle in "cream" which looks gold in neat form, but then I keep splodging it before it dries, so have to re-do it! 3rd time lucky,eh?
Today I am going to bake the Madeira sponge cakes.

Tins ready.