If you are planning on having a more low key wedding, with just family and friends, perhaps to save money, one way you can make the occasion special, as well as reducing costs, is to create your own recipe, or follow one you enjoy.
The white wedding cake is the classic wedding cake look that many will go for and as for from a baker, below we have broken the recipe down with a few tips for each section so you can make the best wedding cake for your special day.
Keep reading to learn more about wedding cakes, and how to bake them.
The Cake
Often the actual cake of the wedding cake is usually quite basic. Some happy couples may choose to smash the cake onto each other’s face after they cut (see also: Is It Rude To Leave Before The Couple Cut The Cake?)into it, but in other ways the main cake here is for structure as well as for volume.
We want to serve lots of people but we also want to have enough cake to support the decorations.
A simple cake batter can be appropriate for the wedding, this simple batter, we call a 1-2-3-4 cake, is tried and tested, ideal for structure and producing volume. It should produce two layers of around 8 or 9 inch cakes.
Here’s the ingredients:
1 cup of unsalted butter (two sticks)
2 cups of granulated sugar
3 cups of all-purpose flour
4 eggs
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Here’s the method:
Preheat your oven to 350 F.
Grease and flour two 9 inch cake pans
Beat sugar and butter in a large bowl until fluffy. Use an electric hand or stand mixer for ease.
Add eggs one at a time, beat the eggs into the batter before adding another.
In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients
In a separate vessel measure out your milk
First, add some of the dry mixture to the butter/sugar mixture and beat until combined
Then, add some milk and beat until combined.
Alternate adding flour mixture and milk mixture until both are completely incorporated into the butter/sugar mixture.
Once everything is combined, stir in your vanilla extract for flavor.
Pour batter into prepared pans evenly.
Bake for 25-30 minutes. Use a toothpick or knife to insert into the middle of the cake and pull it when the utensil comes out relatively dry. Try not to let cracks form on top.
Let cakes cool for around 10 minutes before removing from the pan, then let cool completely on a wire rack before icing.
The Icing
The icing and decoration of a wedding cake is arguably the most important part of the wedding cake. Considering you’re making this yourself, your cake decorating abilities could be limited, or you may have your own ideas of how you want to uniquely decorate the cake.
Here’s two basic icing recipes, for different circumstances, which you can follow – plus a few ideas of how you can make it your own.
Buttercream Icing
Buttercream Icing is really tasty, and also quite moreish and calorific if that matters to you, but has a few caveats. Butter icing can go off quicker than other icing, and also isn’t the best with heat.
In other words, if you plan on making your cake far in advance, or are planning on taking it to a destination in, say, a warm car, the next option could be better. If you want to maximize flavor buttercream can be a good way to go.
Buttercream is as simple as mixing butter and icing sugar together with some sort of flavoring, from chocolate to rosewater to simply vanilla. Here’s a basic recipe if you want one.
Buttercream is also easy to decorate, you can add your own piping designs on top, just let the initial layer of icing set first, or you can add texture to the icing by scoring it in any way you want, it also takes on food coloring well.
This is much more rustic design for a wedding cake, which may suit a low key wedding.
Royal Icing
Royal icing is perhaps the most classic icing, and is used a lot in wedding cakes. It’s popular because it not only holds its shape well but can be stored for a while without losing shape or going off. It is also perhaps the least resistant to decoration.
You can add lots of decoration to royal icing, such as the classic statuettes of the bride and groom, but this is a lot more effort both in making and decorating.
Royal icing can also withstand weather conditions pretty well, no matter how warm it is it won’t really melt in normal temperatures, and is relatively durable.
Royal icing is typically made with sugar water and egg whites, it has a matte finish as a result which is ideal for decorating. Equally, royal icing doesn’t have the most noticeable flavor, buttercream icing certainly tastes better.
Royal icing also has a lot more steps for making than buttercream does, so here is a more in depth recipe for you to follow.
You can do a lot with royal icing in terms of decorating, when you have a sheet of royal icing made, you can make anything from small models to go on your cake, to little flowers. It can be fun to make a fw sheet of royal icing made with different colorings to have some fun with.
Final Thoughts
As you can see most wedding cakes are quite basic in their base cake recipes, and are much more about decoration, which is why they are often left for the pro bakers.
If you chose to make your wedding cake at home, then it can be a good idea to go a bit more rustic and basic, or making it at home can give you much more free reign in terms of decorating the cake and making it unique for yourself.
Leave a comment