Firstly you need to have a rough idea of how many you are catering for. Cake sizes and shapes vary, obviously round and square are the basics but these days you can have almost anything for instance, diamond, petal, oval, rectangular, bell, heart, shoe the list is endless, so it depends whether you’re a traditional, avant garde or themed type of person, or out and out outrageous. Have a look through Wedding Magazines- you can buy ones just for cakes; see if you can find inspiration-or you might already know what you want.
The next thing to decide is how much you want to spend, a small 3-tier 15, 20, 25cm (6”-8”-10”) with little decoration maybe ribbons, perhaps a single sugar rose or a cluster to each if it is a stacked cake would set you back approximately £225-£350. The larger the cake and more elaborate the decoration the higher the cost will be, anything up to four figures in some instances.
- A simple “Cutting cake”
Most Cakemakers/Cake Shops will have samples of cake available as tasters. You need to try before you order. It is also popular to serve cup cakes or mini cakes at the moment but these can cost anything from £2.50 to £7.50 each so could still set you back the cost of a small 3 tier cake up £750 if you had 100 at the highest cost.So before you get carried away, if you are on a limited budget, you could have sponge cake instead and serve it as a desert, although you would have to have more cake as portions sizes are larger than with fruit cake. The cheapest way to do this is have a cutting cake maybe a large square which is marzipanned and iced but with no decoration, so no-one would know the difference once cut.
You can also purchase ready made fruit or sponge cakes with minimum decoration and DIY the decoration, almost anything can be purchased for decoration from supermarkets, specialists shops or online shops. If you have a family member or friend who is good at making cakes you could ask them to make it for you, but ask for tasters just to be sure you’ll enjoy the end result. If you decide to go for the complete DIY Wedding cake, buy yourself a good cake baking and decorating book several months in advance and practice, most people can manage cup cakes but it’s the decoration that makes them, so perhaps, go for a few lessons in cake decoration.
As to the type of cake, fruit or sponge – vanilla, chocolate, carrot, lemon, and coffee are the most popular, also you have a choice of flavour with the buttercream filling, some have combination cakes, i.e. fruit, chocolate with chocolate ganache filling, lemon with lemon curd and vanilla buttercream.
Then the icing, royal icing is used for fruit cake, particularly if you want pillars, whilst sugarpaste icing is used on both fruit and sponge cakes and comes in a variety of colours or white or celebration which is an ivory and then colour it yourself. I always use marzipan under sugarpaste on sponges it gives a firmer smoother surface for the sugarpaste, it is a must with royal icing. Also available is Cocoform which is chocolate either milk, white or plain ideal for covering cakes and making decorations, the white can be coloured as normal icing giving you more scope. Another option is an all sponge cake with the sides covered in cigarillos which are curled sticks of chocolate available in milk, white, plain with the top covered in fruits looks great with berry fruits and is ideal as a desert. In some countries wedding cakes will be covered with frosting only, so would all need to be eaten, another one suitable for desert.
The following is a rough guide to cake sizes and portions, based on catering portion sizes of 2.5cm (1in) for fruit cake and 5cm (2in) for sponge cakes:
Very small 3-tier: 13, 18, 23cm (5, 7, 9in)
- Round approx. 98 portions fruit cake
- Square approx. 126 portions fruit cake
Small 3-tier: 15, 20, 25cm (6, 8, 10in)
- Round approx. 130 portions fruit cake
- Square approx. 171 portions fruit cake
Large 3-tier: 20, 25, 30cm (8, 10, 12in)
- Round approx. 208 portions fruit cake
- Square approx. 278 portions fruit cake
Small 2-tier: 13, 25cm (7, 10in)
- Round approx. 98 portions fruit cake
- Square approx. 130 portions of fruit cake
For most other shapes of cakes use the equivalent size round portion guide. Don’t forget to half portions for a sponge cake but you can have an cutting cake which can be either sponge or fruit and will save you money.
Have fun choosing your cake.
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