One of the most delicious and exciting parts of your wedding planning, bringing your wedding cake vision to life is a fabulous process.

Emma Randell, of multi award-winning Scrumptious Bakes by Emma, shares her top tips with us for wedding cake planning.

Known for their irresistibly elegant wedding cakes and macaron towers, each Scrumptious Bakes creation is imbued with subtle luxury and timeless style. Based in Hampshire, each beautiful, bespoke centrepiece is heartfelt and thoughtfully designed, and they are renowned for their exceptional, organic ingredients, decadent touches and sustainable ethos.

Read on for some top tips covering:

1. When to contact your cake maker;
2. The best size for your wedding cake;
3. The best location for your wedding cake and
4. Cake stand top tips.

Cup of tea (or glass of prosecco!) at the ready…

1. When should we contact our cake maker?

It’s best to say hello when you have your date and venue confirmed, and an approximate idea of how many guests you would like your cake to serve. If you have an idea of the style of cake you might like, and your colour palette, this is helpful for your cake maker too. Pinterest is a great source of inspiration, as is Instagram.

Have a look at the designs that your potential cake maker creates, explore their website, and read their social media posts and reviews to get a feel for them and their business. If the way everything looks and feels connects with you, it’s a good sign that you’ll be on the same page when it comes to bringing your vision to life!

We welcome enquires at all stages of wedding planning and tend to be booked up to 18 months in advance. If you love someone’s work, definitely contact them sooner rather than later!

2. How do we know what the best size for our wedding cake is?

Your cake maker will be able to suggest the best size for your number of guests. This will vary slightly, depending on whether you’d like round, square or hexagonal tiers for example, and whether you’d like traditional finger portions for your guests, or larger dessert portions.

Wedding cake makers usually refer to the size of cake tiers in inches, which refer to the diameter of each cake sponge.

Please see the illustration below for an example of how our classic 4”, 6”, 8” and 10” round wedding cake tiers are stacked together to give you the best size wedding cake for your number of guests.

Each tier in the example above has four layers of soft, light sponge and smooth, whipped buttercream. If you would like a contemporary design, with cake tiers of different heights, this subtly changes the number of guests your cake will serve.

3. Where is the best place to display our wedding cake?

These are our top tips for the location of your cake:

• Somewhere with a neutral background, to allow all of the details to stand out (and be captured by your photographer).
• In a cool place, away from heat sources like radiators, or directly in front of a window, where sunshine streaming through might melt your cake.
• Somewhere with natural light and a reasonable amount of space (not usually a corner, unless your venue is happy to move it later in the day). This helps your photographer to let you know the best position for your cake-cutting moment and ensures that all of your guests can see you.
• On a steady, firm, completely flat and preferably cool surface.

Your venue will probably have a few locations that they suggest. They will be able to let you know where they think is best, depending on the time of year for your wedding and the time that you’re planning on cutting your cake.

If you are planning on a marquee wedding on a potentially warm day, mention this to your cake maker. Depending on the type of design you’ve chosen, you may need to make sure there is refrigerated space available to store your cake until your cake-cutting moment. Cakes can melt in very hot marquees!

4. Do you have any advice on cake stands?

There are more or less three choices when it comes to a cake stand for your wedding cake or macaron tower:

1. 1. Hire one from your venue
   2. Use your own
   3. Hire one from your cake maker.

1. Hiring from your venue

• Lots of venues will have a cake stand or drum (a big metallic stand) that you can use if you wish to, and a cake knife too.
• There may be a charge for this, and the option(s) they have might not be your preferred style. Equally, it may be included within your package, and you may love what they offer! Ask your wedding coordinator for information.

2. Using your own

If you’d like to source your own cake stand, make sure:

• It is sturdy enough to hold the weight of your cake. Four-tier cakes can weigh upwards of 15kg. Some vintage cake stands particularly may not be secure enough to take the weight of a wedding cake.
• The base of your stand is flat. You’d think all cake stands (and log slices) would be, but it’s not always the case.
• It’s wide enough to support your cake. If your bottom tier is 10″ in diameter for example, you need a stand that is at least this wide, especially as the cake board that it sits on may be wider. This is especially true if your cake has decoration around its base too.

3. Hiring from your cake maker

• Your cake maker may have some beautiful stands that you’re welcome to hire. Our favourites are hand-poured Mosser Milk glass ceramic stands, and those by Prop Options.
• Most cake makers will have a hire charge per stand, and require a deposit, fully refundable upon safe collection or return of the item.
• They’ll be able to send you photos and give you a personalised recommendation to best suit your design and wedding day too.

Feel free to contact us if we can help with any further questions and enjoy your planning!

Emma x

hello@scrumptiousbakes.com
www.scrumptiousbakes.com