Pink Hearts Wedding Cake

I have been spurred on to write a blog post as the lady I made this for has just returned the cake knife and I thought is was about time I put her lovely cake on my blog.

It is very cosy sitting in my workroom typing away and every time I look outside I wish Dexter was 10 and could walk home from school on his own. My husband thinks he could now but I know better as he can be distracted by a piece of fluff floating by in the wind.

This was a topsy turvy style cake which is popular now. The colour scheme was pink and green and my client sent me some swatches to get a match.

I made the top wires with hearts first so that they had plenty of time to harden.

I always make wires for toppers extra long because until I get to the point of putting the topper on the cake I do not know exactly what size it needs to be.

I made various sized hearts in shades of pink and set these aside to harden.

The last thing to make in advance was the balls. At this point my son decided he wanted to make some balls too.

I must just say at this point that being a 7 year old boy I made him put his little pile next to him (away from the cake) and then keep them. As I said “it would be much nicer for you Dex if you keep them, then you can put them in a bag and eat them”. This was of course my way of ensuring that none of them were used on the cake but actually he was very happy indeed with this plan.

When I make this type of cake I still want the tiers to sit parallel with the base of the cake rather than each tier to sit directly on the one below and be on a slope.

For this reason I make a cut out section to provide a horizontal surface for the next tier up to sit on.

I feel this makes the overall structure more stable and more secure when transporting the cake.

I have included a pic of how I structure the cake. The dashed line shows where the cake is cut to provide a flat surface for the tier above.

The poles that look like barber shop signs are the supporting dowels. The cake above is then placed on a strong cake card and sits on top of the dowels as it would on a  standard stacked cake.

I feel more confident in this structure than if I were to place tiers directly on top of one another.

Getting closer to school pick up. I actually have the heating on - in June! May as well just face it as I have to walk the pooch too.

Once I had the bottom tier in place with the section cut out I placed the second tier with it’s marzipan covering on top.

When I have to cover a tier with diamonds or stripes I prefer to do this when the tier is in situ. This is because when there are lots of individual pieces of sugarpste rather than one large piece it is more likely that they will move a litttle when putting them in place.

This way the tier is already where I want it and once the covering is done it will only be moved as part of the whole cake.

Patterns are slightly tricky on a wonky tier because there is no uniformity to it. I usually start patterns at the back of a cake but in this situation I would start at the front because working from the back would mean that by the time I got round to the front the diamond pattern would be sitting oddly.

This odd shape is unavoidable on a wonky tier but it should be at the back. So I start in the middle at the front and then work around each side.

Once all the tiers were assembled I could add the sugar balls around the base of each tier. I also decorated the base of the top and bottom tier with white hearts which looked great against the white cake.

Because I made the large pink hearts in advance they were hard and I placed them onto the cake so that they would sit slightly away from the surface of the sugarpaste instead of being stuck flush with the cake.

The beaded wires were made with a combination of green and pink beads, heart shaped beads and sugarpaste hearts. You can get brilliant glue which you dab onto the wire and then thread the bead onto. The glue then hardens and becomes clear and the bead is held in place.

Good old Hobbycraft. I could spend a whole morning in there just buying little bits and bobs which I would never use.

My client was really pleased with the look and taste of her cake and had a fantastic wedding day.