DIY Bride

Now that you’ve decided you’d like to explore making your own cake where, oh, where do you begin? Don’t fret, my friends. In this post we’ll discuss the basics of getting started on your journey to cake bliss.

The Big Decisions

It all starts here, with these 4 questions.

1. What type icing do you want?
2. What cake flavor(s) do you want?
3. How many people will you be serving?
4. What design do you want?

Let’s break each of those down and talk about some options. [Read more below the jump.]

1. What type icing do you want?
It sounds kind of odd to chose your icing first, but it’s a key part of the cake decision process. Not only are taste and texture major factors, some icings are much more fragile than others. This is very important
because some icings will, quite literally, melt when they’re warm. If you’re having an afternoon outdoor wedding in August butter cream icing may not be your best bet.

Types of Icing

Butter Cream (or Buttercream): One of the most common types of icing, butter cream is made with butter or shortening. The flavor is super sweet but takes on other flavors well. Mainly used for icing the outside of the cake it is also a popular choice for fillings and decorations, too. While it is versatile, buttercream is very sensitive to temperature (especially heat - it’ll melt when it gets warm!)

French Butter Cream: Similar to regular butter cream, French butter cream is made from whole eggs (not just the yolks like in other butter cream) which gives it a higher fat content. This makes a very rich and, surprisingly, light icing BUT it’s very fragile. The shelf-life is shorter than a regular butter cream and it’s more sensative to temperatures.

Fondant: Fondant is a thick, slightly chewey white sugar substance that is used to cover a cake or to make decorations. There are different types of fondant: rolled, poured and sculpting.

Rolled fondant has a thick, dough-like consistency that’s rolled or draped over the surface of a cake. Fondant is made of sugar, water, and glucose (or corn syrup). There’s also a version made of marshmallow. It has a smooth surface and, in my experience, is a pain to work with. We’ll talk about this later but fondant is not very forgiving as it shows all sorts of flaws. It looks great when done well, though.

Poured fondant a liquid icing. It’s used mostly for small pieces like petits fours or for glazes.

Sculpting fondant is thick and used for molding decorations.

Fondants do take color well and can be flavored with oils or extracts.

Ganache: A mixture of chocolate and heavy cream, ganache is a delightfully decadent icing or filling. Melted, it’s great as a glaze. Chilled, it becomes a deep, dense truffle-like consistency. Ganache takes flavorings well such as liqueurs and coffee. It can have a matte or a glossy appearance.

Marzipan:  A coating made of sweetened almond paste and eggs. Marzipan can easily be molded and colored. It tastes great but should be avoided if anyone in your guest list has nut allergies. It’s also pretty expensive and can be harder to find in amounts needed for large cakes.

Meringue - Made from sugar, water, and egg whites, meringue is a light and airy frosting that doesn’t have much flavor on it’s own. It’s a great companion for flavorful cakes that you don’t want masked by heavy frosting.

Rolled Butter Cream: Similar to rolled fondant (below) but softer with a shinier surface.

Royal Icing: Used primarily for decorations and icing cookies, royal icing dries very hard. This is great for intricate decorations and it usually doesn’t need refrigerations. A very hard icing that works well with delicate decorations. It’s easy to make, takes color well, and the taste is … “meh”.

Whipped Cream: Similar to meringue, whipped cream is a great (and uber light) frosting. However, because it’s whipped cream it needs to be chilled and kept refrigerated so it’s not ideal for wedding cakes.

2. What cake flavor(s) do you want?
This is the fun part of the cake process because you can pretty much have any cake flavors you want in any combination. Chocolate and mint? Thai coffee & cinnamon? Green tea and ginger? Peanut butter and bacon? You bet!

The main considerations here are:
* Any food allergies that you need to watch out for? (Stay away from anything with tree nuts is my general rule — because I’m allergic to them and lots of other people are, too.)
* Will the majority of your guests like the flavors? That peanut butter-bacon combo may be just a little too weird for your friends and family.
* What will YOU absolutely love?

3. How many people will you be serving?
Before you settle on your final design, you’ll need to know your guest list tally. The size of your guest list will determine how much cake you need. And beware here! Wedding cake servings are calculated as much smaller than “normal” cake slices. A common size for a slice of wedding cake is 1” wide by 2” tall.

4. What design do you want?
Ah, the BIG question! What do you want your cake to look like?

Let’s start with shape. Cake pans can be found in circles, squares, rectangles, hexagons, ovals, and all sorts of novelty shapes.
Next, how about color. What’s your wedding color scheme or theme?
Now, decoration. You can do just about anything you want here. Start checking out cake galleries and wedding magazines for inspiration.

Those are the very basics. We’ll be discussing more fun stuff like timelines, budgeting, and recipes in the coming days.