How to Make a Wedding Cake

As I mentioned, I'm making a wedding-style cake for my cousin's anniversary party. Making a large, tiered, fondant-enrobed cake takes time and planning; the key to a successful large-scale project is making a schedule. At culinary school, we had to make schedules that accounted for every minute of class time. At home I don't get so granular, but I still need a general, but still relatively comprehensive schedule.  I personally prefer to devote large chunks of time to working on the cake with days off when needed, rather than working on it for small amounts every day. I also like using buttercream when it's freshly made (when I can, at least). Given those preferences, here's the schedule I worked out:

My final sketch

• 3-4 weeks in advance: get inspiration (I like browsing through famous cake decorator's websites and--I can't believe I do this--trolling Pinterest) and sketch out your design. I don't care how bad you are at drawing, this is essential. It gives you at least a vague idea of how things will look, what will work together, and if something that seemed possible in your head is going to be impossible in reality (if you can't sketch it, odds are you won't be able to make it out of cake!)

This was my original idea, but I realized I didn't
have the proper equipment to make sugar tulips,
so I had to rework things. That's why it's
good to start rounding up equipment early.

• 3 weeks in advance: order/purchase any ingredients/equipment you need. This gives you time to go to other stores, wait for shipping, etc, so you don't start panicking that you aren't going to have enough fondant. At this point it's good to make sure you have the staples like dowels (and sand paper to make sure you don't wind up with splinters in your cake) or straws to support the upper layers, cake boards for every layer and a cake drum or stand for the base, flour, eggs, etc.

One flower drying

• 1.5-3 weeks in advance: make your sugarpaste flowers/decoration. Depending on how many you are making and how complex they will be (and how safely you can store them) you'll want to leave yourself at least week and a half before the cake needs to be finished to work on them. I like to make them over 3-4 days (including making bases--ie for roses or dahlias) and I like to be finished and have them packed up before I start the actual baking part, so I start a full week before I start baking.
• 6 days in advance: bake your cakes. (Once they are completely cool, hotel wrap--I promise I'll post a "how to hotel wrap" guide later--and put in the fridge.)

Plain, chocolate, and strawberry buttercream

• 5 days in advance: make buttercream, fill and crumb coat cakes (if you don't know how to do this, check out my guide). Put in the fridge to let the crumb coat set nicely, then wrap the cakes tightly with plastic wrap, hotel wrap the whole cake on the pan, and freeze.

Make sure you wrap them well before you move them to the
freezer (and don't unwrap them until they are fully thawed),
if not you could end up with condensation forming on the cakes.

• 4 days in advance: take a well deserved break.
• 3 days in advance: in the evening move the cakes to the fridge (don't unwrap them). That's it!
• 2 days in advance: cover the cakes (and in my case the cake dummy) in fondant. Re-wrap the cakes, carefully with plastic wrap, making sure it touches the surface of the fondant and then hotel wrap the pan.

Use ribbon (or cuts of parchment) to create even lines of
your decorations.

• 1 day in advance: take the cakes out of the fridge well in advance of decorating them but leave them wrapped. Once they are at room temperature, unwrap and decorate. (If you are planning on more complex decorations you may want to start the decorations after you cover them in fondant and finish the decorations on this day.) At this point, wrap the cakes for travel. If you are going to stack them before you transport them, cut and insert the dowels/straws. If you are going to stack them after transport, wait to do the supports the same day.

The cakes waiting to be transported. I also
had a large plastic bin with equipment
(ie. my knife, extra fondant for touch ups...)
and a small bin with the sugar flowers
(and some back up flowers).

• The day of: transport the cake (yikes!). Cut and insert supports if stacking at the location. Attach any sugar paste decorations and touch up any fondant decorations that may have come off or been pushed askew.
• You are done. If you're lucky to be a guest of the party you've made the cake for, wait for the cake to be sliced (or slice it yourself, if you've been asked to) and enjoy!

Obviously this schedule worked for me because it is based on my cake's design, my preferences, and my pace. If you work very quickly (or slowly) or have many more flowers (or none at all) or want to work a little everyday (or quite a bit more on fewer days), you'll have to rejig this.

It's a lot of work, but if you plan it out it's very manageable and the smiles make it completely worth it! Check back very soon for photos of the finished product.