Wow it's been hot hot hot today. Makes a change from all that rain we've been having. Today I delivered a huge cake to the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. It was one of my popular floral cakes and so I thought I'd tell the story of it's creation :)
The beginning of every cake journey has to start in the kitchen......and this cake was a whopper. Five tiers of chocolate mud cake and carrot cake. With a side cutting cake too. The cake needed to feed 300 guests so there was alot of baking to do.
Every cake is baked twice for extra height (by this I mean I bake 2 cakes!) , spliced, sliced, filled and levelled. Levelling a cake at this stage is sooooo important and as I tell all my students in class, take time to get this part right! I have a lovely yellow kitchen spirit level, a vital ingredient in cake construction. And a cake of this size needs to be level, or when it all gets stacked it could go horribly wrong.
When I do cakes with fresh flowers, unlike alot of cake makers, I do all the floristry myself.
I believe it is my job to leave the cake looking perfect and so I go to New Covent Garden myself to select the flowers.
I love getting up early on a summers morning to be greeted by the hustle and bustle of the market. Everything is so pretty and I inevitably come home with something I shouldn't!
The colours are just fantastic and such an inspiration. However todays cake is going to be elegant and cream. The lovely Ken from Robert Allen florists always takes my order a few days in advance and has my flowers ready and waiting when I arrive. Sometimes if he's lucky I take him some cakey offcuts ;)
Today I picked up cream Avalanche roses, white Hydrangea and cream Akito roses. All five of the cakes were iced in a cream fondant icing, then I hand piped a side design using a no. 3 nozzle for a nice raised effect.
Once the design was piped on, I wanted it to have a pearly sheen so I painted carefully over the top of the piping with a pearl lustre dust. This gives a lovely shimmery effect, as well as dusting over the whole cake with my favourite sparkle dust 'Snowflake' by sugarflair.
Finally, after all 5 cakes were piped and shimmered, I could apply the flowers. I like to do the big roses before I leave for the venue and then the rest when I get there. This helps to avoid any wilting....and today was pretty hot!
Abigail also chose to have little gold ball details and some bits of greenery. I chose a dainty eucalyptus for a slightly Grecian look.
Today Abigail and Jaspers Wedding was at the Painted Hall, part of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. I have always set up my cakes in the Painted Hall after the ceremony, but this cake went into the Queen Mary's Undercroft.....
After unloading all the boxes and buckets of flowers I got to work with the assembly. This cake is going to be tall :)
This is the eucalyptus going in amongst the roses..... then cake by cake I created a huge tower.
I attempted a photograph from the top looking down, but my chair was not quite high enough.
And here is the finished result!
I hope it tasted nice and congratulations to Abigail and Jasper.
