It's a bit like being at the dentist!

That’s probably not how you would expect me to describe your wedding cake consultation is it?  But it really is.  I will encourage you to eat lots of cake, and whilst you are busy eating it, I will be asking you lots of questions!  Just like when you’re at the dentist, it will be difficult to answer the questions!  😊

Seriously, what can you expect at your consultation?

Firstly, I hold the consultations in my quite small studio.  That is why I will generally ask you to limit the consultation to two of you only.  I can, by prior arrangement, accommodate a third person, like your Mum if she is the very kind person paying for your cake and wants to have an input.  As the space is small it really isn’t suitable for children, so I do ask you please to leave them with Granny for a while if possible. 

I always offer at least four different flavours of cake for you to try.  Usually there will be two of my more popular flavours and very often I like to throw in a wild card flavour!  This month I have given all the couples Pina Colada cake to try, and they have all absolutely loved it with about six couples actually ordering a tier of Pina Colada.  I don’t normally offer fruit cake or carrot cake, but I can do that by prior arrangement and if enough notice is given.   I will also serve freshly brewed coffee, tea or water to drink. 

And then, it is really a case of deciding how many portions of cake you will need and therefore how big the cake will be.  When we know the size of the cake required, we can talk about a design.  I will ask you about the colour scheme of your wedding, about your flower choices, etc.   If you have seen cakes which you like elements of please do bring along the pictures to show me.  It’s also very helpful if you have any colour swatches and pictures of flowers from your florist.

The consultation normally takes about an hour. 

After the consultation I will prepare a full quotation for you, detailing all the elements of the design we have agreed.  I will give you a really rough sketch (and I mean really rough 😊) if I think it will help you to picture the design.  This will all be emailed to you, usually within a day of our meeting. 

I always try to stress that if the quotation is more than you expected, that you should tell me.  It may be that the design can be adjusted to fit your budget, or I can give you a design that will fit your budget.  A good rule of thumb is ‘the simpler the cake the lower the price’.  If you want a cake festooned with sugar flowers it will obviously be very much more than a naked style wedding cake with minimal decoration. 

Quotations are valid for two weeks after they are issued.  

This doesn’t guarantee that the availability for your date will remain, but I will notify you if I have other interest in the same date in the interim.  Your cake is confirmed as soon as the reservation deposit is paid.

It’s all very painless, and that’s where it might differ from going to the dentist!

Sonja x

This is my superpower.....what's yours?

Although it is a pretty super power that I have, it’s not magic and it’s certainly not quick!  In the past few weeks a few of my Facebook followers expressed an interest in getting an insight into the process, so here is a little explanation. It will also explain why wedding cakes are seemingly expensive.

This cake that I made was all one flavour, vanilla sponge with a tangy raspberry buttercream filling, a white chocolate ganache shell and sugarpaste covering. This actually simplified the process slightly.  Sometimes my customers like to have a different flavour sponge and filling for each tier of their cake, and who can blame them, however this adds time to the baking process.

It actually took six hours of lining baking tins, weighing ingredients, mixing, baking, washing up….then more lining tins, weighing ingredients, mixing, baking and finally washing up to get to this stage.  All the sponges baked.  But they still don’t look like they would make that beautifully symmetrical and level cake do they?

Once all the sponges are baked they have to be sliced to level them, the rounded tops need to come off…… at this point I admit I used to eat a fair amount of those offcuts!  But I am reformed….two stone lighter than a year ago and shunning those offcuts!  But it’s not just a case of slicing the tops off, every tier of the cake needs to be exactly the same depth after it has been cut and filled, so a ruler is involved.  This job requires absolute precision.   As I am a bit of a perfectionist, this is a challenge I enjoy.  Look how level all my cut sponges are….accurate to the millimetre!

Once cut to the right sizes, then they are filled.  Once they are filled the level of each cake is checked.  I use a spirit level for this. You’re quite right my spirit level is rather big!  I am pleased to say I do have a new smaller one now.   

It is very important to make sure, at every stage, the cake remains level.  If it is not level, even by millimetres, it will make the whole wedding cake lean once it is stacked.  It will also be unstable.  Believe me a few millimetres will show in the end result.

The cakes are then filled and trimmed.  Once the cake has been filled it can either be covered in a layer of buttercream or ganache.  This is required to make a smooth base to put the sugarpaste on….and of course it makes the cake even more delicious.  This cake was covered in white chocolate ganache.  

Here is a picture of the first application of ganache, once this was set I went over with another thin layer to smooth it out (no picture of that though).  The base has to be smooth before the sugarpaste can be added.

So all this cutting, filling, levelling, making the ganache and ganaching the cakes took another five hours.  The hours are adding up now.  We are already up to 11 hours.

A further two hours later and the cakes are all covered with sugarpaste and dowelled.  The dowels are put in the cake to support the tier above.  Every dowel has to be cut to exactly the same size so that the weight of the cake above is supported equally, and level.  The trusty spirit level comes into play here again. 

Talking of the trusty spirit level….a fantastic wedding cake artist recently gave me a very useful tip:  Always check the surface you are working on with your spirit level first, especially if you are stacking the cake on site!  If you’re work surface is not straight, your cake will never be straight.  It’s obvious when you think about it really, but I admit I had never checked before.

Now we are up to 13 hours and we have a basic white iced, stacked wedding cake.  There’s a chance there are some more speedy workers than me, so perhaps an hour or two could be shaved off that?  Some cake makers might also buy in ready-made sponges and cut out the baking bit. 

This particular cake was decorated with tropical sugar flowers which I had made the week before.  Sugar flowers take a long time to make because there are several processes to go through, and at the end of each process we have to allow drying/setting time. Each petal is made separately, allowed to dry, dusted with colour, steamed to set the colour.  Once dry the petals can be assembled into flowers, stems taped, and posies made.  Although I didn’t record the amount of time it took to make these, I would estimate about 8 hours, spread over a few days.  

There are a few other little details that perhaps took another hour in total, like covering the horrid silver cake board with matching sugarpaste, trimming the cake and board with ribbons, etc. 

So the actual production of this cake took 22 hours.  But that isn’t the whole picture.  I will have spent time sourcing and buying the ingredients, sourcing the ribbon and food colourings/petal dusts to get the exact colour the bride wanted, and of course I spent a couple of hours delivering the cake and setting it up.  This was a two-person job too because a four tier cake is very very heavy.  Our new total now is 25 hours, and of course some petrol for the car.

So there we have it, I used my super power to turn sponges into a beautiful elegant wedding cake. 

The big question is how much I should be paid for my superpower?   Even at minimum wage of £7.20 per hour, the labour element on this cake is £180.00.  The ingredients and consumables cost around £85.00. That’s £265 without covering any of my businesses costs. 

My business costs include the following:   petrol for the car; electricity to mix, chill, bake, dishwash, lighting; heating oil to heat my hot water; public liability insurance; specialist tools and equipment; telephone; internet; stationery, printing; marketing, wedding fairs, etc.  So to cover all these things which are difficult to cost exactly per cake, I add a percentage to each cake and call it profit.    A while ago I had a heated debate in a cake forum about why you should add a business profit element to the cake price.  My response was, if you are employed by a company they don’t expect you to pay for their electricity, hot water, insurance etc. from your wages, it is paid for by the company from the profit they make.  This same principle applies to my business. My minimum wage would become even less if I had to deduct all these costs from it too!

Another cake forum debate is whether this superpower is a skill worthy of more than minimum wage?  I think it is.  What do you think?

I hope this has given you an insight into the processes and why wedding cakes are expensive.  It is far more than sugar, flour and eggs!  And hopefully, it will have helped some other cake makers starting out in business to understand the process of costing a wedding cake. 

All in just two years!

Wow, what a lot has changed in two years!  Exactly two years ago today, on the 5^th April 2014 John and Jackie got married.  We’d been friends for years before that, and Jackie had been our daughter's favourite teacher, so they have a special place in our hearts.  When they announced some months beforehand that they were getting married, after a fairytale romance, I enthusiastically offered to make their wedding cake.  My business was in its infancy and I’d never made a wedding cake before.  They eagerly agreed, the deal was done……and yes, I had moments where I deeply regretted making the offer.

The wedding cake is the centrepiece of the Reception.  Everyone will look at it.  Everyone will watch as the Bride and Groom cut it ….. there’s no hiding place.  If the cake is rubbish, everyone will know.  I lost many nights sleep worrying about it and when I did sleep I had all sorts of dreams encompassing just about everything that could go wrong.  John rather helpfully (not) kept reminding me that Mr. Kipling would be on hand if it all went wrong.

But they trusted me and there is no way I would let them down.  So I set about learning as much as I could about how to build a wedding cake, one that would get from my home in Hampshire to the wedding venue in Oxfordshire, in one piece. 

Gosh, when I had finally made the cake I was sooo proud of it!   And I think I had every right to be proud of it.  Now, two years later, I realise it wasn’t quite as smooth as it could have been, and the placement of the flowers could have been better….but on the whole I think I did an amazing job…even if I say so myself.

It did something else for me too, it gave me the impetus to keep going and to make more wedding cakes, and to prepare myself and my business to take more on in the future.  I love making wedding cakes and so I know this is the direction for my business.

In the intervening two years I’ve learned lots of new techniques, some via courses and some by studying at home.  I really wanted to make some wedding cakes that would be different, that would stand out from the crowd.  Although I had attended courses to learn how to make sugar roses and peonies which are by the far the most popular flowers on wedding cakes, I spent months teaching myself how to make tropical sugar flowers (I bought a fantastic book by Alan Dunn to help me). 

I created my ‘tropical sugar flower cake’ as my first entry into the Cake International Competition.  I wrote a post about this last year, you can read here.  This won me a Certificate of Merit from the judges, which I was thrilled with. 

Having well and truly caught the competition bug, I decided to enter the Spring Cake International Competition.  In March this year I created my ‘beach theme’ wedding cake.  I’d bought a course on how to achieve the aged painted wood effect and thought it would be perfect for this cake.  It is a very labour intensive process but the results are worthwhile.  I hope to incorporate the wood effect in other cakes in the future.   I was delighted to earn another Certificate of Merit for this cake too.

But the ‘icing’ on my cake journey so far was winning the Bronze Award for my ‘Rainbow Daisy Cascade’ design, also at this Spring's Cake International competition.  I absolutely loved it because it was so different from the pastel roses, peonies and lace designs we all know and love.  It is vibrant and bold.  At the competition I was able to hear some of the feedback from the public and it was all so positive towards this rainbow cake. 

So it’s been a wonderful two years from making Jackie and John’s cake to winning the Bronze Award.  I thank Jackie and John for allowing me to start with their cake, it was the first and most important step on this exciting journey.  

Where will the journey take me next……silver and gold awards at November's international cake competitons....hopefully….but most of all I look forward to making your wedding cake, making it the centrepiece of your Reception and something you and I can both be proud of.

I already have some exciting wedding projects in the pipeline.  I'm especially looking forward to making Claire's wedding cake in July.  Her 'coral' colour scheme and beautiful barn venue in the same village as mine is very exciting.  

Sonja