A first-timer's guide to making a wedding cake - ABC Everyday (2024)

Making a wedding cake isn't for everyone, but if you love baking and the people you're making it for, that's an excellent place to start.

A homemade wedding cake is "a nice way to show someone you love them," says Natasha Banks, a work mate who made a three-tier wedding cake for her sister last year. It can also double as a wedding gift and be a lot cheaper than a professionally-made cake.

Tash became a bit of a cake coach after I offered to make my brother's wedding cake in March, as did Le Tran, a friend and self-taught baker who was only an Instagram DM away.

"I know how nerve-racking it can be making a big cake for the first time," says Le, who's busy making wedding and occasion cakes most weekends.

Here are three things worth knowing before you attempt a wedding cake at home — from the best way to prep, to the inexpensive item that keeps big cakes from collapsing.

Bake and freeze cake layers in advance

Step number one: make some room in your freezer so you can get your baking done early.

"I would always recommend a practice run as things can go wrong and you don't want to be stuck at the last minute," says Le, who leaves the day before a wedding for decoration.

She says dense cakes, like chocolate mud, are the sturdiest if you're going to be stacking them for a cake with multiple tiers.

"It was all done in advance," says Tash of her eight-layer cake. "I made the layers and froze them individually in freezer bags."

She also made her frosting (Swiss meringue buttercream) ahead of time, transporting everything to the venue in an esky for assembly.

I started baking my cake three weeks before the wedding, spreading it over weekends and after work, which kept it both fun and manageable. That left the days before the wedding for making icing and the night before for cake assembly.

Not sure how much cake you'll need? Deb Perleman's wedding cake guide outlines the "party cut" — where you serve small rectangular segments of cake rather than larger triangular slices.

I offered to bake as much cake as I thought I could comfortably make and move, knowing that not everyone would eat it.

Use support dowels for cakes with multiple tiers

Found at specialty cake supply shops, dowels are plastic or timber straws that get pushed into the middle of a layer cake, helping to keep it all together.

They're especially important if you're stacking one cake on top of another — they provide structural support, stopping your top cake from sinking into lower ones (disaster!).

While they sounded a bit finicky, I decided to use them on both Le and Tash's recommendation.

I'm extremely glad they did. Dowels are what saved me when I lost grip of the top cake the night before the wedding. They meant the cake layers didn't fly apart, hilariously making the cake easier to catch.

"Depending on the number of tiers, I would use support dowels for each [cake] tier and one big one in the middle if I'm making a three-tier cake," Le advises.

"That said anything can happen in transit, so I would try to bring supplies to fix the cake if need be."

I went with three dowels in the middle of each cake, arranged in a triangle shape, and the total cost was under $10.

It doesn't have to look like a 'wedding' cake

With weddings getting smaller due to coronavirus restrictions, you might not even need a big, showy cake to feed a crowd.

I baked a lemon yoghurt cake for a five-person wedding in May, with a simple crème fraîche icing and lots of edible flowers thrown on top.

Whether there are two guests or many more, there are plenty of ways to bake a wedding cake. You could make one beautiful cake for photos and cutting and then a bunch of simpler ones for serving.

When I finished installing my brother's wedding cake back in March (when big gatherings were still allowed), I was elated. Sure, it had a slight lean to it, but I'd pulled it off and shown up for him and his fiancée in a big way.

Final advice before you get going? Both Tash and Le say practice makes perfect.

"Since I'm self-taught, I learnt so many things the hard way," says Le.

"Some things I thought would be easy turned out to be much harder than I thought, which would completely stress me out."

"Sometimes the best way to learn is through trial and error, so definitely practise!"