Pretty Pink Rose Wedding Cake

It's become a tradition at my school, that when you reach Year 10, the whole year puts on a mock wedding.  Now, whenever I mention this to someone, I always get the same reaction. The puzzled look. Why would a school hold a mock wedding? It's strange I know. And I'm not totally sure why we do it. We are a Church of England school and part of our R.E (religious education) GCSE is to do with Christian Weddings and Divorce. It's also ran by the students who took long course R.E (meaning the get a full GCSE in it, as opposed to half). So they organise it and have first pick of the roles. Yes, there's the bride, the groom, ushers, bridesmaid, the whole shoobang really. One of my good friends, Clare, was picked to be the bride and she looked amazing!    

  

Most of my friends ad become involved. One was the photographer, another the hair stylist, one in the band and then two in the bridal party. So I offered to make the wedding cake along with two other friends. Originally I hadn't realised what a big task it was. And our R.E teacher assured me it had been done well in the past so we had to impress. The first mammoth task was to find a recipe and the correct cake tins. It was harder than you think. But with help from teachers and my mums friends we got a 12 inch, a 10 inch, an 8 inch and a 6 inch. The next part was the fun part; Designing the cake! And we weren't short of ideas.

We decided to match the colour scheme of pink and go for sponge as fruit cake was expensive and we were on a budget! We used butter icing for the two chocolate layers and royal icing for the 2 vanilla layers.

For the 12 inch Chocolate layer:

340g (12oz) Margarine, at room temperature
340g (12oz) Caster Sugar
6 eggs
170g (6oz) Self Raising Flour, sifted
70g Cocoa Powder, sifted
3 tsp Baking Powder, sifted
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Preheat the oven to 180^oC/356^oF/ Gas Mark 4. Grease and line the cake tin with greaseproof paper or baking parchment. 

Cream the margarine and caster sugar together in a bowl until light and fluffy.

 Add 2 eggs wit ha heaped tablespoon of the flour. Beat well. For best results use an electric hand whisk. Repeat for all 6 eggs. 

Fold in the remaining flour, the baking powder, the cocoa powder and the vanilla extract using a large metal spoon. When all the ingredients are combined, pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 45-50 minutes.

To make sure it's cooked thoroughly, place a skewer through the middle of the cake and it should come out clean. 

                                     

Leave the cake in it's tin to cool for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack

Repeat these steps for the other 3 tiers, using the following ingredients and cooking times. 

For the 10 inch Vanilla Layer:

280g (10oz) Margarine

280g (10oz) Caster Sugar

5 Eggs

280g (10oz) Self Raising Flour, sifted

2 ½ Baking Powder, sifted

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

35-45 Minutes

For the 8 inch Chocolate Layer: 

225g (8oz) Margarine

225g (8oz) Caster Sugar

4 Eggs

180g (6oz) Self Raising Flour, sifted

45g Cocoa Powder, sifted

2 tsp Baking Powder, sifted

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

25-35 Minutes

For the 6 inch Vanilla Layer

140g (5oz) Margarine

140g (5oz) Caster Sugar

2 Eggs

140g (5oz) Self Raising Flour

1½ tsp Baking Powder

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

20-25 Minutes

For the chocolate layers, they are going to be decorated with butter icing. We made our batches of icing our of 500g of Sieved Icing Sugar and 250g of Margarine. Colour it with pink food colouring. Cover the inch in a thin layer of butter cream to seal any crumbs. Then use the technique I used in Beth's Rose Birthday Cake to create the rose look. For the 8 inch cake, I used 2 8 inch sandwich tine, but if your using 1 big 8 inch tin then cut the cake in half. Sandwich the two halves together with butter cream and repeat the steps for the 12 inch. By this time, you will have had to make more icing. 

When decorating, the vanilla layers are covered in white royal icing. Firstly, cover them in a very thin layer of butter cream. This is so that the royal icing sticks. Roll out some icing to a depth of 4mm. To find out a big to roll out, take a clean ruler and measure the length of the side, top and other side.

Place onto a rolling pin and lift up and onto the cake. Use a cake smoother to create a clean finish. Use a sharp knife to cut vertically down to remove excess icing at the base. Repeat with the cake smoother. 

Use this method for both vanilla cakes.

When stacking the cake layers, you must do this at your venue. To support our cake, we inserted straws into the bottom 3 layers and then placed the layers on top. This did work, but we could see that it started to sink after a few hours. So I would recommend watching this video as to how to stack your cake. 

For extra decoration, I bought this butterfly cutter in a sale at Lakeland and I love it! The butterflies are so cute and were the perfect finishing touch. 

Simply, roll out some icing and cut the butterflies. For an extra finish, I layed them on creased cardboard to bend their wings so they looked more realistic. 

Happy Baking! 

x

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 P.S A picture of me and my friend millie :)