My DIY Cake: The Baking

So you want to make your own wedding cake. Congratulations! Good for you, being all brave and unconventional. But where to start? My search for an instruction manual lead me to this detailed article from Epicurious. It has all the recipes you need to make a white cake filled with lemon curd and fresh raspberries, along with videos and step-by-step instructions for assembly and decoration.

I highly recommend the Wilton website for ideas, recipes and decorating guides. They can help you decide how much cake you'll need for your guests and have detailed baking guides for different sizes of pans. You'll also find istructions for storing, transporting and assembling your cake (ever wanted a wedding cake with a fountain and stairways? This is the website for you!) They also have a discussion board if you're really stuck!


Anna Olson's latest book Back to Baking has a detailed recipe with great photos to help you make a 2 tier lemon cake with lemon curd, lemon buttercream and fondant.

And finally, you can't ask a culinary question (especially about weddings) without getting an answer from Martha Stewart. Her Baking Handbook has instructions for the over-achievers among us to make a 3 tier mocha pistchio wedding cake with pastry cream and buttercream.

On to recipes! I love the idea of this strawberry cake with cream cheese icing, but worry about whether the icing will hold at room temperature (or near a sunny window) for hours. It would be great at a bridal shower though! hint, hint :)

J and I narrowed down all the flavour possibilities to a vanilla cake iced with vanilla buttercream and a strawberry filling. And then I narrowed down all the vanilla cake recipes to three for testing. The candidates are Michael Smith's double vanilla cake, a 1-2-3-4 cake from an awesome food blogger and the rich vanilla cake from Anna Olson's Back to Baking.


Since I already had the ingredients, I used a rainy Sunday afternoon to make Michael Smith's vanilla cake. The ridiculous amount of vanilla in this recipe was overpowering and the texture was too dense and a bit dry. Luckily this cake is the perfect excuse to make a chocolate fondue!

Next up was Smitten Kitchen's version of a 1-2-3-4 cake. Making this cake was so simple and the finished result was a moist and tender cake with a rich buttery flavour.

Last but not least, I made Anna Olson's rich vanilla cake. The use of cake flour and buttermilk made this cake light and very moist with a very pronounced vanillla taste.

The recipe search ultimately came down to either the 1-2-3-4 cake or the rich vanilla cake. The rich vanilla cake has a more delicate texture that worries me for assembly and transportation. I think the subtle flavour of the 1-2-3-4 cake will complement a buttercream icing and strawberry filling. The fact it has such a simple recipe using everyday ingredients is a bonus!