What Goes into Designing a Luxury cake?

You may view a cake as simply flour, sugar and eggs but you’d be wrong – very wrong! We work with some fabulous cake designers but Nicola from Hall of Cakes is certainly one of our favourites.  They designed and made two show stopping designs for one of our recent clients, so we invited Nicola to talk to us about the design process, over to you Nicola –

At Hall of Cakes we only do bespoke. We work with our clients – and Planners – to design an edible centerpiece that encompasses the client’s overall vision. Once we have a feel for how big the client wants to go (the bigger the better right?!) then we can get to work.

What a pleasure it was to work with Melanie and the Cranberry Blue team for the wedding of Esme and Adam recently. Of course we can deliver two enormous cakes to Scotland.. not a problem at all!!!

So, two cakes. The first, for the welcome party and this was to be a vintage circus extravaganza. The first thing to establish was the size, and Esme confirmed that she wanted it to be a real focal point – and at least 6 tiers. We spent a considerably amount of time with Esme and Melanie looking through images of circus themed cakes and Esme highlighted details that she liked. However, when our creative ideas really got going was when we saw the invitations. The red, the gold, the curtains, the black and white vintage images.

As you can see, we took the main features from the invitations – the curtains, and the black and white images and transported them into the cake. We wanted the ‘Baker and Brown’ (or B&B) and the curtains to be the central focal point and we were delighted that this did indeed take centre stage within the cake. The carousel was the hardest part by far! Esme and Adam were delighted with the finished cake – as we were.

Photography – Matt Porteous
Stationery design – Intricate Creations

Photography – Hall of Cakes

Once we had established the design for the circus cake, our main focus turned to the wedding cake. Esme wanted the wedding cake to be huge – a grand focal point combining various design elements.

Esme loved the idea of using a vertical paper fold effect along with a lot of sugar flowers.  She also wanted to include the pale sage green from the charger plates, a hint of gold, possibly some butterflies and she was keen to explore the idea of bringing in a castle element to the design.

The design that we came up with featured all of these elements  and I was absolutely delighted when both Melanie and Esme confirmed that they loved the first sketch.  We included castle wall at the base of the cake and also topped the cake with a stone effect vase.  The detail from the charger plates was a key feature and we transported this onto alternating tiers.  The paper fold effect worked beautifully, it was so much work but we were so pleased with the overall finish.

We worked closely with the florist – Amie Bone to ensure that we knew of ALL of the fresh flowers that were to be included in the reception marquee.  We worked for months to recreate them in sugar to what you will see is a beautiful cascade that falls from the top to the bottom of the cake.

If you look closely, you will also see some handcrafted sugar butterflies too!

Sanshine Photography (left hand image and centre; right hand image – Matt Porteous Photography)

It was an absolute pleasure to work with Melanie and we just can’t wait for the next Cranberry Blue adventure!