Transporting a Wedding Cake

Transporting a wedding cake is a nerve racking experience and not for the faint hearted. We constantly have people come into our shop, some in tears, desperate for us to help.

Being one of the top destinations in the country to get married, people often bring their cakes from home to their Lake District wedding, but my heart goes out to those designated to carrying them up here, on our very difficult and windy roads – something we are used to dealing with.

We had one incident where the Mother and Father of the bride had been given the task of transporting the cake from their home some 100 miles away. On the way they suffered a puncture, and Dad changed the tyre but by now it was making them late. In his frustration he threw the tyre in the boot, where neatly nestled was their daughters wedding cake.

They came in to us to see if there was anything we could do, Dad ashen, Mum in bits. How was she going to tell their daughter? Sadly, it was covered in oil and dirt and way beyond repair.

My Tips for Transporting.

Never put a cake on a car seat. Even if you put a seat belt on it (people do!), it will slide off its boards, and it needs to be kept flat, preferably in the boot.

Don’t wedge it in there with suitcases or cushions; let it move around the boot a little, especially if already stacked, and take everything else out.

Keep it cool, essential in the summer.

Plan your route, sudden stopping and roundabouts can cause more damage than you think.

My best advise is to pay for delivery from your cake supplier. They’re used to doing it and you don’t have the stress.

This week’s Cake

On Valentines Day we made a cake which took hours upon hours to decorate. It had beautiful folds of dark belgian chocolate, each one handmade by us, with two of us working in tandem – one folding the chocolate, the other sticking it to the cake. The couple had requested this particular design as the folds mimic the wave effect on the lake, and each tier was finished with beautiful red roses cushioning the dark chocolate.

A perfect cake for a valentines wedding.

Wet Weddings

This weekend was probably the wettest weekend for a long time. My heart went out to my brides & grooms. One of our weddings was in a marquee in the garden of the bride’s mother. It couldn’t have been more beautiful, set on the banks of the fabulous Lake Windermere, the whole scene was idyllic. If only the sun had shone. But even in the rain the marquee looked fabulous. The family had obviously spent a lot of time choosing what it was to look like, bringing in lots of local touches like name cards made of slate, and little bottles of Damson gin (a local speciality) as wedding favours. I spoke to Mum who was struggling to come to terms with the dreadful weather on what was to be her daughter’s very special day, as far as I was concerned the sun was shining from within. It would be a special day!

One of my assistants said something this week which moved me. She said ‘Some days when I see our cakes finished, I want to shed a tear as they are so beautiful’. I know exactly what she meant, we spend so long designing with our couples a unique and simply stunning wedding cake. They take your breath away and it’s quite sad to see them leave. Judging by the number of cards we receive, I think they must feel the same too

Sexy Cakes and The City

I recently returned from a wonderful trip to New York where I had the pleasure of working with a renowned American cake decorator Elisa Strauss. She designed Charlotte York’s second wedding cake for an episode of Sex and the City.

 

I am always looking for new and exciting techniques and loved her sexy shoe-and-shoebox cake. I emailed Elisa and three weeks later found myself with my partner Steve, on a plane landing in NY to a beautiful sunny day.

 

Imagine my surprise then, on waking up on our first full day to see eight inches of snow on the ground outside. I’m not known for being tall and I can tell you that stepping off a kerb in NY and watching my foot, ankle and half my leg disappear into the slush, was a bit of a shock.

 

On the first day I was to visit Elisa in her studio. Steve had worked out a route for me to walk, crossing Central Park. I just had to walk a few blocks along and Bob’s-your-uncle, I should be there. I wrapped up warm and prepared for my assault across the cold and windswept park. Steve insisted I’d be fine if I kept following the map. What the maps don’t tell you (but the locals did) is they don’t reflect the true roads within the park, and I found myself walking alongside a dam, being passed by joggers, praying I was heading in the right direction. Eventually I popped out on the other side of the park and to my surprise I wasn’t far from 87^th Street. But on approaching the first building looking for number 102, I saw it was 742. Oh my God! How far was I to walk to get to 102? Anyway I kept going, only much faster as I was already late. On the next block it read 100 – must be a mad numbering system. I thought I must be near, another few paces and Ta-da… 104………………. What! Spinning round like something out of The Exorcist, all I could see around me were apartment blocks, where had I gone wrong? But then I spotted Elisa’s famous handbag cake in a basement window. I went down the dark steps hoping I hadn’t stumbled on the wrong side of town and discovered the buzzer for her studio. Phew!

 

As a little foot note: Within half an hour of arriving Steve telephoned the studio to make sure I’d got there. He told me later that as he’d watched me leave the hotel he felt like he was watching me go to my first day at school, and was worried and a little guilty he wasn’t taking me. Aaaaah!

 

Eliza and her team were lovely. I spent two blissful days making a shoe-and-shoebox cake, popping out at lunchtime into a café for a bowl of soup, feeling very much a New Yorker. How quickly we become accustomed to city life. Of course I also did the touristy things expected – Empire State, Grand Central, Statue of Liberty but the most poignant was the September 11^th  Ground Zero Visitor Centre which is full of powerful images. The most heart-rending thing was listening intently to a lady volunteer talking about some of the people who died that day, and pointing to a photo of a handsome young fire-fighter and explaining that he was her son. I could not stop myself sobbing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello world!

Who’d be a cake decorator

It’s stressful, long hours and quite frankly exhausting! I love what I do, I consider myself to be fortunate to do something creative and I get to deal with people who are at their happiest, making fantastic choices for what will be their dream wedding. Cake decorating is an art and takes time, I don’t mass produce which does mean I limit the amount I can do but I’d rather have quality not quantity. I’m known as the ‘cake lady’ and I must admit to having a rather wicked sense of humour, so if you met me be prepared!