Here are a few photos of a couple of wedding cakes I have made recently. The first was for some good friends of ours, which made me extremely nervous as we were invited to the wedding and I had fears of the cake tasting horrible or collapsing!

It was really nice to do something a bit different for a change as most cakes tend to be sponge or cupcakes. This was a fruit cake with a thick layer of marzipan, covered in royal icing. Here are 10 things I learned from doing this cake:

1. I am definitely going back to Eastleigh College to have more lessons on royal icing with Eddie Spence.

2. I will never be happy with the finish of any cake – ever!

3. It is very hard to colour gum paste to match the colour of a ribbon, especially if it’s a dark colour.

4. Royal icing is tricky, sticky, frustrating stuff! I must have applied about 20 layers and it still was only a few millimetres thick!

5. Piping straight lines on the side of a cake is enough to turn your hair grey.

6. Getting the lines to cross evenly, even with a template, is very difficult.

7. Wilton gum paste smells weird.

8. If you water down your royal icing too much to cover a cake board it will not set hard.

9. The desk lamp is my friend (you use it to help set the icing – in case you are wondering about the random love of desk lamps!)

10. Doing something that challenges you once in a while is good for you and brings with it a massive sense of achievement.

Despite a few panics, mainly due to my lack of practice at royal icing, I really enjoyed making this cake. The wedding was wonderful, the bride (who made her own dress) looked fabulous and nobody spat the cake out.

The next wedding cake was a cupcake tower with a giant cupcake as the top cutting cake. I love the classic simplicity of this design, which matched the wedding theme of roses.

We used some gold cases for the cupcakes and some were sprinkled with gold edible glitter. The bride and groom chose 3 flavours for the cupcakes – lemon and poppy seed, toffee fudge and vanilla.

The giant cupcake was a chocolate cake and was iced with some rose swirls to match the small cupcakes, with some gold glitter – you can never have enough edible glitter!

Huge congratulations to Kat & Dan and Claire & Nathan – hope you enjoyed your special days.