Things that can go wrong with a wedding cake

I am sure that anyone and everyone who has ever made a wedding cake will have had either the very hint of a doubt or a full on nightmare about what can possibly go wrong. I thought I would start a list here and keep adding to it from our Facebook page and Instagram feed. Here is a beginning of our soon-to-be-comprehensive list of what can go wrong with a wedding cake:

1) Undercooked – You do not know what lurks inside a cake until you cut it. And you do not cut a wedding cake if you have baked in sandwich layers. Stuff of nightmares.

2) Cake sinks – At the very least you can make another cake if one sinks, so all is not lost. But do you have the time?

3) Cake shrinks – So you were making a nine inch cake, you bought boards and drums for a nine inch cake, you poured the cake batter into a nine inch cake tin and you are staring a an eight inch cake. Welcome to the cake world.

4) Too sweet – You baked with sugar, you saturated with sugar syrup and you slathered on the buttercream. What do you expect?

5) Not sweet enough – Not your fault, the recipe did not call for loadsa sugar, you used ganache instead of buttercream and bingo!

6) Air bubbles under fondant – Real stuff of nightmares. For hours you piped delicate royal icing detail on the sides of your cake, it was beautiful too. You deliver the cake on a warm day and yesterday’s straight cake edge now bulges out. You cannot use a smoother. It’s over.

7) Air bubbles under buttercream – So you thought you would get around problem #6 by using a buttercream finish? Well, you were wrong.

8) Fragile sugar decorations – The thing is, they break. Only this many spares you can make.

9) Wonky cake – We all need a spirit level in our lives.

10) Spelling mistakes – Well, ahem, this blog has tonnes of them, but I do take care that a Groom is never a Goom.

I will stop here at number 10 and open this up on Facebook and Twitter and keep adding to this post. It would be a really interesting exercise to see just what the final number is by the end of this week!

Kate Salewood: 11) The topper the bride to be purchased is significantly wider than the top tier of the cake. Lovely news.

Julia Neale: 12) The topper for the cake that was supposed to be delivered to the venue on the day doesn’t materialise so you have to hastily improvise a floral decoration with the mother of the groom’s corsage and whatever flowers you can lay your hands on.

Gail Stewardson 13) Wedding cancelled  week before!

Caroline Payne: 14) You’re shaking so much from the adrenaline when you finally get the most ornate cake you’ve ever made set up, that you literally smash one of the porcelain-fragile rose into the side of the cake while trying to place it gently on the cake. Thankfully no-one noticed the dent.

Caroline Payne: 15) Husband slams the brakes on on the M1…

Pauline Fairlie: 16) You trip with the cake or it gets damaged on transportation!

Kirsty Hoyle: 17) Having to do an emergency stop at a roundabout with 150 wedding cupcakes in the car was def. my worst one!

The Sugar Boxx 18) dropping a freshly baked cake in silicone mould on the oven door-squashed & depth of the cake reduced by half