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new classic wedding cake + how to

In the months before my wedding, I periodically suggested I might like to make our wedding cake (because most giant wedding cakes are terrible) and was swiftly shot down by everyone who heard it. “You’re crazy.” “It’s too much work.” “Do you want to spend your Special Day covered in frosting?” And so I relented and our wedding cake tasted like processed awfulness and it bothered me so much that I volunteered to make the wedding cake for friends a few years later, in 2008. At the end of this fun but exhausting endeavor, I declared the accounting of terrible and wonderful wedding cakes in the universe to be infinitesimally more in balance and making wedding cakes to be “completely out of my system.” That lasted about nine years, when one of my oldest and favorite-est friends got married in 2018. However, I waited completely until the last minute to start it and while we loved it in the end, the absolutely-my-fault stress/chaos of the project definitely set the clock back on me making another wedding cake for at least another nine years. But a mere year and a half later, another fabulous friend got engaged to another wonderful guy and that brings us up to a couple weeks ago: wedding cake three. Three wedding cakes in, I’ve learned a lot of stuff that doesn’t fall in your usual wedding cake baking guide and since I’m definitely never making another wedding cake (“I mean it this time!” I say with such thin resolve it’s clear even I don’t buy it anymore), I think we should start here.

How to | Cake Details | Recipes | Buttercream Flower Garden

How to really make a wedding cake

1. First, a reality check. Here’s the thing: Baking a delicious cake for people you love is not hard; it’s very doable and lovely and even feels good. Baking a cake to feed an entire wedding reception is a whole other thing. It is a logistical challenge that few home kitchens have been designed to accommodate, let alone city kitchens with a single counter, small oven and fridge. As soon as the headcount is over 80 people, you’re likely looking at a tier that’s 14 inches, which is larger than small city ovens can fit, and the absolute outer limit of the Whirlpool masterpiece my building has graced my kitchen with. Each layer of a 12-inch cake may fill a 5-quart KitchenAid bowl, so you’ll make each as a separate cake recipe. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Things happen that if you were a baker at a bakery who did this all day, would be a small inconvenience but at home can be utterly derailing. I curdled a dozen-egg batch of custard on my second wedding cake (and yes, of course I didn’t have a dozen eggs to spare). On this third one, I realized the cake was shrinking more than I’d expected at larger sizes (don’t worry, I’ve since fixed the recipe), meaning that once trimmed my 12-inch tier was more like 10-inch and… woefully short on servings, leading to a bonus day of baking 14-inch layers and just so many (fine, three) gray hairs. Ovens break, stand mixers break — it’s all happened to me. There hasn’t been a single Wedding Cake Week in which I haven’t fallen behind in every other area of my life.

This doesn’t mean I regret any of them. There are lots of reasons to do it anyway: To see the shock and surprise and delight on people’s faces when they bite into a cake that actually tastes like a dream. Because (once your kitchen has recovered) you’ll admit that it’s more fun than buying a place setting of china. Because you’re only going to do it once and then it will be out of your system — just like me (wink).

Since I have failed to dissuade you…

2. Figure out your cake sizes. How many guests will the cake need to serve? Does the couple want to take the top tier home for their anniversary cake? Sort these first. Take a look at cake serving guides online (Wilton has some good ones). You’ll see terms like Wedding Cut and Party Cut and be perplexed, so let me break it down for you. Regular layer cakes (“party cakes”) are shorter, usually 3 inches tall with frosting and filling. Imagine the grid/cutting guide from the top of the cake, looking down. A 2-inch by 2-inch slice — aka “party cut” — is generous. A wedding cake tier or is usually much taller, often 4″ to 4.5″” (but seriously, 4″ is really perfect and 5″ won’t fit on a lot of dessert plates). When cut into 1″ by 2″ slices (“wedding cut”), it’s not ungenerous; it’s, in fact, perfect. So, you get a lot more servings per cake.

Two really key things, though: One, don’t assume anyone cutting the cake knows how wedding cakes are supposed to be cut, no matter how many weddings have been hosted there. Print a guide out and bring it, explain it, and save yourself a lot of mental distress because the alternative is that slices come out too big, nobody finishes them, and then there’s not enough cake, adding insult to injury. Second, account for error. If you’re doweling the cake so it can be stacked, each of those dowels will cost you a slice or so. You want to plan for 20 extra slices, to play it safe. Besides, your cake will be amazing and people will want seconds.

I know you already know to do this (don’t you?) but please, make sure your oven can fit the pan size you want to use. If your wedding requires a 16-inch cake, it’s simply not going to come out of most home kitchens.

3. Settle on flavors. The first wedding cake I made was half chocolate with chocolate filling and half vanilla cake with mango curd filling and I made enough that each guest could try both. The second cake was a german chocolate cake. And here, my friends said they like salted caramel, brown butter, and vanilla. Figure out how you want to execute them — what kind of cake layers, what kind of filling, and frosting will best exhibit the flavors the couple loves. Nominate some recipes to audition.

first test cake first test cake

4. Make a test cake. I usually use a 6-inch round cake to create a test cake but I make it in full, with however many layers and whatever kind of frosting the final wedding cake will have. Do as many test cakes as needed; there is absolutely no hedging on this. You must see and taste how it comes together. You must see if the layers plus the filling and frosting make the height you’d like the tiers to be. You want to see if the cakes shrink in the oven and how much; perhaps you’ll need larger ones. Smooth out your processes. Talk to friends who are good bakers, or make new ones. They may be able to offer you invaluable advice. (More on this later.) Get the proportions, flavors, and size right on your small cake, then scale it up for the entire cake size.

5. Create your final recipes. I don’t scale cakes by cups of batter, but by the area of the bottom of the cake. The reason I only use two-dimensional area and not three-dimensional volume is that I want my cake layers to stay the same height even as I change the size of the pan they’re in — i.e. I want each tier to be the same height, even if the cake diameters are different. The way we find area of squares and circles has not changed since grade school (but the calculators on our phones sure makes it easier). A 6-inch round pan has a base area of about 28 inches. A 9-inch has 64. A 12-inch, 113. It’s not perfect math, but I use these as a guide and put double the amount of batter in a 9-inch pan as I do in a 6-inch, and double it again for a 12-inch. Figure out what you’ll need for the cake pans you’ll use.

Don’t worry about ending up with funny numbers as you scale up or down, like 1.33 eggs. You can decide how you want to handle it (i.e. beating an egg and pouring in one-third of the mixture or just adding a single extra yolk) as you go. I’m more concerned about scaling up incorrectly, i.e. if you round the 1.33 eggs down to 1 egg and then multiplying it by 6 for a larger cake, you’d end up with 2 fewer eggs and possible, a different cake.

Fact: Cake math is the best math.

6. Find a schedule that works for you. Know how far in advance you can work based on how long each part of the cake will keep at peak quality. Cake layers, tightly wrapped in a couple layers of plastic, will be good for 1 to 2 weeks (and longer, but hey, fresh is the goal) in the freezer. The salted caramel filling we’re making here is good for two weeks, easily, in the fridge. The custard base for the frosting, easily 4 days. Figure out what order you want to make it in and what you’ll do with the parts until you’ll need them.

Always build in an extra day or two. If you’re on schedule, go take a nap. If you hit a snag you’ll be glad you have a “slush fund” in your schedule. Know what kind of baker you are. Some people go for it — start the morning of the day before the wedding. But I lack that stamina and don’t want to be tired when my focus is needed the most. I prefer to do a little each day; I prefer to be done at least half a day before I deliver it, especially if you’re also a guest at the wedding, wouldn’t it be nice to arrive without buttercream in your hair and a vacant expression in your overtired eyes? Find out who to connect with (i.e. not the bride(s)/groom(s), leave them alone on their wedding day) to deliver the cake and when they can accept it, and schedule your time backwards from there.

first batch of groceries second batch of groceries

7. Buy all the materials and ingredients you need. What kind of materials? A box to transport the cake in (and remember, it should fit the cake board size, not the cake itself). A drum (thicker, more decorative cake board) that it might sit on. I find having several extra plain cake circles helpful when I need to stack the layers without bending their shapes, as well to move the cake layers around. Will your cake require dowels? Kits are inexpensive and easy. Think you’ll need a cake cone or core for a larger layer? (Read more about them here).

This is not the time to skimp on things that will make your life easier. My 12 year-old serrated knife was pretty dull; I bought this new one to easily zip through layers. I needed a whisk that would better reach into the corners of pans for the caramel and custard and bought a small and large of this (it was sold in a set at the time. I have used them almost every day since, and not just for baking.) Pre-cut parchment rounds to line pans are worth every penny (these came in a nice folder, making storing extras neater). I bought a sturdy revolving cake decorating stand after borrowing one for my first wedding cake and am glad I did.

Then, shop for ingredients, either online or locally. I like to buy extra of everything, but not so much that I (ahem) am shamed by my cabinet, finding bags of expired coconut years after the wedding cake that used them. But I also live in a big city with several grocery stores in a few block radius; you do you. Go to the big box stores for reasonably priced butter, eggs, and more, if you have access to them. A few good things to know: A 5-pound bag of flour contains about 17 cups of flour. A 4-pound bag of sugar contains about 9 cups of sugar. A pound of butter is 2 cups; European packs of butter are usually half a pound or 1 cup but sometimes they’re an even 500 grams, which is a tablespoon or two more.

I bought a couple extras this time: a highly concentrated vanilla bean paste that came with glowing recommendations for the frosting (vs. procuring and opening a dozen vanilla beans) and I bought some milk powder, so I could make extra-toasty brown butter. (More on this in a bit.)

People often ask when it’s worth it to use extra-amazing ingredients and when it’s not. Here, I used three different kinds of butter. I found that in the cake layers, I could make browned butter from any basic butter and it was great. For the caramel, I used a salted European-style butter, but I do think basic salted butter probably would have been fine, too. For the frosting, I also used a European-style butter because it’s so butter-forward, the improved flavor is worth the splurge.

one's freezer during a wedding cake week the 10" tier

8. Get to it. Don’t worry; you’ll never question (or let anyone question) why bakery wedding cakes cost so much again.

Let’s talk about this cake

There are 61 one Celebration Cakes on this site and another dozen over my two cookbooks, and yet this is one of my favorite cakes I have ever made. To understand what makes this one amazing, it helps to consider what makes classic wedding cakes mediocre. Classic, very traditional wedding cakes are white cakes (you know, because white = “purity” aiee), and white cakes are often made with egg whites only, which yields a lightweight but somewhat sturdy/firm cake that is very easy to work with while maybe not tasting as wonderful as your favorite golden-hued birthday cake. Fillings can be more “interesting” along the lines of lemon curd or raspberry puree, but the frosting usually goes back to a pure white color, and for this Swiss or Italian meringue buttercream are the standards. They’re buttery, not very sweet, and pipe like a dream. They’re not, however, terribly exciting. The best case scenario for any of these elements would be top-notch ingredients but it’s unlikely that bakeries cranking out loads of wedding cakes are able to do it with a, say, Kerrygold budget.

This cake takes each of these classic elements and betters them, turning what could be basic into layers upon layers of nuanced flavors.

perfect brown butteradding the very brown butterdry ingredients + brown butterthe final batterready to bakea 9-inch brown butter cake layer

Cake layers: Each tier (although these were not stacked) is three layers of tender vanilla cake fragrant with brown butter. Brown butter is created by melting butter and continuing to cook it until any water content evaporates and the remaining liquid separates into butterfat and milk solids. The milk solids toast and become nutty and fragrant. Still, it’s a mild flavor and can be hard to get it to “show up” in a cake. To amplify it, I employed a technique in which you add additional milk solids in the form of powdered milk to the melted butter. Here, I added 1 tablespoon milk powder to each 1/2 cup of butter.

Because these cake layers are on the plush, fluffy side, I reverse-creamed them on the advice of Erin Clarkson, the talented baker behind Cloudy Kitchen. You can read more about reverse creaming here, but in short, it leads to flatter tops and a more even, plush crumb, making it more desirable for big layer cake projects.

I baked these cake layers at 325 degrees F (versus the usual 350F), which led to flatter tops, less shrinking in the pan, and a more even golden color all over.

whisk the mostly melted sugarsalted butter caramel

Filling: I think that a real, proper salted butter caramel sauce is a revelation to taste, and I wanted nothing short of this stop-you-in-your tracks deliciousness for the filing here. I aimed for a caramel that that was softer than a caramel candy (which, of course, would be a bit chewy) but firmer than a sauce (which would be runny and difficult to contain). I found that my go-to salted butter caramel sauce cook to about 145 degrees F did the trick perfectly. From the fridge in a bowl, it’s hard to scoop. Warmed up to room temperature, once it’s spread thin, it stays in place when the cake is slices but begins to trickle down the cake sides a couple minutes later, which I considered ideal.

Clarkson suggested that to keep the caramel from soaking into the cake, or even trying, I coat each cake with a thin layer of the frosting. I also piped a “dam” around — a ring of frosting that would ensure that the caramel wouldn’t trickle out the sides at any point. I got both cold enough that they were solid before filling the top with caramel.

I love sea salt flakes in caramel, but I find they don’t disperse reliably throughout the caramel and I didn’t want some slices to be very salty and some not salty enough. To avoid this, I used salted butter, which of course fully distributes but has a very subtle saltiness. After spreading the caramel, I sprinkled it evenly with sea salt flakes before putting the next cake layer on top.

sugar, cornstarch, saltready to cookcooking the custardcooled custard basewhipping the custardgerman buttercream

Frosting: Over the years, I’ve made so many delicious frostings but I couldn’t decide which one would be a real show-stopper here, and not just a pretty coating. Clarkson urged me to try a new-to-me frosting, German buttercream. German buttercream, or whipped vanilla custard frosting, is exactly that — a vanilla bean custard that you beat a tremendous amount of butter into. It’s absolutely glorious: not too sweet, fluffy but holds a shape easily, keeps really well with no notable loss in quality over a few days, rewhips like a dream, and tastes so good, it could convert even the biggest frosting skeptic. I ended up using a mash-up of Clarkson’s technique and Stella Park’s recipe on Serious Eats, but using a lot more vanilla bean in it, in the form of vanilla bean paste. (This stuff was wonderful and very concentrated.) I also used vanilla extract. They add different vanilla tones to the frosting and I encourage you to use both for the best flavor.

trim the top of the cake so it's levela thin layer of frostingmake a dam of frosting to hold the caramel insalted butter caramel fillingtrim so that the sides are evencrumb coatsecond coat of frostingsimple cake, finished

Assembly and decoration: Wedding cakes are traditionally stacked with hidden dowels that support the upper layers from falling in. This was deconstructed, with each tier on a separate cake stand (I don’t know the name for this style — the Meghan and Harry?). The bride sent me these two pictures from Pinterest to for inspiration, so I kept the cakes plain and let the florist decorate them with fresh flowers. But I’ve been promising you a tutorial for the buttercream flowers (and my one-bag, one-bowl method for them) them since the last wedding cake I made so I’ve added that below. [If you’re looking for tips along the lines of Layer Cakes 101, see this post.]

new classic wedding cake

Ready to get baking?

New Classic Celebration Cake

  • Servings: 12 to 16
  • Time: 2 hours plus cooling time
  • Source: Smitten Kitchen
  • Print
This a 3-layer 9-inch celebration cake — not a wedding cake tier, which would be taller. (We will get to scaling it up for a wedding at the end.) This is for birthdays and anniversaries and anything else worth celebrating on a smaller scale, like how awesome you are. The cake will be just over 3 inches tall without flowers, and 3.5 inches with them. The cake layers are a generous 3/4 inch tall. The salted caramel makes 1 1/3 cups of sauce but you will only need 1/2 cup per 9-inch layer, so 1 cup total as shown. The frosting yields 6 cups. You’ll need 4 to 4 1/2 cups to coat the top and sides, and for a thin layer around and under the salted caramel as a barrier, leaving you a generous 1 1/2 to 2 cups to decorate. (Don’t need to decorate? Simply make 2/3 of the frosting recipe below.) The German buttercream (whipped vanilla bean custard) frosting is adapted and simplified from Stella Parks (Serious Eats) and Erin Clarkson (Cloudy Kitchen). A more detailed description of each recipe element is above.
    Brown butter cake
  • 1 cup (8 ounces or 225 grams) unsalted butter
  • 2 tablespoons powdered milk
  • 1 3/4 cups (350 grams) granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 3/4 cups (360 grams) all-purpose flour
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 cups (475 ml) buttermilk, well shaken
  • 1 tablespoon (15 ml) vanilla extract
  • Salted butter caramel filling
  • 1 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar
  • 6 tablespoons (3 ounces or 85 grams) salted butter, in 1T slices
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (135 grams) heavy cream, cold is fine
  • Sea salt flakes, for assembly
  • Vanilla bean custard frosting
  • 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (225 grams) granulated sugar
  • 1/3 cup (45 grams) cornstarch
  • 1/4 + 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 3 large eggs, cold is fine
  • 1 1/2 cups milk (355 ml), whole or low-fat, cold is fine
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste or the seeds from 1 large vanilla bean
  • 1 tablespoon (15 ml) vanilla extract
  • 1 1/4 pounds (20 ounces, 2 1/2 cups, or 570 grams) unsalted butter, slightly cooler than room temperature (firm-soft, not mushy)
Make the brown butter cake layers:

Heat oven: To 325 degrees F. Coat 3 9-inch cake pans with nonstick spray and line the bottoms with a fitted circle of parchment paper.

Don’t have three? Don’t fret. I found no noticeable loss in cake quality when baking the layers one after the other, but you will need to divide you batter evenly.

Brown the butter: Melt butter in a deep skillet or wide saucepan (I’ve been using this white coated one, which makes the color change easier to see) over medium/medium-high heat. Once melted, keep cooking the butter, stirring, until faint golden specks of brown appear at the edges and in the pan, then add the powdered milk. It will get lumpy; do your best to smash the lumps, don’t worry, though, we will get rid of any stubborn ones later. Remove from heat as it begins browning; butter will continue to toast in the hot pan. When it reaches a moderately deep brown/hazelnut color, pour into a bowl and let cool to lukewarm or room temperature.

Make the batter: Place sugar, flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in the bowl of a stand mixer and combine with the paddle attachment on low for 30 seconds. Pour in the browned butter (and any sediment in the bowl) and continue to mix on a low-medium speed for 2 minutes. The paddle should beat any remaining brown butter lumps smooth. Scrape the bowl and paddle down, raise the speed to medium, and beat for another minute. With machine running, add buttermilk and mix until combined; scrape down bowl, all the way underneath, where butter-sugar-flour sediment will want to collect, promise. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until thoroughly combined.

Bake the cakes: Divide batter between three cake pans. Bake cake layers for 17 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of each cake comes out batter-free. Rotate your cake pans during the baking time; most oven racks aren’t totally level and we want the layers to be. Let cool in pans for 5 minutes, before flipping out onto a cooling rack, removing the parchment paper, and flipping back onto another. Let cool completely.

Do ahead: If you’re not assembling the cake today, wrap them in 1 to 2 layer of plastic wrap and freeze until needed.

Make the salted butter caramel filling:

Have everything ready (chopped butter, cream) and reach-able because this will go quickly. Pour sugar in a large skillet over medium-high heat and cook, without stirring, until sugar is partially liquefied, about 4 minutes. Whisk until all unmelted sugar disappears into the caramel and nudge the heat down to low. We are going to cook it a little darker, but it will go quickly from here. Cook until the sugar is deep amber, 1 to 2 minutes (you can test this on an instant read thermometer, 305 to 310 degrees but, I find it easier to eyeball — it can burn while you wait for the thermometer to finish climbing). Add butter, 1 tablespoon at a time, whisking until each piece melts before adding the next. Slowly drizzle in cream, whisking the whole time — if done slowly, the sugar should not seize up/re-solidify but even if it does, don’t worry, we will cook the caramel further.

Return heat to a medium-high and cook until caramel reaches 245 degrees F, about another 5 to 7 minutes. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl and cool to room temperature. At room temperature, it will thicken to spreadable fudge consistency. You can speed this along in the fridge.

Do ahead: If you’re not filling the cake today, refrigerate until needed, up to 1 week. It will be almost solid from the fridge. Microwave in 10-second bursts, stirring thoroughly between them, just until caramel softens slightly for spreading. No need to get it hot again, or the butter will want to separate.

Make the vanilla bean custard frosting:

In a medium saucepan, off the heat, combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt with a whisk. Add eggs, one at a time, whisk thoroughly between each addition to make sure no dry ingredients are stuck along the edges. Slowly pour in milk, whisking the whole time, followed by the vanilla bean paste. Bring saucepan to stove and cook over medium heat, whisking the whole time, until mixture begins to bubble. As soon as it does, set a timer for 1 minutes and continue whisking (it will get immediately thick and require some real muscle to do this but I believe in you) the entire time. The custard will take on a yellow color and be very thick. Remove from heat and whisk in vanilla extract. Scrape custard into a small bowl to cool completely, or the bowl of an electric mixer. Press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface to keep a skin from forming. If you’re not finishing the frosting today, refrigerate the custard until needed.

When you’re ready to finish the frosting, scoop custard (cold from fridge is fine) into the bowl of a stand mixer (if it’s not there already) and use the whisk attachment to beat the custard for 2 to 3 minutes at medium-high, until pulverized and a little fluffy. Keeping the machine running, add the softened butter a few tablespoons at a time, whipping it throughly into the custard between each addition. Continue until you’ve used all of the butter and whip for 3 to 4 minutes after that, so the frosting is as fluffy as can be. Finally, run the machine at a lower speed for half a minute, just to make any very large holes smaller.

Do ahead: The custard portion can be refrigerated until needed, up to 4 days. The completely frosting can be refrigerated for 3 days. Take it out a 1 to 2 hours before you need it (bringing it to a cool room temperature) and briefly rewhip it with the whisk attachment before using.

Assemble the cake:

If you cake layers are frozen, you can use them right away — no need to defrost first. If they’re at room temperature but difficult to work with because they’re so soft (this is more an issue with larger cake sizes than 9-inch), you might want to briefly semi-freeze them before getting to work. Cold cakes are easier to trim, frost, and move around.

Assess your three cake layers for how much they match each other in size by stacking them. If the sides are very uneven and will require a lot of trimming to make them stack neatly (we want the sides to be a straight vertical line), do this now. If you have a cake circle, plate, or bowl that’s slightly smaller than the diameter of the cake, using this as a stencil to trim with can make it much neater.

Then, place your first layer on a cake plate. If you have a revolving cake stand, use this too. Use a sharp serrated knife to level the cake — i.e. remove any doming for a perfectly flat top. Brush off any loose crumbs. Coat cake top with a thin layer of the buttercream. Place a big scoop of frosting in a pastry bag, or a sandwich bag with the corner snipped off and pipe a thick ring of frosting around the edges of the cake. Place cake layer in the freezer, just to solidify the frosting. While you’re chilling it, repeat this process on the second cake layer.

If your salted butter caramel filling is at room temperature, you’re good to go. If it’s solid from the fridge, microwave it in 10-second bursts, stirring thoroughly between them, just until caramel softens slightly for spreading. No need to get it hot again, or the butter will want to separate out. You’re looking for a thick fudge-like consistency.

Once the frosting on the first cake layer is chilled solid, spoon (in 1-tablespoon blobs) the salted butter caramel onto the cake top. Use an icing spatula or spoon to nudge it as flat as possible — it’s okay if this never looks even (see my photos for moral support) because it will smooth out as it sits between cake layers. 1/2 cup caramel for each cake layer should provide a perfect height of filling. Sprinkle the surface of the caramel lightly with flaky sea salt.

Place the second cake layer (with a solidified frosting dam) on top and repeat this process. Place the third cake layer (still untrimmed) on top of the second layer of caramel. Press the layers firmly together from the top with your hands. Trim the top flat and even, as you did with the other layers. Your cakes should line up nicely with even sides because you already trimmed their circumference, but if any small amount needs shaving, do it now, being careful not to cut so much that you break the caramel filling dam you piped around the cake.

Cover the top and sides of the cake with a thin layer of frosting — it’s fine if you can see the cake through it. This is called a crumb coat and its goal is to keep the crumbs out of the final frosting. Briefly chill your cake until this frosting is firm to the touch; I use the freezer, as usual.

Cover the top and sides of the cake with a more generous layer of frosting, your final coat. If you’d like to create the sides you see in my photo, congratulations, this is the easiest way on earth to decorate a cake: With your cake on a revolving cake stand, or even a lazy Susan, give the cake a spin and gently press the edge of a small or medium offset spatula or butter knife against the cake and keep it spinning while you draw the knife up the sides.

How to turn this celebration cake into a wedding cake:

As I mentioned in the headnotes, this celebration cake is 3 to 3 1/2 inches tall, which is perfect for a regular party. For a wedding cake tier, you will want it taller, about 4 1/2 inches, before you add any flowers. (See our conversation up top about the size of cake slices.) To turn this 9-inch celebration cake into a 9-inch tier for a wedding cake, multiply every single cake ingredient by 1.5. The layers will be taller, about 1 1/4 inches tall. You will not, however, need to increase the salted caramel filling or the frosting because we’ll have enough leftover frosting that it can cover the extra 1.5″ of height.

So, that’s a 9-inch cake tier. What if you want to make what I did, a 6-inch and 12-inch tier as well? Here we use my cake math. For a 6-inch tier with exactly the same height as the 9-inch tier (4 1/2 inches), you’ll want to halve this scaled up 9-inch recipe. For a 12-inch tier, you’ll want to double the 9-inch. For everything in between and/or over, I’ve described above how I do the math.

one bowl, one bag flowersflowers, ready to freezedecorating the topnew classic wedding cake

How to make a buttercream flower garden

I made my first flower-topped cake in 2018 for that German chocolate wedding cake that was naked cake-style (no frosting on the sides) and needed some prettiness on top. I was inspired by the stunning garden Molly Yeh had piped on top of her rose rose cake earlier that year. Alas, she hadn’t posted a tutorial on how she did it until a couple weeks after the wedding I needed it for (the nerve!), so — for better or worse — I was left to my own devices.

The internet is full of tutorials on how to make absolutely stunning buttercream flowers and more from pastry tips. This isn’t that. This is much sloppier; this is for people who like the look of flowers but also don’t want to work too hard for them. I have a feeling I’ll never convince you that my method is shockingly easy, but I’m telling you, it truly is. Here’s why:

1. Flowers Not Found in Nature: While you might be able to use Ateco Tip #79 to make a Lily of the Valley and Tip #150 to make Carnations, I’m never going to do that. Instead, I watched a few flower-making tutorials (these are wonderful), immediately scrambled them in my brain, and then just used various tips to make bloop and u’s and blobs in cone-d and concentric shapes and found that when surrounded with leaves in leaf colors from leaf-making tips, they’re surprisingly indistinguishable from Flowers Found In Nature, which is great because I’m coincidentally indistinguishable from a person who is going to feel bad if her posies don’t look like posies.

2. The One-Bowl, One-Bag Method: I was about to mix a small bowl of each color I wanted to use and set it up individual bags for each color when I was overwhelmed with a feeling I am extremely familiar with in projects where I’ve bitten off a lot: Must I? Do I haaaaave to? Isn’t there an easier way? And so I tried something else:

– Fit a single, large pastry bag with a coupler. A coupler allows you to switch decorating tips without having to change the bag.
– Put a small amount of frosting in a smallish bowl. The more colors you’ll want to use, the less frosting you’ll need right now. I use a couple tablespoons at a time for this small cake shown here. Arrange the colors you’ll want to use in some sort of chromatic order. Tint this blob of frosting with the first one and put it in the bag.
– Put a tiny schmear of frosting on your flower nail. Place your first square of parchment on top. Pipe a bunch of blops, bops, or swirls into something flower-ish. Carefully pull the paper off the flower nail and put it on your tray.
– Make a few more flowers. Before the frosting in the bag runs out, add another scoop of plain frosting to the bowl and tint it with your next color. Mix it with any frosting left in the bowl from the previous color. Add it to the piping bag.
– Continue to make flowers. Change tips whenever you’re bored of the shape you’ve been using or go back to an earlier one. Add colors as needed. Instead of having distinct colors in each flower, you’ll have blends, ombre-ish. It’s much prettier, in my opinion; a lovely reward for this lazier method.
– When your tray is full, freeze it. If you think you’ll need a second tray of flowers to cover your cake, continue until you have more than you’ll think you’ll need. Very soon, the flowers will be solid and will be very easy to lift from the parchment squares and arranged on the cake.
– Tint some frosting in a leaf-y green. Place a leaf tip on your piping bag. (I’d probably first squeeze out any remaining flower color, since we want the leaves to be clearly leaf-like.) Use the leaf tip to fill in the spaces between the flowers. I have a couple leaf-ish tips and a couple shade of green in the set I have, so I moved between them.

Tools: I have these disposable pastry bags (but would get these compostable ones next time), this AmeriColor gel paste color set (these are particularly floral but there are lots of other color themes to choose from), this set of tips, which is more than I’ll ever need.

More? Shortly, I will put up an Instagram Story of this whole process, which will probably make the frosting and decorating parts simpler. I’ll save it when I’m done, and should Instagram let me (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t) link it here. I’m thinking about going one further with this — an Instagram Live Q&A one day next week where you can ask me anything you want to know about wedding cakes and I, a not-expert but enthusiastic make-do-er, will do my best to answer them. I’ll keep you posted on a date/time for that.

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