14" Wedding Cake

speckledhen

Hi All,

Planning on making my sister's wedding cake but I didn't realise that such a large cake was needed!

Has anyone got a good recipe (and tips!) for making a 14" round fruit cake!

phormium

A big cake isn't needed unless she is having a small army at the wedding.

Very little cake is used these days at weddings as it is normally only served late at night with the afters food and usually just from a table with the teas and coffees so basically hardly anyone goes looking for it and people certainly aren't hungry. As well as that fruit cake is possibly the least popular cake flavour at weddings, a 14" cake will serve nearly 200 people alone in wedding size slices if square and about 170 if round. Are there other tiers? With a 14" bottom tier I would expect there to be about 4 more tiers on top?

You definitely don't need a portion for everyone, fine to have lots if you are using it for a next day party or something but even at that I would not make a 14" fruit cake, make one of the smaller tiers fruit if there are more tiers.

speckledhen

Thanks phormium, I agree! She has dummy tiers from another wedding tho and they need the big base. Had tried a few recipes but fruit cake got voted in :-(

phormium

I presume it's round? Lot easier to do a square as you can bake 4 x 7" ones

That's a huge size fruit, very hard to get it properly cooked in middle without sides being overdone, put something like a heating core in centre to distribute heat, a baked bean tin with the end cut off would do.

If you have a usual recipe that you use and a tin to match then fill that tin with water to the usual level of the cake and tip the water into the 14" tin, see how many fills it takes and multiply your recipe by that. If you don't have a recipe you use then the BBC simmer and stir fruit cake is very good, swap the macadamias for almonds.

Unfortunate that the other tiers are dummies, the 14" is the obvious one to have as a dummy as it's just too big and awkward for baking.

speckledhen

Thanks a mill will let u know how I get on ☺

speckledhen

Stupid question! Do u put the open can in the cake. Will this not leave a huge hole in the cake after?

phormium

You put the tin in the middle and put some mix into it too so that when it comes out of oven while there is technically a hole the mini cake that is in the tin will fill the gap, it just conducts the heat into the centre as that is the slowest part to cook. Just be sure there is no edge on the tin, some openers leave a ridge and some chop if off level so you need clean straight sides on tin, line it with a bit of parchment too outside and in.

speckledhen

Cake was successful! Looks good anyway and feels nice and spongey. Put the can in the middle. Tanks for all the tips ☺