How To Make A Wedding Cake At Home | CHELSWEETS

welcome back today i'm sharing a tutorial on how to make a wedding cake so i think a lot of you know by now that i'm planning to make my own wedding cake this summer and i've been making some wedding cakes for my friends to make sure that i feel comfortable with the process and to test out my skills so i'm going to share all of my tips and tricks for making a four tiered wedding cake the tears on this cake are made with 10 inch 8 inch 6 inch and 4 inch cake layers i've cut out some parchment rounds to line the bottom of the pans with and i've sprayed them with some nonstick cooking spray you can see i also have placed a flower nail upside down in each pan and this helps get heat into the center of the layer which helps large cake layers bake more evenly and more quickly so i highly recommend doing this if your flour nail shifts as you're pouring the batter in don't worry about it just re-center it and press it down to make sure that it's all the way flat against the bottom of the pan another great tip for making sure that you get even cake layers is to weigh your pans if they have the same weight of batter then you know that they're going to turn out to be the same height and that is exactly what you're after before you pop your cake layers into the oven it's really great using a kitchen towel to just bang these against your counter to help get any air bubbles out of your layers by hitting them on the counter the air bubbles are going to rise to the surface and that way they won't bake in the layers leaving any pockets of air the bride wanted four different flavors in her wedding cake which included red velvet funfetti chocolate and carrot cake so that first round of layers that were red velvet were made in 10 inch cake pans and these funfetti layers are eight inches across so with eight inch cake layers you don't really need to use a flower nail or any cake pan that's smaller than that but if you're making layers that are bigger than 8 inches i highly recommend using a flower nail so half the battle is just making all of your cake batter and baking your cake layers once you get to that part and your layers have fully cooled run an offset spatula around the sides of the pan to help them easily release as you flip them over this is the point when i like to remove any flower nails that are baked into my layers i then flip them over and use a large serrated knife to level my cake layers so if you want to see a more in-depth tutorial on exactly how i level my cake layers and trim away any caramelization you can click the link in the upper right corner the main gist of it is just keep your elbow in close to your body and to try to keep your knife at the same height as you cut that way you'll just remove the cake top and you'll be left with a perfectly flat and level cake layer i like to do a couple passes after i remove the top just to make sure that everything is perfectly flat and that there aren't any crumbs left over i repeated this process with all my cake layers and this step is absolutely mandatory if you want to build a cake that is perfectly straight and nice and level leveling your cake layers is an absolute must it's going to make the assembly of the cake so much easier and you will thank yourself later as an added bonus you can taste test the layers by eating some of the cake tops or you can save them and give them to the bride which is what i chose to do the next step is to start assembling those tiers so to do this you're going to need a lot of different cake boards so i have here an eight inch a six inch and a four inch cake board that all have holes cut perfectly in the center and as you can see my dowel can easily fit through them so it's going to be a breeze to stack these it's really important that your holes if you choose to cut them yourself are centered or else your tears are going to be lopsided and that is not the look that you're after to provide support inside the cake i like to use bubble tea straws so these are just thick smoothie straws that are made with plastic if you don't want to use these you could totally use wooden dowels as well but i think that these cut a lot more easily and actually provide just as good of support as wooden dowels so i started building my cake on my 12 inch cake board so this is a thick cake drum as you can see it's got about a half an inch of height there and i cut a hole into the center of it so that my center dowel will really stay in place as i transport the cake i also added a thin layer of buttercream underneath this first cake layer and that's a process i'm going to repeat for every tier that bit of buttercream underneath helps keep the cake layer in place so that way it won't slide on the cake board i also added some simple syrup to these cake layers i don't normally add simple syrup to my cakes but since these cake layers are sitting out for a little bit longer than normal the simple syrup is going to help ensure that every bite is super moist no matter how long it takes you to build this cake so it's really a great idea and a common practice for wedding cakes for any of you that don't know what simple syrup is it's just a mixture of equal parts of granulated sugar and water that you bring to a boil until the sugar dissolves and then you let it cool before you add it to your cake layers so to assemble this cake i'm adding a pretty generous layer of buttercream between each cake layer and that's because i want this cake to have a decent amount of height i wanted each tier to be about four inches tall so to do that i have to fill in with a lot of buttercream the bride was also a huge fan of frosting and i didn't want to let her down once i had stacked all my cake layers i began to work on my crumb coat of my cake and a crumb coat is just a thin layer of frosting that you add to a cake once it's assembled to help trap any crumbs that might have gone rogue and prevent them from getting into your second thicker layer of frosting you want to cover the cake completely and once you've done that with your offset spatula you can use a bench scraper to get your sides nice and smooth once you've gotten your crumb coat to where you want it to be and you've smoothed out the top you can pop your cake into the freezer for about 10 minutes to allow the crumb coat to set this part always kind of feels like you're playing musical chairs is where you've crumb coated one cake then you're crumb coating another then it's time to add the second layer of frosting to another and it's kind of maddening the other thing is you need to make sure that you have enough freezer and fridge base for all these tiers it takes up a lot of space so you want to plan ahead for that and be sure that you have room for it so as i was doing these i was swapping them out between the fridge and the freezer and i first worked on a lot of my crumb coats and then i started to work on my second layers of frosting this part wasn't super challenging for me because i stack and assemble cakes all the time but if you're not as comfortable with the process i have an in-depth tutorial with all my tips on stacking a cake and frosting it you can click the link in the upper right corner to learn more about that process and while you may think that the smaller tiers are easier to frost and the bigger tiers are harder i actually find it's the other way around sometimes these really small tiers like this top tier that's made with four inch cake layers was super difficult to frost just because it's so tiny but no matter how you feel just be patient as you're doing this and take your time once i had finished crumb coating all of my tears i started to work on that second thicker layer of frosting so i always like to start by adding frosting to the top of the cake spreading it to the edges and then slowly working my way down but you might have a different preference any style works whatever you feel most comfortable with is what i recommend this is just the method that works best for me another piece of advice is to be very generous with your frosting a lot of people struggle getting smooth sides on their cakes and one of the main reasons that they struggle is because they don't add enough frosting so be generous as you do this and be sure to make loads of frosting i ended up actually using four batches of frosting for this to cut our bubble tea straws to the right height i like to use a ruler to measure the height of the tier and then very carefully mark and cut the straws it's really important that you're precise when you're doing this because if you cut them at an angle or if the straws are different heights it can cause the tear above it to be at an angle or to be a bit lopsided and that's not what you want once all four of my straws were the same height it was time to insert them into the cake so i like to mark where i'm going to insert the straws before i actually put them into the cake and you want these to be evenly spaced and a little bit within where the top tier will go so i like to place them about one inch in from where the edge of the tear will be i eyeballed this here but you could also use your cake pan to mark exactly where you want them to be another trick is to use a straw that's already cut to do the final push into the cake just that way you're not stabbing your fingers into your tier to insert the wooden dowel the main center dowel that's going to support the entire cake i also use my ruler to make sure i got it right in the center next i repeated these steps with my remaining tiers so for my eight inch cake layer i also used four bubble tea straws and then i set to work on adding my second layer to my six inch tier and i noticed that it was a little bit shorter than my other cake layers and this was just because i used four different types of batter and inevitably that's going to happen so if you run into this problem don't worry just coarse correct and use some extra buttercream on top of that tear to get it to the height that you're after i only use three bubble tea straws in that cake layer because it's only supporting this tiny little four inch tier so once all of my tiers were properly supported it was time to assemble the cake so i like to chill my cake layers before i do this because it makes them way easier to handle i also made them a day in advance so that allowed the buttercream to firm up and really crust overnight which makes them so much easier to work with my only bit of advice is if you're going to do this you might want to poke a hole through the top center of your tear or else when that dowel goes through it can push up a lot of the frosting and kind of tear up your cake layer so i'm spreading a bit of buttercream between each tier to help keep everything together and i'm also using my large offset spatula to help me lower the tears on top of one another most of these tears were in the fridge overnight but i popped them into the freezer right before i stacked them so that i could really handle them like this so once all your tears are stacked it's time to cover up any exposed cake boards or any little gaps that might exist between the tiers so i'm just piping a bit of frosting at the base of each tier and then smoothing it using a small offset spatula and my bench scraper just to remove any excess and then comes the final part which actually i think is most stressful which is figuring out how to transport your cake to the venue so i got just a simple moving box from the home depot i think it was literally a dollar but if you planned ahead you could definitely order a square cake box online that was 12 by 12 or whatever your cake base is this one actually was 12 by 16 but it worked like a charm and i was super happy with it so once i taped it together i took an exacto knife and i actually cut the sides so that i could create a flap that would flip down so i cut the long side of my box pulled down that side and then very carefully slid the cake into the box disregard my facial expression here the cake is very heavy so definitely took a lot of effort to get it in there once it was safe and sound i pulled that flap right back up and taped it into place right after this i literally got in an uber xl with the cake dropped it off of the venue and then raced downtown to meet up with the rest of the bridal party i decorated the cake later that night just with some fresh flowers from the bouquets in the wedding and it was truly such a magical night so long story short wedding cakes are a ton of work but they're totally worth it if you have any other questions i might not have covered in this video i have a really detailed blog post on chillsweets.com about making your own wedding cake that i highly recommend reading so thanks so much for watching and hopefully i'll see you guys again soon

Channel: Chelsweets

Views: 4,028,499

Keywords: chelsweets, cake tutorials, wedding cake tutorial, how to make a wedding cake, how to make a wedding cake at home, how to make a wedding cake from scratch, how to make a wedding cake step by step, how to make a wedding cake box, chelsweets wedding cake tutorial, chelsweets wedding cake, making a wedding cake, making a wedding cake at home, simple wedding cake, buttercream wedding cake, 4 tier wedding cake, 4 tiered wedding cake, 4 layer wedding cake, how to make a tiered cake

Id: mCZwFFrvqz4

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2019