I was showing a patron where to find the books on birthday cakes when I spotted an useful looking title – Wedding Cakes You Can Make by Dede Wilson.

I took it home and read it that evening. The first half of the book, entitled Everything You Need to Know about Making a Wedding Cake, contains all sorts of useful information – equipment needed, how many people a particular sized cake serves, how much batter is needed to fill each size pan, ingredient tips, cooking tips, how to assemble your cake, how to support tiers of cake, how much filling and icing you need, how to ice the cake, how to transport it and how to cut it. This section really lived to its title with very clear, comprehensive instructions and handy charts and easy-to-refer-to coloured blocks of text.

The second half of the book contains the recipes. Whilst traditionally New Zealand wedding cakes have been similar to Christmas cakes i.e. fruit cakes with royal icing, American wedding cakes are obvious;y very different. There is not a single fruit cake recipes and most of the cakes are iced with buttercream. Instead these wedding cakes are made up of several tiers of cake with each tier consisting of 4 cake halves layered with a filling of some sort. They sound delicious – Lemon Blackberry cake, Marzipan and Orange Essensia cake, Hazelnut Praline and Apricot cake, Brown Sugar, Pecan and Peaches cake . . .  Unfortunately none of the recipes were egg-free and even the buttercream contained some egg white.

I gave the book to the happy couple to look at for some design ideas and, of course, they liked the most difficult cake in the book that has white chocolate plastic roses on it.

Chocolate-Covered Cherry Cake from Wedding Cakes You can Make

I won’t use Dede’s cake or icing recipes since they contain egg, instead I will use an eggless chocolate recipe  and use white chocolate ganache for the filling and the icing. The good thing about the chocolate roses is that they can be made in advance so I will have plenty of time to practise making them. Today I ordered some of the essential equipment – 2 icing spatulas, a rose petal/leaf cutter and a leaf veiner. I am also watching an auction for a Lazy Susan which will hopefully work out cheaper than the cake decorating turntables that are available.