
About the bake
Weddings can be expensive business so why not challenge yourself to bake and decorate your own beautiful personalised showstopper. The beauty of this cake is that the sponges can be baked and frozen up to 3 months in advance, simple allow 24 hours to defrost and before adding the marzipan and icing.
Method
Step 1:
Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C Fan, gas mark 4) and grease and line your tins. If you are filling your cakes, you can bake in sandwich tins or slice after baking.
Step 2:
To make the sponge cakes: Place the butter in a large mixing bowl and add the sugar. Beat together, preferably with an electric whisk until the mixture is wonderfully light and fluffy. This can take up to 5-7 minutes, so this stage should not be rushed.
Step 3:
Beat in the vanilla extract and eggs one at a time, with a spoonful of the flour with each one to prevent the mixture from curdling. Fold in the remaining flour with a metal spoon until you have a soft, smooth cake batter. Split the cake batter between two sandwich tins.
Step 4:
Place in the oven and bake the 6" cake for 25 minutes, the 9" cake for 30 minutes and the 11" cake for 40 minutes.
When cakes are cooked they should be pale golden in colour, insert a cake skewer/sharp knife into the centre of the cake, if it comes clean then the cake is baked throughout.When fully baked, remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin and then transfer to a wire cooling rack. If you want to make the cakes in advance – wrap in clingfilm and freeze.
Step 5:
Once the cakes are cool, slice and fill with strawberry jam.
Step 6:
To ice the cakes, pipe a little royal icing in the middle of the cake board to help secure the cakes. Lightly dust the work surface and rolling pin with sifted icing sugar. Roll the marzipan, turning the icing 90 degrees after every roll to get an even thickness. Roll to a thickness of a £1 coin.
Step 7:
Lightly brush the outside of the sponge cakes with boiled apricot jam to help the marzipan stick.
Step 8:
Using the rolling pin, lift the marzipan and ease it over the cake. Use your hands to smooth the marzipan into place, making sure there are no air pockets. Trim away the excess marzipan from the base of the cake using a small knife.
Step 9:
Repeat step 8 with the sugar paste icing placing it over the marzipan layer. Lightly dust your hands with icing sugar and gently run over the cake with your hands to even out any lumps or bumps.
Step 10:
To build the tiers, cut a template the same size as the second layer and sit in the position of the second tier. Mark each corner with a needle. Push a plastic dowel into the cake and mark with a pencil where it comes out of the cake. Lift out of the dowels and trim the dowels about 1-2mm above the mark then stick them back into the cake.
Step 11:
Pipe some royal icing onto the centre of the bottom tier to secure the second tier. Carefully place the second tier onto the bottom one. Mix some icing and pipe a thin line along the bottom edge of each tier. While wet, run a finger over the line to smooth the icing and fill any gap between the two cake layers. A ribbon can also be added here to hide any unevenness that may appear. Repeat the process for the top tier.
Step 12:
Decorate the cake with ribbon, lace or sugar paste flowers to match the wedding theme and colours. Alternatively you could pipe royal icing patterns on to your cake. Cake decoration videos can be found in our 'how to' section of our website.
Ingredients
For the 12cm square/15cm (6") round sponge cake
- 200g Butter (unsalted) (softened)
- 200g Billington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar
- 4 Egg(s) (free range)
- 1 tsp Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract
- 200g Self-raising white flour
- 350g Marzipan
- 350g White sugar paste icing
For the 20cm square/23cm (9") round sponge cake
- 300g Butter (unsalted) (softened)
- 300g Billington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar
- 6 Egg(s) (free range)
- 1.5 tsp Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract
- 300g Self-raising white flour
- 800g Marzipan
- 800g White sugar paste icing
For the 25cm square/28cm (11") round sponge cake
- 400g Butter (unsalted) (softened)
- 400g Billington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar
- 8 Egg(s) (free range)
- 400g Self-raising white flour
- 2 tsp Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract
- 1kg Marzipan
- 1kg White sugar paste icing
For the cake filling
- 750g Strawberry jam
- 250g Apricot Jam
Recipe Reviews
I've just made a 6 inch cake in one tin, recipe gave plenty of volume (made a single 4 plus inch high cake) and took 50 mins at 160 fan, it will be wrapped and frozen ahead of defrosing and decorating. Will be making the 9 inch later in the week but using two tins instead. It will be my go to recipe now for celebration cakes, thank you.
Hello, i want to use butter cream to fill and coat the outside of a 6" round and a 9" round cake, any ideas of what quantity I may need? I've made the cake before very easy to follow and good taste
We would recommend using the buttercream quantities on this recipe as a guide. You may need to double the quantity to cover both of the cakes. Happy Baking!
Good
Very tasty, would use a wider pan next time to avoid uneven cook
I am practacing a three tier wedding cake. Ive tried many sponges, but this is good and produces deep cakes, that cut into two good sized portions per cake
Fantastic recipe so happy with the turn out so moist and soft would l8ve to try this as a chocolate sponge cakes my advise
Ingredients
For the 12cm square/15cm (6") round sponge cake
- 200g Butter (unsalted) (softened)
- 200g Billington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar
- 4 Egg(s) (free range)
- 1 tsp Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract
- 200g Self-raising white flour
- 350g Marzipan
- 350g White sugar paste icing
For the 20cm square/23cm (9") round sponge cake
- 300g Butter (unsalted) (softened)
- 300g Billington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar
- 6 Egg(s) (free range)
- 1.5 tsp Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract
- 300g Self-raising white flour
- 800g Marzipan
- 800g White sugar paste icing
For the 25cm square/28cm (11") round sponge cake
- 400g Butter (unsalted) (softened)
- 400g Billington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar
- 8 Egg(s) (free range)
- 400g Self-raising white flour
- 2 tsp Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract
- 1kg Marzipan
- 1kg White sugar paste icing
For the cake filling
- 750g Strawberry jam
- 250g Apricot Jam