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Three tier sponge wedding cake

Published: Updated:

34 Reviews

Total Time
3h 5m
Prep Time
1h 30m
Bake Time
1h 35m
Serves 120
Serves 120
intermediate
A little effort

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.

23 ingredients12 steps

    Method

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. Step 5

      Once the cakes are cool, slice and fill with strawberry jam.

    6. 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.

    7. Step 7

      Lightly brush the outside of the sponge cakes with boiled apricot jam to help the marzipan stick.

    8. 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.

    9. 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.

    10. 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.

    11. 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.

    12. 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

      • 200gButter (unsalted) (softened) 
      • 200gBillington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar 
      • 4Egg(s) (free range) 
      • 1 tspNielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract 
      • 200gAllinson's Self Raising Flour 
      • 350gMarzipan 
      • 350gWhite sugar paste icing 
    • For the 20cm square/23cm (9") round sponge cake

      • 300gButter (unsalted) (softened) 
      • 300gBillington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar 
      • 6Egg(s) (free range) 
      • 1.5 tspNielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract 
      • 300gAllinson's Self Raising Flour 
      • 800gMarzipan 
      • 800gWhite sugar paste icing 
    • For the 25cm square/28cm (11") round sponge cake

      • 400gButter (unsalted) (softened) 
      • 400gBillington's Unrefined Golden Caster Sugar 
      • 8Egg(s) (free range) 
      • 400gAllinson's Self Raising Flour 
      • 2 tspNielsen-Massey Vanilla Extract 
      • 1kgMarzipan 
      • 1kgWhite sugar paste icing 
    • For the cake filling

      • 750gStrawberry jam 
      • 250gApricot Jam 

    Nutritional information per 63g serving

    • Energy 290cal
    • Fat 10g
    • of which Saturates 4.9g
    • Carbohydrates 46g
    • of which Sugars 40g
    • Protein 2.9g
    • Salt 0.13g

    34 Baker Ratings

    How tall will this 3 tier cake be

    Love this?

    Best sponge I’ve ever made! Thank you for sharing this wonder recipe. I’ve made a 6” and a 9”, two tier wedding cake for my daughters wedding. But I just had to make an uniced sponge just to taste it first. Smashing!

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