This week I had the honor of making my sister’s wedding cake. A couple months ago when she got engaged, I knew that finances can be stressful and I love making my cakes, so I offered to make her wedding cake. I warned her that I am no professional and I would not be offended at all if she wanted to go another route. But she chose to take me up on the offer!

I’m not gonna lie- this was an extremely humbling experience. I knew that I wasn’t a cake-making pro, and now I REALLY know that I’m not a cake-making pro ;).

Leading up to the big day, there was a lot of prep work. I had to get my state-certified Food Handler’s Permit, because the venue my sister chose would not allow people to bring food without it.

I wanted to find a simple, rustic cake stand, something that would fit the theme of the reception, as well as being something that could be used in future events! I bought more cake boards, cake dowels, and food coloring. I wanted to have all the resources at my disposal to make the best tiered cake that I could.

And then of course, there was the design! I looked at several options with my sister, and in the end she really wanted a simple watercolor look. Her wedding colors were blue and yellow, and she loved the idea of yellow watercolor on her white wedding cake.

The week of the wedding, I made two practice cakes before the actual cake. I planned on doing a cookie butter cake for the bottom tier because my sister LOVES cookie butter, and I wanted to do a pineapple Dole Whip flavor for the top tier, because my brother-in-law loves tropical flavors (he’s from Samoa!). I wanted to do a practice cake to get the watercolor look just right, but also because I was using a different frosting recipe than I’m used to- something without butter because summer weddings and buttercream don’t really mesh ;).

The first round was definitely a practice round haha. The cake didn’t blend the way I wanted it to, and the frosting tasted NASTY. At least to me. My husband thought it was fine, but I’m pretty picky on my frosting and I thought it was disgusting.

The second round I changed up the butter extract (thanks to a recommendation from my sister), and I added way more cream. The flavor was MUCH better. I also was able to achieve more of the watercolor look we were going for. I felt much more confident in how the cake was going to turn out.

I baked all the cakes Tuesday night, so they would be cooled and ready to go for Wednesday- decorating day.

Wednesday ended up being a little crazier than I thought, trying to prep for wedding (getting kid’s clothes ready, painting nails, helping with wedding prep, etc), and I wasn’t able to actually start the decorating until much later that night than I had planned. I realized that I hadn’t even thought about a cake drum, which is a much sturdier version of a cake board, and is basically an essential when making a heavy, tiered cake. I had a moment of panic until I had the brilliance of googling a DIY cake drum- and Google delivered. I taped together 4 cake boards and covered it neatly with foil. It totally did the trick!


Overall, I actually felt really calm while making the cake. I’m usually a basket case when I get too stressed (I struggle with anxiety), but I had asked my family to pray for me and I started my decorating with a prayer, and I absolutely believe I had heavenly help. Not necessarily with the cake, because it was far from perfect and not even my best work, but I felt calm the whole time- even when I knew the cake wouldn’t be the perfect cake I had envisioned. I just felt this peaceful feeling that it would all be fine and rather than stay up late scraping off all the frosting and starting from scratch, I needed to be ok with the final result, even if it wasn’t perfect.


I can see very little flaw in my cake, and as I mentioned before, I was particularly disappointed because I KNOW I can frost better cakes. This is far from my best cake. But man, was it a learning experience! And a humbling one as well. I know I have a LONG way to go to call myself a professional ;).


But at the end of the day- my beautiful sister loved the cake. She was thrilled with how it turned out, and mentioned that her friend had called it “stunning” and asked where she got it. She was shocked to find out that her sister had made it! I received many compliments, and while I’m sure that some of them were just out of kindness, I felt that the cake wasn’t as horrible as I was feeling it was at 1:00 in the morning the day before ;). The flowers definitely helped complete the look!


I’m in no rush to make another wedding cake right now. Definitely not for someone outside of my family. But if a sibling asked me to make a wedding cake, I would happily accept the assignment, and hopefully be able to take what I learned from this experience to make it even better.

At the end of the day- the cakes tasted amazing and my sister and brother-in-law had a beautiful day, and that in my book is the real win!

    Camille Hoffmann
    Monthly Newsletter Contributor since 2014
    Email the author! camille@dvo.com