Monday Crafternoons are all about making your DIY project just a little more attainable.  I was a serious DIY bride, with a handyman fiancé so we have a ton of projects under our belt.  Let us know if there are any projects you want us to add to our series in the comments.

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Please keep in mind while you are reading, that I am a tad insane.  If you too are insane, keep reading.

For our own crazy DIY wedding, I decided to make my own cake.  We looked into a couple bakeries, even went to a tasting, but when we were handed that pricing sheet, we about died.  We were going to have around 300 people at our wedding, and a cake to feed 300 ain’t cheap. And I love baking.  So I figured, how hard could it be to just whip up a cake?  So that’s what I did.

(Thank you Katelyn James for all the images!)

Fast forward a couple years and my best friend is getting married! She asked me to make her cake, and without hesitating I of course agreed.  Then I started to panic a little, I can bake a cake, but I am by no means a baker.  It was one thing when it was my own wedding, but now it’s someone else’s.. What if I messed up!? Luckily, Caitlin is the most easy going person ever and I knew she would be fine with whatever I was able to put together.  So we started to brainstorm some ideas.  And if you saw her bridal shower, you know she LOVES sprinkles, so we decided we’d cover the whole cake with them.  I made a few testers to find out what flavor she’d want for a party we threw to have the bridal party all meet each other.  They picked pumpkin, red velvet, and a classic yellow.  And then I went to work.  Keep in mind that this is hugely time consuming on the day before/day of the wedding.  Being a maid of honor and a baker was probably not the best idea.

The project: Wedding Cake

The difficulty level: More time consuming than difficult.

Time needed to complete: We baked the cake 2 days before the wedding and needed at least 6 hours.  Then, about 3 hours the day before the wedding (to ice, stack, and cover with homemade sprinkles), and an hour the day of (to stack the tiers and add the final touches).

Materials needed:  The grocery list from your cake recipes (and icing!), 6″, 8″, and 10″ cake rounds, support (wooden dowels, and cake board)

The Total Cost:  It was just over $100 in groceries for the icing and cake ingredients.  We also bought cake dowels, and ingredients and supplies for the icing.  So all in all it was probably around $150 for everything you’d need.

The Step-by-Step instructions:

• We used these cake recipes (red velvet + icing, yellow + icing, pumpkin and buttercream to cover the full cake).  The pumpkin was the definite favorite!
• 2 days before: I cooked and sealed the cakes (with saran wrap).
• 1 day before: I made the icing, iced the caked (just a crumb coating), and stacked each individual layer.  We put the individual layers in the fridge to set. Then, we added the skewer rods and did a final icing of the layers/added the sprinkle coating.  We left it in the fridge overnight.
• Day of the wedding: We stacked the layers, filled the gaps in between each layer with extra icing and sprinkles, and we were done.

 

Is it worth the DIY?:  If you’re a good friend of the bride and not the maid of honor, it is definitely worth it cost-wise.  Or, if you’re just like I was as a bride and want the “naked cake” look, it’s worth it.  That being said, we know some AMAZING cake artists.  These people create a serious work of art.  This DIY is NOT that.  This is more for people who are thinking, “I know I need a cake, but it’s certainly not a priority, so it’s where I want to cut corners budget-wise”.

 

Let us know how it goes for you!