Our pistachio & raspberry wedding cake

And some home truths on making my your wedding cake from me, mainly to me

The question I was asked most in the run up to our wedding was whether I’d be making our wedding cake. I suppose it is the obvious question to ask a wedding cake maker who’s getting married. 

Having never been one to dream about a hypothetical wedding, the question of if I’d make my cake wasn’t one I’d spent much time with. But when it came to it, it felt silly not to - I know how to do it, I know how to fit it in around everything else, and wow, weddings are expensive - so why would I pay someone else to do something I could? 

I was also excited by the opportunity to do something a bit different - I have quite a signature style, and have found in recent years that couples come to me with just that in mind - and honestly thought this would be the lowest pressure job of all. Because if there’s one wedding cake I’d choose to royally mess up, it would absolutely be my own. 

It was suggested by several fellow cake makers and people who loved me that it would be the last thing I needed in the week before our wedding. Did I listen? Absolutely not. I work two jobs! I am an organised person! This wedding is planned to within an inch of its life (not true, it transpires), there will be nothing for me to do that week! 

Reader, I was wrong, and they were right. 

After a bonkers few weeks at work, I signed off late on the Tuesday night with three full days ahead of me to get wedding ready. In the cold light of a work-free day, our to do list suddenly looked a little longer than I had anticipated, but, I reasoned, there was still plenty of time. I sank into the sofa with a glass of past its best red and looked forward to a relaxed few days. Oh. my. 

Wednesday saw us spend an inordinate amount of time washing and removing the infuriating sticky labels (what do they put in that glue?) from 250 jam jars. Then filling those jars with candles and dried flowers, before running around Sainsbury’s like I was competing in Supermarket Sweep with an inadequate shopping list, improvising the wedding cake ingredient shop while also dealing with a missing champagne delivery (*EMERGENCY*) that threatened total wedding disaster. 

Thursday dawned, bringing with it torrential rain (bad) but also reinforcements in the shape of my Mum (good) and an entirely related dent to the wedding wine supplies (very good). I had my first ever spray tan (risky, I know), we got our nails done, we dealt with a number of last minute annoyances, most of which seemed to cost us £100 to resolve, and at about 9pm, I realised I should probably start thinking about the cake. As the clock struck 1am, I was starting to regret my breezy assertions that I had it covered, and was forcefully reminded of the seven hour drive I once undertook alone, from a wedding in northernmost Wales, to get back to London to bake for a week long book shoot. It had been the last time I vastly overestimated my ability to do it all, and I started to realise a little too late that I had not learnt from that mistake. 

Friday brought more rain, many stressful and wet journeys to collect beer kegs, moving the indecent quantities of wine that had survived the Thursday raid from A to B, transporting the aforementioned stupid little jars to the venue, and opening our flat - which at this point looked like the scene of a devastating natural disaster - to stranded family members who couldn’t get into their Airbnb. I iced our cake in record time, losing a lot of my intricate decoration plans to the cutting room floor, and departed for The Standard where I was staying with my maid of honour the night before the wedding. 

Saturday morning finally brought with it, for me at least, the dose of relaxation I had planned for my time off work. While I was pampered and force fed M&S salad pots to ensure I wasn’t a drunk bride, Chris’s poor stepmum was moving our cakes from the flat to the venue, unknowingly incurring SIX separate tickets for failing to mind read Stoke Newington’s bizarre low emission zone. She’s a hero, but wow, Hackney Council are brutal. 

I decorated the cake half way through the reception with flowers from my bouquet when I realised I’d forgotten all about it. We cut it to an audience of about three people - having unwisely decided the moment to cut it was exactly that that the bar opened - and our caterers put out piles of slices for everyone to graze over during breaks from the dance floor. We sent guests tottering off to the night tube with little takeaway boxes of cake for hungover Sunday breakfasts, one of my few nods to old school wedding tradition. 

All of this is to say. That while it’s lovely to look back on having made my own wedding cake, I would not be in a hurry to do it again. 

So for anyone reading this who’s thinking about it, I shall say only this. If you prove to be more organised than me and build in proper time to make it, then ABSOLUTELY do it. But if, like me, you’re prone to biting off more than you can chew… pay someone else to make it. It’ll still be beautiful and delicious, and you might be a notch less stressed which is, believe me, worth its weight in gold when it comes to your wedding. 

I made three individual sheet cakes for our wedding, in rhubarb, almond & orange blossom; salted chocolate & butterscotch, and raspberry pistachio cream cake. Here’s my recipe for the later, which will always be my favourite cake. Hopefully your experience of baking it is less stressful than mine. 

Raspberry and pistachio sheet cake

Cake

4 eggs, weighed in their shells, at room temperature

Equal weight of unsalted butter, at room temperature

Equal weight of caster sugar

Equal weight of shelled, unsalted pistachios

Zest of 1 lemon or lime

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp fine salt 

Filling

100-150g raspberry curd (find my recipe here) 

75g pistachio paste

150g fresh raspberries 

Buttercream 

200g egg white

400g caster sugar

¼ tsp fine salt

500g unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 tsp vanilla bean paste

Heat your oven to 170C and line a 20x30cm sheet pan or high sided baking tray with baking paper.

Cream the butter and caster sugar until pale, soft and fluffy, then add the eggs once at a time, mixing well after each addition, until they’re all incorporated. Scrape the sides of the bowl and mix again until smooth. 

Blitz the pistachios in a food processor until sandy, then add these to the butter mixture along with the zest, baking powder and salt. Mix again until just combined. 

Spoon into the lined tray, level the surface, then bake in the pre-heated oven for 25-35 minutes until risen, golden and a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool. 

While the cake is cooling, make the raspberry curd. Set aside, covered with cling film to stop a skin forming to cool. 

To make the buttercream, place the egg whites, sugar and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer, then set this over a pan of water. Heat the water until it is simmering, you don’t want to rapidly boil it but you do need a steady steam coming off it. Use a hand whisk to whisk the whites and sugar every now and then, leaving it for periods of time to heat through. After 5 minutes, use clean fingers to check the consistency of the mixture. If you can’t feel any grains of sugar, it’s ready. If you can, give it another few minutes then check again.

Put the bowl back into the stand mixer, then whisk it for 5-10 minutes until it forms pillowly meringue. It doesn’t need to be in stiff peaks but it does need to look like thick white meringue. The bowl should have cooled to just warm by this point too.

Add the butter and vanilla, then whisk again until it becomes smooth and glossy. This takes a while and usually it looks awful and split before it forms a smooth buttercream, so don’t panic!  Transfer the buttercream to a piping bag. 

Level the surface of the cake, then carefully slice the sponge in half so you have two layers. 

Wash and dry the tin, then line it with cling film leaving plenty of overhang. Place one of the sponge halves into the tin, then pipe a boarder of buttercream round the edge. Spoon the raspberry curd inside, taking care not to overfill it. Next, drizzle or dollop over the pistachio paste. Finally, pipe lines of buttercream over the curd, dot the raspberries in between, and carefully layer the second piece of sponge on top. Cover up with the overhanging cling film, and place in the fridge for 2-3 hours to allow the buttercream to set film.

When you’re ready to ice the cake, take it out the fridge, unwrap the cling film, and carefully turn the cake onto a board. Lift off the tray and remove all the cling film wrapping. 

Use a palette knife to spread the remaining buttercream round the sides and top. I tend to do a thin crumb coat layer first, chill this, and then finish with a final layer. 

Decorate however you like, with piping, raspberries and flowers.