I have made two other wedding cakes in the six years I have been cake decorating as a hobby. I have made multiple other birthday, baby shower, engagement, bake-off cakes but I have only ever made three wedding cakes. And that is the most I WILL ever make. It's not that the marrying couple were horrible and demanding - they were just the opposite - it IS that the pressure of making that ONE cake that will be their ONLY wedding cake is too much for pressure this little perfectionist. Let me take you on the journey that was the last wedding cake I ever made.

As a person who knows how to decorate cakes I am frequently asked to make cakes for my family and friends to help celebrate their life events. And I am always willing to do that. It is an honour that they trust me with this task. So when my dear friends Mel and Tony asked if I could make their wedding cake. I was honoured, if not cautious, about saying "yes, I will". You see, I have cake rules. Cake rules are explained to every person who asks me to make their cake.

The first rule about cake club is... we can design a cake and agree on everything but on the day - if things are going wrong or if I can not achieve something we agreed upon - I will make changes. You will still have a cake. It may not be the cake we designed together and that's what I call the 'risk discount'. I am not professional - results are not guaranteed.

The second rule of cake club is... you can tell me what you would like and I retain the right to tell you it will look like crap and that I won't do it. This has never really happened but it helps me steer friends towards designs I actually WANT to create and work on rather than horrid designs that offend me.

Once cake rules were explained we progressed on our wedding cake journey together. The first step is cake consultation. The bride and her mother were wonderful and generous with their ideas and my suggestions. I've always loved the simplicity of Faye Cahill's cakes and used hers for some inspiration.The groom sat in the other room, popping in every now and again. His primary request was no flowers. But one or two flowers would surely be ok... The mother of the bride was concerned about the scale of the cake and eager for a forth tier, but we agreed upon a three tier cake (6", 8" and 10").

The venue Vogue Ballroom had Art Deco style decorations on the walls which the bride was keen to incorporate into the design. She also wanted it to have minimal colour. We settled on white and gold, classic and beautiful. She messaged me a number of cake designs that she liked so I could get a sense of what we needed to aim for. For many years now I have been admiring the cakes made by Gateaux Inc a cake decorating company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They not only design and create beautiful cakes, but they invent and produce a lot of custom equipment that results from their cakes sold via Evil Cake Genius. So when the bride said she wanted gold, I knew exactly which gold I wanted to get. Their gold powder is hands down, the best gold powder ever found (and it says so in the description). The bride also selected one of their stencils that would match the venue's Art Deco theme perfectly. So I excitedly purchased both the gold powder and the stencil.

But eventually the doubt crept in... would three tiers be too small? would it be dwarfed by the happy couple? maybe we should have a fourth tier? I've never done a four tier cake. I called the bride to my house for a second consultation. She assured me (not supposed to be the brides job) that three tiers was fine. We even crafted up a mock cake with paper and cake tins so we could see in real life the ACTUAL final size of the cake. Agreed. Three tiers with alternating heights of 6", 4" and 6" - making it an impressive 18" tall.

I then trekked to my regular haunt West's Cake Decorations to buy all the staple ingredients that I needed. As the wedding was planned for 20 January, I had to buy EVERYTHING I may possibly need before the Christmas closures. Did I panic purchase? yes. Do I regret it? no.

The cake was to be both Chocolate mud cake with caramel and white chocolate ganache and also Red Velvet cake with cream cheese filling. Planning on baking the cakes over the Christmas break I was struck down with a horrible flu/virus. The baking was delayed to within two weeks of the wedding. Stress was beginning. Anyone who has successfully cooked a moist (yes, MOIST) cake of any kind will appreciate that a slow bake is preferable. A single cake was taking approximately 3 hours. And due to limited numbers of tin and a small oven in my rental house, I had about 15 hours of baking to fit in on weekends and after work.

Someone couldn't handle the heat in the kitchen

We had agreed to incorporate some large sized sugar flowers in the design. My go to product for sugar flowers is Endless Creations flower modelling gum paste. This stuff roles millimetre thin and dried hard as rocks. They even guarantee that flowers made with this paste will not wilt under humid conditions. However, I still wanted to wait and see what the Melbourne Summer weather would bring us... oh joy. The week leading up to the wedding was going to include a heat wave of 38-42 degrees Celsius and thunderstorms. I sourced as many silica sachets (commonly found in shoe boxes for absorbing moisture) from friends as I could and popped the flowers in a cardboard box. I guess that guarantee is really going to be put to the test.

Even though I had taken off two days from work to make the cake - I found I could only start decorating after 6pm at night when the weather had cooled down. This meant staying up until 1-2am in the morning for about a week. Not great for someone that needs 8+ hours of sleep a night. This is how I coined the term 'cangry' it's when you get angry whilst cake decorating. I have become fiercely cangry during every cake I've ever made. My patient and beautiful partner can substantiate this claim. So it was to be a hot, humid and cangry week.

Sadly the fondant didn't come with the same guarantees as the flower paste, and neither did my ganache. And this is where the real problems started and my cangry muscle flexed. The top tier was failing. I forgot to create a dam for the ganache and once the fondant went on that shit was bulging. To me it looked like the Mt. Everest's of bulges, when I'm sure anyone else it would be a Mt. Kosciuszko at best. The other problem was what is known in the biz as 'elephant's skin' which is a frightful condition for fondant to suffer. And mine was suffering bad! Messages back and fourth with the bride and I was on a panic purchase visit to West's Cake Decorations. Even though the Bakels fondant was giving me grief, and the lovely and helpful shop lady had previously recommended a new product, Renshaw, I decided to keep my faith in Bakels 'cause the wedding was only two days away and now is not the time to start experimenting.

Only, I was experimenting. I had not had time to test the gold powder. I certainly hadn't tested mixing it and airbrushing it onto the cake with a giant stencil. I have only used my Dinkydoodle airbrush a couple of times and only with airbrush colours. I had purchased it with birthday money from Cake Deco a number of years ago and now I was about to attempt mixing a powder and AIRBRUSHING IT ONTO A WEDDING CAKE!!!! Oh my heart. My cangry muscle twitched. I practised spraying onto some paper, all went well. I watched the Evil Cake Genius video tutorial, feelin' good. I watched a few more of their other video's, starting to procrastinate. Focus, I said. It has to be done. And then I went for it. Holding my breath as I tentatively started spraying the cake knowing that if something went wrong it was going to be a long journey to get back to a clean white fondant base. But my worry was in vein. I even dragged my partner away from the Xbox to make him look at my good work and our now shimmery gold kitchen (cause airbrushing without an extractor is messy).

It was now bedtime. I would have to stack the cake in the morning when it was less humid and when I was fresh and focused. I had an efficient plan for the morning. All I had to do was stack, put on the ribbon, put in the flowers, take some photographs and get that bad boy to the venue for 11:30am. But the fates were cruel that day my friend. With the heat the middle tier had actually formed an outer crust of hardened fondant. When I picked it up and placed it in position - as I have done every other time - it cracked! and not a little, like A LOT! If people lived on the fondant some of them would have fallen into the newly formed crevice. I started hyperventilating. I had to deliver the cake in 3 hours. I panicked. I wanted to throw up. I didn't know what to do. My cangry muscle became overactive. I wished I had practised meditation. I spoke with the groom - who spent more time reassuring me that the everything would be fine and insisting that I needed to relax like him and walk around in my jocks and listen to some music. Isn't he the one that is supposed to be nervous?! It's his wedding day. I resolved to place a third layer of fresh fondant on the tier and pray to the cake gods that it didn't bulge or air bubble or crack or elephant skin. It didn't do any of those things. It behaved like a nice piece of fondant should and I put on the top tier. With the fresh and soft fondant I resolved to finish decorating the cake at the venue. I would skip the 'studio' photos.

At 11am I started packing the car. I packed EVERYTHING! Everything I could conceivably need to finish or fix the cake when I arrived, including 2kgs of fondant and a rolling pin... just in case. The drive there was fraught. I had the air conditioning going on full blast but the sun was landing directly on the cake. I maintained a speed of 60km or lower much to the vexation of my fellow road users. Just as I was approaching the venue I thought, kindly, that I would pull into the parking lane and cruise along at 30kms until I reached the venue allowing other drivers to go around me. MISTAKE. The moment I pulled into the parking lane I drove through about four bitumen traps (pot holes that you cannot see because they have not cracked the surface.) I snapped my head to view the cake in the rear vision mirror. To my horror the cake was swaying with the stability of a drunken pirate during an ocean storm. The cake was about 5cm from hitting the side of the car and falling over. (note, for technical information, I do not use a centre dowel so the risk of a tier sliding off was very real). But the cake and I, once more, survived.

I walked into the venue. "Hi, I am here to deliver a cake for Tony and Mel's wedding", "There's no wedding today" he replied. 'Don't joke with me, I am on the EDGE' I thought. I also thought 'I can see why the groom liked George, the venue manager'. But then it happened. The venue wasn't ready for me. We had agreed on 11:30am - but the lady I spoke with wasn't there, the message had not been passed on. The team were still laying the floor and the cake table wasn't in position. But George was cool as a cucumber. They arranged for the row of flooring under the cake to be installed while I carried everything in from the car. This team was unflappable (I meanwhile was flapping all over the place). The cake was in, the flowers were finished and put into position. I took my photos and I turned my back on the cake. I left the serving instructions with a team member and I raced home to get ready for my attendance at the wedding ceremony.

Later that evening when we arrived at the venue, we were held for drinks and canapes in the foyer. But was the cake ok? Did it hold up over the day? I chanced myself a sneak peak through the curtains and the cake was there and it looked great. Once the bride and groom entered they ceremoniously cut the cake. I snuck up with the rest of the paparazzi to record a image of the special moment. In all the busyness of the day and the activities, for an instant my eye met with the groom and with the bride, my friends Tony and Mel, the bride mouthed the words 'thank you' and I blew her a return kiss. This is what the pain was for. Making my friends happy on one of the most special days of their life together. They chose me, they trusted me.

Throughout the course of the evening I received many compliments about the cake. How good it looked and how nice it tasted, I was especially pleased to hear from the brides mum that the size was indeed adequate, and we laughed.

Why do I decorate cakes? I won't lie, a big part of it is the glory. The positivity about my efforts is always happily received. But with this is knowing that my friends had a kick-ass wedding cake made by someone who loves them and a cake full of my love, sweat and tears (almost literal). But I won't make another wedding cake. Although I said that about the last two wedding cakes.

The last wedding cake I ever made

Have you ever made a wedding cake?