ethicalweddings.com

My jaw nearly hit the floor when we saw the price of wedding cakes in the shops. Phil and I quickly decided that we would make our own – not just cheaper, but much easier to make sure the ingredients are ethically sourced… and most importantly of all, it gives us an excuse for lots of practice cakes and cake-tasting sessions!

We plan to make three giant cakes of different flavours. One traditional fruit cake, one properly gooey chocolate cake, and one frosted carrot cake (our particular favourite kind of cake!!) We will use Fairtrade cocoa, sugar and fruit, free range local eggs and locally-grown carrots. Perhaps we can even find local flour and butter – anyone in the Berkshire area know where you can get local flour from??

The recipes need some perfecting, as very large square cakes need to be cooked more slowly than normal size ones, otherwise they burn on the outside and don’t cook in the middle. But we do seem to have got the quantities about right now. We have also discovered that the chocolate cake freezes really well, so we could make it quite far in advance. I now need to try freezing the fruit and carrot cake recipes, and see how they fare! Oh dear more tasting… how will I cope…?

If anyone else is making their own cake, do get in touch if you want our recipes. The cake tin we are using has also proved very useful. It can make square cakes of all different sizes and the sides all come off separately to make it easy to get them out. Very handy.

We’re borrowing a cake stand from friends who got married last year and made their own stand. Now the only conundrum is what to put on top of the cakes to decorate them… little Fairtrade chocolates maybe?