I get excited every time I receive an enquiry for a wedding cake – but when Laura slid into my inbox asking for “a cake that didn't look anything like a cake”, it’s fair to say I jumped at the chance to fulfil the brief. Thus, her and James’ modern black wedding cake with touches of concrete and metal was born!
Industrial, textured black wedding cake
Often when you see a black wedding cake, it looks elegant, gothic, and regal. Move over traditional tiers – as the famous song goes, we see your white cake, and we want to paint it black.
Some of my previous black wedding cakes
However gorgeous a black wedding cake is, though, it still looks like a cake: and this isn’t what Laura wanted. She had followed me on instagram for a while and liked my textured designs, specifically any cakes that looked more like a piece of granite than a piece of cake: so that’s what I did! With this in mind, I worked on a deconstructed cake design, consisting of 3 cube-shaped cakes.
The tallest cake had a concrete effect, achieved with one of my favourite mediums to work with, painted chocolate ganache. In addition, I added layered details using painted textured sugarpaste and black rice paper sails. On the other side of the stand, the single tiered black wedding cake was a carved, geometric form coated in yet more delicious, rich Belgian ganache, and then painted a matte black. I then added 23 carat gold leaf to the carved corner, before dry brushing more black on to soften the brightness, and add more of a weathered effect to fit with the industrial vibe.
As well as wanting a black wedding cake that didn’t look like a cake, Laura wanted her flavours to be unusual too. We discussed a variety of options, but since I can pretty much make any flavour combination into a cake, the final choice was up to Laura!
She eventually settled on three divine flavours: Coconut, Passionfruit & Lime (Coconut sponge with Passionfruit Curd and Lime Buttercream), Red Velvet & White Chocolate, and Blueberry, Raspberry & Lychee (Raspberry sponge with raspberry conserve, lychee buttercream and fresh blueberries). I’ve never made anything with lychees before, but they worked perfectly. Blended into a purée which was then folded through the buttercream, they gave a fruity flavour with floral notes that paired perfectly with the fresh blueberries and raspberry sponge.
Bespoke cake display
As you can probably tell, I loved so many things about Laura and James’ black wedding cake designs. But, in particular, I especially loved how they gave me free reign on how to display them! A wedding cake is probably the most expensive cake you’ll ever purchase, so you should get your money’s worth by making it a talking point and feature of the day.
Laura and James definitely wanted to properly show their cake off - something I was only too happy to oblige. We spent ages discussing and sketching back and forth, dreaming their arty, exhibition-inspired display into life. In the end, we created a bespoke display for using some chunky wood and black metal plinths from PROPosal, and a background grid. Ivy Floral Events had created a glorious floral arrangement which we attached to the front, as well as the monochrome cake menu from Silk & Ink Designs. The whole display looked perfect against the flint walls of Oxnead Hall.
The finishing touches
To add depth and dimension to the black wedding cake design, I searched high and low for the perfect dynamic elements to add in. I knew what I wanted, but just had to find them – and was rewarded on a particularly blustery day, when I found the perfect twisty sticks on a walk! I thoroughly cleaned the pieces before spraying them with sugar glaze and edible black colour. This ensured they were both foodsafe and the perfect tone to match my vision.
For the two-tiered black wedding cake, we opted for a fun, semi-floating design. Laura sourced a black metal cutlery pot to work as a cake separator between the two tiers. Plus, the grid design perfectly allowed me to weave in some textured foliage, my precious twisty sticks, and a single ivory ranunculus.
Similarly, the ‘cake stand’ was actually an upside-down geometric bowl to match the cutlery pot. (Laura has the same vision as me when it comes to seeking out items to use in place of something more obvious!) Finally, the single-tiered black wedding cake perched upon an awesome stand from Bramblesky. In fact, I loved it so much that I bought it from Laura after the wedding…so if you want to hire it alongside your wedding cake from me, you can.
Sweet talkin’
As you can tell, I absolutely adored working with Laura and James on their black wedding cakes – but don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what Laura had to say about her experience working with me:
“There are very few things when you are planning a wedding that you trust someone else to do without you signing off on every tiny detail, but from the minute we spoke with Imogen about our vision for our wedding cakes, we knew we were in the right hands. We gave a very brief brief, fired off a few inspo pics and left it in her very capable hands. The cakes that Imogen created for our day were nothing short of incredible. They visually were exactly what I had imagined and they tasted insane! We were so right to put our trust in her and couldn't have asked for a more perfect cake for our day.”
If you’re looking for a black wedding cake, or a design with a textured, industrial, concrete vibe, then I’d love to chat - you can get in touch here.
Photography credits: Matt Dartford Photography & Imogen Davison
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