Operation Wedding Cake: Phase One

My lovely sister is getting married at the end of October and not only has she given me the honour of being her Chief Bridesmaid, she's also asked me to make their wedding cake.

This has required much thought and a multiphase plan which will culminate in a perfectly designed, beautifully decorated and deliciously tasty cake. I can cook a fantastic fruit cake. I have a tried and tested recipe that was given to me by my Auntie. I've made our family's Christmas cake from it for many years now. It's perfect, I know what size square tin it fills and exactly how long it needs in the oven.

However my sister is having round cakes and each tier is a different size. So before I can make the proper cakes, I need to do a test run to ensure cooking times and cake mix quantities are correct for each size cake. My flatmate didn't realise how much maths went in to baking! I've got the middle and top tier in the oven but I'll need to make another batch of cake mix for the bottom tier.

Phase two will involve icing these cakes, buying myself some lovely flowers, collecting various other bits and pieces and playing around with different ways of tiering the cakes and decorating them. Once a design has been agreed with my sister I'll then move on to phase three: baking the real cakes.

Phase four will be the decoration of the cakes, with phases five and six seeing the cake safely delivered, assembled and enjoyed.

In other news: I didn't get out for my walk today as I think I'm coming down with the something. On top of the pains I had yesterday I now feel like I've been swallowing razor blades and I've lost all sense of taste. Decided it was best to get myself well before the 16 mile walk on Sunday.