When it comes to wedding cakes in Essex, we know exactly what is required to create your dream cake.  With more than 18 years’ experience of making wedding cakes in Essex, we fully understand how important the wedding cake is to the bride and groom.

Our wedding cakes are real show stoppers.  Made to our customers exact wishes, we can create a masterpiece fit for a royal wedding.  Any design, shape, flavour and idea can be achieved, whether the happy couple want a traditional fruit cake with a bride and groom cake topper, to a more elaborate and modern creation that incorporates that bridal party’s colour-scheme. 

Traditions of the Wedding Cake

The tradition of serving cake at a wedding goes back to Roman times and certainly no wedding today would be complete with a wedding cake.

The Romans started baking savoury cakes, made from wheat and salt, which would be part-eaten by the groom during the ceremony.  The rest of the cake would be broken over his bride’s head to symbolise his dominance in the marriage and also to bring good fortune and long life.

The birthday cake is, quite rightly, the star of any birthday celebration meal and nowadays we look to really capture the personality of the person celebrating the birthday in cake form.  The nature of the cake is usually kept as a surprise for the recipient and great thought has been put into its design.

To ensure that you get the perfect birthday cake the first question you need to ask is how many people the birthday cake needs to feed?  This of course depends on whether you are throwing a huge party for a 21^st birthday or are just having a quiet family celebration for a handful of people.

History of the Birthday Cake

Always the highlight of any birthday party, the origins of the birthday cake date back to Ancient Roman times where flat rounds made with flour, nuts, yeast and sweetened honey were served up at special birthday celebrations.  

The ritual spread throughout Europe and in the 15^th Century bakeries in Germany began making one-layer cakes for birthdays and weddings.

It is always a good idea to shop around to compare prices and quality, as the prices vary wildly from shop to shop for what appears to be the same cake. Searching around takes time, effort and in the end costs you money, most cake shops and bakers work to a 10”+8”+6” formula with a 3” depth, make sure you find out what is included in the price.

Everybody knows somebody that makes cakes, and it sounds like a good idea that the time when they suggest to make the cake for you at a “cheaper” cost.

But….buying your cake from a home cake maker there is no guarantee that you will get your cake on the day, and often cost more that if you went to a specialists cake shop like Leigh Cakes or your local bakers, as we are able to buy the ingredients in bulk and have several members of qualified staff making the cake so it does not become a long drawn out process.

It comes round every year Christmas and you are faced with that dilemma, buy or make your own Christmas cake, it would be much more satisfying to bake you own and decorate at, but busy mums and dad's sometimes just don't have the time.

So you are thinking of purchasing your cake from a supermarket?

Most supermarkets do wedding cakes, but there range is limited to a basic range with very little colour options, and are sold to you by staff who do not make cakes and have no experience of cake making and what actually goes into making a cake.

Do you really want to put the most important day of your life in the hands of school leavers?

Having been making cakes for the wholesale sector for the past 15 years and not getting the credit that we deserve for all of those thousands of cakes that we’ve made, thought it about time we did some advertising to the retail market, so the Wedding Guide was duly summoned
(a must have booklet for all brides). 

Did you know that last year 6400 brides registered in Essex to get married and Leigh Cakes produced 1200 Wedding Cakes within Essex

Over the years we have found a wedding fare is a good place to get ideas for designs.

We have found most exhibiters at these Wedding Shows are small specialist shops and the lady that makes cakes at home, and it’s a good opportunity to show of there products, but these shows are not cheap to attended for the cake maker such as ourselves, (see our wedding cakes) on average it cost about £250 per show plus your own publicity material, plus making cakes for the display, transportation, then there is the staff cost.