My cake bakery friend had to deliver two wedding cakes. She put both in the car for the early Saturday morning delivery. Having delivered one successfully she thought she had better check that the other was still fine before she started on her half hour journey to the wedding venue. To her horror the bottom tier (it was a stacked cake) had completely cracked despite having rods through the whole cake and was allowing the upper tiers to force the bottom apart. She put this down to extremely hot weather, it had never happened before. But what to do? The wedding was in a couple of hours. Fortunately she had some dummy cakes at her shop and rushed back to cover these - calling in an emergency member of staff to help so at least the photos would look ok. The damaged cake had to be given to the caterers just to cut up without anyone seeing the disaster. The bride was told - do not try to cut the bottom tier - it is false! Good for her for having some dummy cakes of the right size at her shop as well as spare fondant icing of the right colour. If she had to go shopping for the spare equipment in order to effect the repairs she would not have had time. So a lesson for us all. Ask yourself - what would I need to do - if the worse happened and am I prepared for a disaster in any event. It is not being negative - just prepared!

I actually have a spare wedding cake in the freezer at all times. It's frosted with plain white buttercream so if there were an emergency I could put something together to be similar if not exact to their order.