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Yes we are talking all things cheese wedding cakes. This is your essential guide to getting the perfect cheese wedding cake.
When your a big cheese lover, having a wedding cake made of cheese has to be the obvious choice but where do you start? In order to create your cheese wedding cake masterpiece your going to need some top tips from the experts.
We have some fab tips on getting it right from award winning Cheesemonger Andy Swinscoe, so why not wow your guests with this alternative idea!
Essential advice from World Cheese Awards ‘2013 Cheesemonger of The Year’, Andy Swinscoe of the Courtyard Dairy, Settle.
Whether you are looking for a cheese wedding cake for the main meal, a replacement for a classic wedding cake, or simply something to help keep the after dinner drinkers more sober, a stunning cheese wedding cake is definitely in vogue at the moment. Andy Swinscoe of The Courtyard Dairy (recently awarded Cheesemonger of the Year at the 2013 World Cheese Awards, and with plenty of previous experience creating his own unique range of farmhouse cheese wedding cakes and helping to develop John Lewis’s online cheese wedding cakes) can help you ensure that your cheese wedding cake is perfect in every way.
11 Top Tips you need if your having a cheese wedding cake
Related:15 Alternative Wedding Cake Ideas
1. Order extra supplies of the top (smallest) tiers.
Most people buy a cake without realising they’ll be less of the cheeses at the top! As you get higher up the tiers so the cheeses get smaller. That can often mean you’ll get a tiny cheese on the top to split between all your guests. If you want an even selection for everyone to taste, order a few extra of these smaller ‘top-tier cheeses’ to be served once the cake is cut.
2. Make sure you’ve pre-tasted all the cheeses in your cake!
Taste is so important – you want people to be amazed by the cheeses in your cheese wedding cake. Good cheese shops will let you come in and taste the cheeses first. But if you don’t have a great cheese shop close enough, the bet ones will allow you to mail-order a sample box of your selection of cheeses. The Courtyard Dairy regularly sends out sample boxes so that their customers can be sure of the quality and amazing flavours on offer.
3. Size and colour matter too!
The very best cheese wedding cakes will look stunning, as well as taste amazing – and although it’s not all about the size, choose your cheeses so that the layers go up in nice increments, at least 2cm difference in diameter between each layer. Add a bit of colour to the cake for an extra-special effect (you can use cheeses like Sparkenhoe red Leicester or Shropshire Blue, but this can also be done with fruit decorations, see below).
4. Try to balance styles.
A cheese wedding cake shouldn’t contain cheeses that all taste the same and have the same texture! This can be a problem if you simply concentrate on the diameters of cheese rather than the colour, texture and taste. So be careful when you’re choosing. Try to select a range of styles – at least a hard, a soft and a blue – but think about adding a goats’ cheese and a crumbly Lancashire, Cheshire, or Wensleydale too. And it’s worth noting that the harder cheeses will probably be the most popular so you’ll want the biggest quantity of those.
5. Build your own.
The Courtyard Dairy, and most good cheesemongers, will let you book an appointment so you can taste cheeses and create a cheese wedding cake to fit your requirements perfectly, but you may prefer to build your own. If you have a favourite cheese, you could ask your supplier to cut it in flat circles rather than the normal wedges so you can build up tier after tier. If you are thinking of building your own cheese wedding cake, take a look at The Courtyard Dairy’s cheese diameter dimensions web page to help you build the ideal tapering tower!
6. Don’t be afraid of using a soft cheese in the lower layers.
Although a soft cheese will deform under the weight of the cheeses on top, there are a few tips and tricks you can use: cut out a small circle in the centre of the soft cheese and insert an eggcup. The next layer will then rest on this, and you won’t be able to see the eggcup (see attached pictures). If it’s a wide cheese, use three eggcups with a cake plate on top.
7. Add height to your cake.
You can give your cake a bit of extra height in a relatively inexpensive way! Simply use glass tea-light holders in-between each layer – this will add height to the cake and give you space to decorate!
8. Small can be beautiful.
For something quirky or different you could create an individual smaller cheese wedding cake for each separate table. By using two or three small cheeses, for example Tunworth Camembert topped with an individual goats’ cheese such as Dorstone, you can create a cheese table cake your guests will love!
9. Serve your cheese at room temperature.
Cheese tastes so much better at room temperature – so make sure it’s out of the fridge a couple of hours before its cut – not too long though – you don’t want the Brie running down the aisle!
10. How much cheese do you need?
70g-100g of cheese per person is ideal for a normal cheese plate serving. If it’s to constitute a main part of the meal – double that quantity!
11. (The extra one.) Be safe and minimise the worry.
Always order your cheese wedding cake well in advance so you can be sure that the cheese will be perfectly ripe on the day. Make sure you get it delivered a couple of working days before the big day, so that’s one less thing to worry about.
More about The Courtyard Dairy and its Cheese Wedding Cakes
The Courtyard Diary’s Cheese Wedding Cakes are carefully created from a selection of the very best cheeses available in the UK and France. After years working for top cheesemongers in the UK and France, including helping to develop John Lewis’ online cheese wedding cakes, Andy & Kathy set-up The Courtyard Dairy in 2012: a shop and online business featuring what they consider to be the 25 best cheeses available. Sourced from individual farmers who use traditional methods to make their cheeses by hand, all The Courtyard Dairy’s cheeses are selected to have an amazing depth of flavour and be perfectly ripe. For example, The Courtyard Dairy stocks the only unpasteurised, traditional cloth-bound Cheddar made in Yorkshire (Dale End). This attention to detail has not gone unrecognised – in 2013 The Courtyard Diary won best New Cheese Retailer at the British Cheese Awards 2013 and Cheesemonger of the Year and Cheese Counter of the Year at the World Cheese Awards.
