Timescale For Icing A Wedding Cake

by Anne
(UK)

I'm making my own wedding cake and I was wondering how long before the wedding should I ice my cake – I'm going to use either ready-rolled Royal icing or fondant icing.

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Ask the expert

Answer:

You can ice your cake in advance with both Royal icing and fondant icing, and it would be fine to do this up to two weeks in advance of your big day for the Royal icing and about 5 days in advance for the fondant icing.

Royal icing is will set much harder (rock hard) whereas fondant icing will look similar, but not be quite so hard. It feels soft to bite into to, but Royal icing is quite hard. Fondant icing tends to be far more versatile as you can use for decorations too and it will remain slightly soft. The cake should be stored in a cake box in a cool dark place.

However, if the cake contains perishables (i.e. cream filling), then you should store it in the refrigerator and put the icing on the day before the wedding.

I hope that helps.