Cake Question

As far as I can remember a three tier cake of 6, 8 and 10 inch tiers serves 100-120 people.

HTH

Hiya - hope this helps from my experience of making hundreds of wedding cakes.

The standard size slice of fruit cake is a 1 inch square finger (that's if it's a reasonable depth of say 3 - 4 inches), this is what we use for calculating tier sizes etc and what catering people use as a standard when cutting the cakes up. So working on this and for the sake of easy maths a 10 inch square cake will cut into approx 100 portions and I work on round cakes yielding about 75% of a square cake of the same size so I work on about 75 slices from a 10 inch round cake.

If it was me I'd go for a standard 10, 8 and 6 inch round cake - you'll get about 75 from the bottom tier, about 48 from the middle and about 25 from the top. Although you may want to cut larger slices than the standard although bear in mind that it's very rich and most people won't manage more than the normal finger sized piece and may not take a slice at all if it looks too big.

You may find that you still end up with the top tier left uncut and possibly even a lump of the middle left over as the take up on fruit cake is not generally as much as sponges or a mixture of flavours.

HTH
Catherine

Hi Ali,

Hope your well.

Im sure Catherine has answered your question, I don't know the first thing about cake making, but I was going to suggest you look at the product details on the m&s cakes, I remembered they told you how big each tier was an an estimate of how many portions you get from it! I've posted the link anyway, the details are at the bottom of the page.

http://www.marksandspencer.com/gp/product/B0015ZHXX6/ref=dp_bsl0/278-1123146-0563314?ie=UTF8&mnSBrand=core

Dee x

Hi girls! Thanks all - particularly Catherine!

Looks as though 10, 8 and 6 is the way to go - I've just told my mum and apparently we'll only have to get a 10 inch tin, so that's great.

Thanks so much everyone for taking the trouble to reply!

Ali x

I think it's wonderful you're making your own cake - so personal. and from the above posts I think you will have plenty of info about making enough. good luck with it!

Thanks so much, henheaven!

Hopefully it'll turn out ok. If it's a disaster, then at least I can say that I tried!

A x

Hiya

Re missdeedee's post above - careful of using M&S portion guides for anything other than their cakes. Their cakes are not as deep as you would make yourself or a cake maker would provide and their portion guides reflect this as you need a larger square than a 1 inch finger for a normal portion.

Their extra large cake is an 11 inch round (27.5cm) which I would work on being approx 90 portions and their portion guide is 66 portions.

Obviously, AliLindsey has made her size decision now so this is just in case anyone else is reading this.

HTH
Catherine