12 Tips For Creating The Perfect Cheese Wedding Cake

29 Oct 2018

We might be biased but we think a cake of gorgeous truckles of cheese makes a perfect wedding centre-piece. When the right cheeses are used, this kind of cake can be both delicious and beautiful. It can add a rustic or foodie touch to the day and also be a surprisingly cost effective way of feeding hungry guests later in the evening. 

We’ve put together some tips you may want to consider if you’re thinking that a cheese cake could be right for your wedding or celebration.

Quality

Perhaps it should go without saying, but there is a huge range of cheeses available to us here in the UK, and the quality can vary considerably. For example the difference between a supermarket ‘Cheddar’ and a proper traditional truckle of Cheddar is vast, so we’d recommend sourcing cheese for your wedding or celebration from a specialist who will ensure your cake is made up of excellent wheels of cheese in their peak condition.

Quantity

One of the questions we’re asked most often about cheese for weddings or other events is how much is needed per person. This obviously depends on what role the cheese will be playing, and at what point in the day it will be served. If a cheese wedding cake is going to be served up as part of a range of other foods in the evening then we’d suggest between 75g and 110g per person. If the cheese will be the main evening food at a wedding, or if a cake is being used for a cheese and wine evening or similar then between 150g and 200g might be more appropriate.

If you’re considering a Welsh Cheese Company wedding cake each of our online options gives an indication of the number of people it will serve, roughly based on the 75g-110g range.

Styles

One of the fantastic things about cheese is the diversity of styles available. At The Welsh Cheese Company we stock Cheddars, Caerphillys, Bries, Goudas, blues, rind-washed cheeses, goat’s and ewe’s cheeses and many more besides. 

Creating a good cheese wedding cake is about choosing a diverse selection of cheeses that will please a wide variety of tastes. It’s great to have some unusual cheeses that will be admired by the seasoned foodies amongst your guests but you also want to have plenty that will appeal to the less adventurous too. Our online cakes strike a careful balance between the two, and use combinations of cheeses that should keep all guests coming back for more.

Colours

We think that a great truckle of natural-rinded artisan cheese is a thing of real beauty! Wheels of cheese such as Hafod Cheddar, Thelma or Gorwydd Caerphilly, Perl Las or Mon Las blue have been aged by expert cheese-makers to allow the natural rind to develop wonderfully subtle but beautiful colours and textures. If you have a look at the images of our cake range you’ll be able to see how they look as naked undecorated truckles. 

Some of the cheeses we stock are made with colourful wax exteriors, such as Snowdonia’s Black Bomber or Abergavenny’s Harlech or Tintern. These can create quite a different effect when used in a cheese wedding cake but can also work well, and we often use them in bespoke cakes.

Tasting

The look of the cheese truckles might be important, but ultimately it’s all about the taste! We offer taster boxes of all of our cakes through our website for you to give the cheeses a thorough test in the comfort of your own home. If you’re local to Cardiff we can also arrange an appointment for you to come down to our unit in Taffs Well for a tasting session.

Tiers

When designing a cheese wedding cake it is important to consider the size of each tier, and the overall shape of the cake. We’ve picked the cheeses we use very carefully in order to create gradual steps in the sizes between tiers – you don’t want to end up with a completely cylindrical tower or one or two 200g wheels placed on top of a huge 5kg truckle! This isn’t always easy, as many traditional cheese truckles are made in very similar sizes/ shapes and there are limited options for large base layers and also for penultimate tiers in the 500g-1kg range. Some of our online cakes use cheeses that our producers make in a specific shape especially for us in order to create the best shaped cakes!

Bespoke Cakes/ Cheese Selections

As well as the range of 7 cakes that we’ve created for our website we can also design bespoke cakes. We can suggest combinations of styles, sizes and looks that will work well and can also incorporate any of your favourite Welsh cheeses. 

We can also provide fantastic platters of cheese for any occasion if you’d rather not have your cheese in a tiered cake format.

Extras

Whether you’re choosing one of our online cakes or creating a bespoke cake, you may well want to add a few extras. Often customers order a few additional small cheeses to display around the base of the cake. If you’re a particular fan of your cake’s top tier for example, and would like to have more than 200g of it so that everyone can have a taste, we can provide additional small wheels of that cheese. We can also provide Welsh chutneys and crackers.

Decorating

We recommend a less-is-more approach to decorating. As we mentioned above the beautiful natural rinds are the stars of the show. Have a look at the way the cakes on our website are decorated if you’re looking for inspiration. We opted for simple floral or fruit decorations for some, and subtle craft-craft-based decorations for others. All decorations for our photos were bought at either a local florist or an online craft shop, and none of our online cakes cost more than £10 to decorate.

Please note that all of our cakes are supplied without decorations.

Labelling

Labelling is becoming an increasingly important issue as people are more and more careful about what they eat. We can provide label flags with our cakes that will give a brief description of each cheese and also let your guests know what ingredients they contain and whether or not they are suitable for vegetarians.

Serving 

The cake should be built and decorated shortly before being displayed. The cheeses will be fine at room temperature for 4 or 5 hours. If they are likely to be out for longer than that before being eaten then you could cover the cheeses with a clean damp cloth to keep them fresh. Try to avoid leaving the cheese out in direct sunlight or near a hot radiator.

We recommend that you dismantle the tiers and put all cheeses on a firm surface before your guests tuck into them. The cheeses are best eaten at room temperature, so we suggest that they’re kept out of the fridge for at least 2 hours before being served, depending on the temperature of the room.

Storage

Your cheeses will need to be stored below 8ºc until the day of your wedding. The best way to achieve this will be to keep them in a fridge. A cool larder may also be sufficient. We provide all of our cakes in insulated boxes with ice packs to keep them cool during transit. If necessary you may be able to keep the cheese cool after it arrives by keeping it in the same box but replacing or re-freezing the ice packs.

If you’re lucky enough to have a few leftovers at the end of the night then they don’t need to go to waste! Some soft/ mould ripened cheeses and rind-washed cheeses might need to be eaten on the same day if they’ve been out for several hours in a warm room, but all hard cheeses should be fine if they’re carefully wrapped and refrigerated at the end of the night. Wrap with either cling film or waxed/ greaseproof paper, and they should keep in the fridge for at least a few days longer. Left over hard cheeses can also be frozen if necessary.

If you have any questions at all about cheese wedding cakes please feel free to email or call us any time. We’re always happy to help!