Hey everyone and welcome back to my channel Cakes by MK. In today's video i'm going to be
challenging myself to make a gorgeous wedding cake using only $50 on both decorations and
ingredients. I'm going to show you guys exactly everything i bought, how much everything cost
when i managed to save a little bit of money on to make things a little bit cheaper and i'm
also going to show you guys my thought process that went behind designing this cake as well as
you know of course putting it all together at the end. If you're new to my channel please click the
subscribe button below and don't forget to turn on the notification bell so that you're updated
whenever i upload a new video. Apart from that stay tuned and I hope you guys enjoy this video.
So let's start off by taking a look at the different ingredients and decorations that
i bought for my cake all under $50. So one of the best things that you can do when trying to reduce
the cost when it comes to actually making the cake is just to buy a cheap but good quality cake mix.
So what I've got here is I've got a golden butter cake mix which is basically just a nice vanilla
cake and this cost me $2.50 which is super cheap and i basically bought three of those so i'm hoping
that will be enough to give me some decent layers in my wedding cake. Now for these cake mixes you
will need to buy some additional ingredients to turn them into a cake batter so for that
i needed some milk so i just bought a cheap one litre bottle of milk which cost me $2.50. I've got
all the prices written down on my tablet because i couldn't remember them by heart and then i also
needed some butter so i just bought some salted butter because it's cheaper than unsalted butter
and that cost me $5.69. Then i also bought a whole bunch of eggs so just a tray of eggs these are 12
large eggs and that cost me $4. Now when it comes to the butter cream or you know frosting
that you're using on your cake, I find that just making your own is the cheapest option so
what i've got here is i've got some icing sugar some vanilla essence and some unsalted butter for
my buttercream. I'm just going to make a simple American style buttercream which tastes amazing
and it's really easy to make. So my unsalted butter cost me $5.78 and my vanilla essence cost me a
$1.19 and then my icing sugar cost me $3 ($2.50*) so that is all my ingredients done
now when it comes to the deco for a wedding cake a wedding cake almost always has flowers on it
so what i did today to save money is instead of buying fresh flowers i bought fake flowers
what i managed to find are these really beautiful large fake roses which are a super decent quality
for the price i was really happy with these and they also came with you know a lot of greenery
as well which i can use on my cake and this you know whole stem here which comes with two roses as
well as a bud and the greenery cost me $3.50. So i bought two of those so all together this all cost
me seven bucks which is an absolute bargain. Then i also bought some extra little kind of flowers
to put around my roses and this whole bunch here cost me $4. Now in the price i
did decide to include some of the things which require you know you to build your wedding cake
and so first up I've got some cake cards here and those cost me $0.30 each. Now I've also got some
cake dowels here now these nails were actually pretty expensive it cost me $4 I think,
um no $5, so these cost me $5 but to save more money you can literally just buy
some bubble tea straws which will be so much cheaper and then last i've got a nice big cake
board here which cost me $2.50 so all together for all my ingredients and deco the total price
was $48.26 which i am super happy with and now we're going to move on to the next step which
is designing this wedding cake. So i'm going to quickly run you guys through what's going through
my mind in terms of the design of this wedding cake and hopefully i'll be able to execute it so
what i want to do first is i want to start off by having a 8 inch layer on the bottom but only one
layer so i think i'm not going to have enough cake to make you know like a really tall cake. And then
what i'm going to do is i'm going to add a 6 inch tier which is going to be built up of
three cake layers, so it's going to be a little bit higher. And then i'm going to finish off by adding
another one layer tier right on the top which is just going to be a little baby 4 inch cake
And then what i want to do is i want to add my roses kind of up the top corner here as
well as the bottom corner on the opposite side so if i draw that in which will probably not
look very nice but that's okay.
And then some of those little kind of flowers that I've got
okay so my flowers are looking pretty horrible so just be kind in the comment
section and then i'm just going to finish off by adding some greenery
okay so that is it, it actually doesn't look too bad hopefully you guys get the idea and
now we're going to start baking. So when it comes to making the cake all you want to do
is follow the instructions on your cake mix box so this one is pretty easy it basically
says to just add all the ingredients to a bowl and just mix it together with a hand mixer.
So i'm just adding in my cake mixes first, and then i just softened my butter so i'm adding that in
and then i've got to add in six eggs and then lastly i'm just going to add in 525 ml
of milk, and now i'm simply going to mix that together with my hand mixer for about two minutes
So what i've got here is i've got some pre-prepared cake tins which i just coated
with my easy cake release recipe and i'll post a link to that below. Now i didn't actually account
for the cost of the ingredients that it takes to make this cake release but just to be fair i
am going to include it in because i did say you know the cost of any ingredients that it takes
to create this wedding cake so the amount that i used to you know coat these pans is probably
about maybe 20 cents if you know even less than that but i'm just gonna go with the 20 cents and
so that takes my total amount at the moment to $48 and 40 something cents i think so i've
still got a dollar somewhere you know in case i've forgotten something so we're still okay. So
all i'm going to do is i'm going to distribute my cake batter evenly into these cake tins so
i've got one 8 inch cake which is for my bottom tier and it's just gonna be a one layer
then i've also got three six inch cake tins which are going to be for that middle taller layer
and then i've got one little baby four inch cake tin which is going to be my little tier on the top
So i was lucky enough to just be able to fill my cake tins, so what i'm going to do now is i'm
going to pop these into the oven and while they're cooking away we're going to go ahead
and make our buttercream. So for my buttercream today i'm just making a simple American style
buttercream. So for my ingredients I've got my icing sugar, my unsalted butter which i softened,
my milk and my vanilla so i'm going to start off by creaming my butter for about five minutes on
a medium to high speed in my mixer and you can also do this with a hand mixer as well
Now once your butter has finished creaming up you know that it's done when
it's lighter in color and it's doubled in volume then the next thing to do
is to add our icing sugar to our butter and i'm going to do this in two batches
now once that's all nicely mixed in i'm going to go ahead and add in my vanilla
now the last thing that i'm going to do is i'm just going to add in a bit
of milk in my buttercream to thin it out a bit so that it's nice and smooth
okay so my buttercream is all done and now we're going to start icing our cakes
So my cakes are all ready now they have completely cooled and i'm going to go
ahead and trim the tops of all of my cake layers so that they're all nice and flat
so i'm just using a serrated knife to do this and you just want to keep your knife really nice
and straight. Now i'm not going to lie i did slightly over bake these cakes which is why
they're a bit extra brown on the edges. I started cleaning up and actually forgot about them so
don't forget about your cakes but i mean i've just cut through the top and they look absolutely fine
so i have finished trimming all the tops and now i'm going to start stacking my
cake. Now usually i put simple syrup on my cake layers as i'm stacking them to help keep them
nice and moist, but instead what i did today so i didn't have to spend extra on sugar is i simply
got my leftover milk and i added two teaspoons of instant coffee powder into it to create my
kind of simple syrup which i'm going to put on top of my cake layers and i estimated my
two teaspoons of instant coffee to come to about 50 cents so i think i'm still just
under $50. So i'm just starting off by putting a little bit of buttercream on my cake board
now i'm just putting my coffee milk mixture on top and just using my offset spatula i'm just going
to start spreading buttercream all over the cake and then i'm going to smooth it out with my cake scraper
okay so i have done my eight inch tier now i'm gonna put that aside and go ahead and
do my six inch tier. So for my six inch tier i'm just going to place it on a separate acrylic
disk and then i've also got my cake card which i cut out from that bigger one that i had because
i couldn't find the right size so i cut out a six inch cake card and a four inch cake card
slightly smaller than six inch and four inches so that it's not kind of showing on the bottom
and i'm simply going to start stacking my six inch cake on my six inch cake card
okay so i have done the crumb coats on my cakes now it looks like i will have enough buttercream
to be able to cover all these cakes completely which is good because at the moment my crumb coats
aren't looking that great because my buttercream was becoming too hard really quickly because it's
really cold here in New Zealand at the moment and so it was a little bit hard for me to ice
my cakes. What i'm going to do is i'm going to pop these into the fridge now just for about
half an hour or so to allow the buttercream to firm up and trap all those crumbs and in
the meantime i'm gonna go ahead and warm up and re-whip my buttercream. So my cakes are out of the
fridge now the buttercream is nice and firm so i'm gonna go ahead and do my final coat of buttercream
And that is my four inch tier done and now i'm going to pop these all into the fridge again for
about an hour to allow the buttercream to become really nice and firm and then we're going to
come back to finish stacking and decorating this cake. So my cakes are out of the fridge
now the buttercream is nice and firm so i'm going to go ahead and start stacking my cake
so first what i'm going to do is i'm going to place some dowels in this bottom tier and then
place my six inch tier on top of that. Now if you're not quite sure what dowels are, why you
need them, or how you use them, then i will post a link below to a more in-depth tutorial on this
now what i'm going to do next is i'm just going to use my cake scraper to help me release my six
inch cake from my acrylic disk and just make sure that your cake card is on the bottom because that's
what's going to sit on top of these dowels that we just placed into our bottom tier
and because our cakes are nice and cold it should be really easy to
just release from the acrylic disk and just pick up with your hands. Oh actually
i forgot to place a little bit of buttercream down which is going to help stick our tiers together
now once your cake tiers are kind of sitting where they look like they're supposed to be
sitting then the next thing that i'm going to do is i'm going to clean up this cake so
the first thing that i'm going to do is i'm just going to fill
in these gaps over here and then just smooth them out with my cake scraper
so i have finished cleaning up my cake now it's looking pretty good and now we're just going to
finish off with some decorating. So to finish off decorating i've got my fake flowers here
and just make sure that you do wash and dry your flowers before putting them into your cake because
you don't know where they've been so you just want to make sure that they're nice and clean and now
i'm simply going to go ahead and just poke them into my cake like how i had in my original design
i feel like these roses are a bit big for the bottom
so i might just poke one in and then poke the little flowers around it
now with my spare rose what i might do is i think i'm going
to poke it up the top so it gives the cake a little bit more height
okay i think i might be going a bit overboard with the flowers now so
i'm just gonna try and rain it in
okay it's just taking me way too long to decide what to change and what to add
on so i decided i'm just going to leave it just like that so that is my cake all done
i'm really happy with how this cake has come out, I like how it's got that larger
tier in the middle so i wanted that effect to come through which i feel like it has
it is slightly smaller in size compared to how tall i thought it was going to be but
it's still a really decent sized wedding cake and i would say that this would comfortably feed
about 50 people coffee sized pieces. Compared to the design that i had sketched out earlier
i'd say i did a pretty decent job in you know bringing it to life it looks pretty similar
now one last thing is to cut a slice of this cake and see what it tastes like because
even though we made it on a budget it should still taste just as good as it looks. Now i haven't
actually taken photos of this cake yet so i'm just going to take a little slice from the back so
hopefully you can't see it. And that is my little baby slice of cake which i'm going to taste test
that tastes really good i'm really happy with how this cake both looks
and tastes so that's basically it i hope you guys enjoyed this video let me know
what you think in the comments section below and thanks again for watching Cakes by MK :)