A few months before the wedding of two of our close friends, I was approached and asked if I could produce a stand for their wedding. They actually wanted a cake-pop stand, not a cake stand. For those not aware of the phenomenon, think lolly pop but swap the sugary sweet for an iced chocolate cake.
The first part of the challenge was to work out numbers, which took me back to my GCSE maths lessons. I’d been asked for the stand to accommodate roughly 120 cake-pops, and I’d decided myself on three tiers. So, out came the calculator to work it all out, this was beyond using fingers and toes.
I also had to take into consideration the spacing required, given the average cake-pop diameter. They’re all made by had so I had to allow for differences from one to the next. This gave me a rough idea of size and dimensions of the base, middle and top tier once I worked out the numbers.
I chose three similar mouldings from D&J Simons in obeache which I cut 90 degrees from normal (see pic1 below) which would create three tray like frames, and used 6mm mdf board to mark up and cut to size then asked a local joiners workshop to drill the holes as I only had a hand drill and the holes had to be perfectly straight (see pic7 as to why this is critical). I used some 20mm oak moulding offcuts as the legs and secured them in place with screws, washers and lots of wood glue. The three tiers can be seperated for ease of transport, and sit on top of the legs of the tier below with 4 tabs of velcro to secure (and prevent any wobbles).
I added 3 coats of primer each followed by a smoothing down with ultra-fine sandpaper which was then covered by 3-4 layers of Liquitex iridescent silver. I drafted in my father who is a professional paint sprayer to do the silver painting, so the finish ended up faultless.
Finally, I added 12v LED lights to provide down-lighting. The cables were sprayed silver and run up the inside rebate of the oak moulding on the front legs so it could not be seen.
The stand was very well received and got a lot of admiring glances. I've since had a two enquiries from professional cake makers to make one for themselves, they think it’s something that could be hired out too!
