This is one of the most common questions we get asked in the cake industry! It might seem a silly question to some but it’s absolutely fair to ask your cake maker this question, especially if there’s a specific design you’ve set your heart on and the shape or proportions are unusual.
Every cake maker has their own preferred height of cake (for example, our cakes are a standard height of 5”) and this of course will affect how many servings you can get out of it. Gone are the days of 3” high birthday cakes, as with all things, cakes also have trends that come and go! Although, the trend for taller cakes is definitely here to stay, for a good long while at least.
If you’re deciding on the size of a round celebration cake, an 8” will typically serve anything between 17 and 30 portions, depending on how big you cut the slices. Take into consideration if you want leftovers!
We cake makers can advise you on the best sized cake to provide the portions you need and more often than not, our clients are dubious about the recommended size, as they are so used to imagining the flat birthday cakes you see in the supermarkets. They are often surprised at how much cake is leftover after they decided to increase the size of their cake! But also we rarely have clients regretting the leftovers as they can enjoy their cake for quite a while afterwards when stored properly (you can find info on that here).
Also take into consideration whether you’re serving adults or children as you probably won’t need such a large cake if serving mostly kiddies. Unless your child is like mine and can eat a slice as big as her head.
For any designs that have unusual proportions such as 3D cakes or extra tall tiers, it is best to ask your cake maker for their recommendation. They will also advise you of any design elements that need to fit onto the cake, for example, if your chosen design has 10 models on the top, they may have to alter the design if you only want a 6” cake!
It may be worth noting that although you may opt for a smaller cake, the price may not decrease by much, because with bespoke cake pricing, it is essentially based on the time it takes to decorate. So the difference between decorating a 6” cake and an 8” cake in terms of time, is minimal. Often when this is explained to customers, they will choose the larger cake seeing as there is not much difference in price.
Be open to the idea of having dummy tiers if you want a much bigger cake for maximum impact or having cutting cakes if you have a large number of guests. Cakes are rarely physically cut up and served in front of guests so nobody would know.
You can find our portion guides on our pricing page here!
I hope this guide is useful in helping you to size your celebration cake but hope you agree that there is no such thing as ‘too much cake’.
Watch this space for our next blog post about wedding cake sizes which is a whole different kettle of fish!