James Middleton's secret disaster ahead of sister Princess Kate's wedding
The Prince and Princess of Wales gave their wedding cake maker two months' notice to create their royal wedding cake, but the baker was known to the Middleton family long before that.
Fiona Cairns came to the rescue when Kate's brother James Middleton almost suffered a mishap with his flourishing food business. James explained in his book Meet Ella that William and Kate's royal engagement announcement in November 2010 prompted a Paris hotel to order 2,000 cupcakes from him for one afternoon and a further order for 4,000.
"My excitement at securing such a thrillingly large order was eclipsed by the fact that I'd nowhere near the capacity to make such a vast number of cakes in my trailer," he wrote, before revealing he turned to Fiona and her husband Kishore Patel for help.
"I was bubbling with excitement and thrilled to see that they had the capacity to bake the cupcakes in their factory.
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"The deal was struck: they'd make the sponge and I'd take charge of the decoration. But the manufacturing of the cakes, it emerged, was the easy bit."
Between them, they managed to create 2,000 beautiful cupcakes. While production had been sorted, James revealed transportation to Paris using his father Michael Middleton's 1988 Renault van was disastrous.
The adventure included James breaking down, surrendering the van and a cheque to a French truckman, and his father having to help him hire a new van and buy a flight home.
"After paying Dad back, I calculated that I'd made a profit of precisely nothing, but the cupcakes had been a success and the hotel still wanted 4,000 more. So Fiona and Kishire baked them and I decorated them – but second time round, with valuable experience gained, I arranged for a professional delivery company to transport them," James penned, before revealing this took place around eight weeks before the wedding.
This would be around the same time Fiona was commissioned to create the towering fruit cake for the royals.
Fiona Cairn's confessions
Wedding cake maker Fiona described the royal wedding as her "big break", explaining to The Mirror: "My husband knows Kate Middleton’s brother, James, and the family heard about our cake business.
"But I couldn’t believe it when I was asked to make the wedding cake for Kate and William back in 2011."
Speaking of her brief, she added: "It was quite traditional, but Kate wanted natural, softer icing, rather than the traditional hard-edged cake.
"A fruit cake must be baked months in advance, so when I was commissioned on 18 February, with the wedding being 29 April, we baked all the cakes at the beginning of March, so they had two months to mature."
However, she described the lead-up to the big event as stressful, causing her "sleepless nights."
The end result was 12 traditional fruit cakes topped with marzipan and royal icing – just like William's father King Charles and Queen Camilla. They were arranged in a towering confection and finished with 17 meaningful flowers in sugar paste.
As well as blooms to symbolise England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, she said the cake featured Lily of the Valley decorations which "symbolises sweetness and humility."
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