Once it was agreed he would design the cake he decamped from his base in Holbrook, Derbys, to McVities' test bakery where, amidst tight security, he and a team from the firm worked for 29 days and nights to design a cake to meet royal approval. It was one of six designed.
He said: "With eight days to go, and with the design agreed by Buckingham Palace, we were told we needed to make two cakes which would travel to the Palace in two separate vans just in case there was an accident.
"So with two days to go one van went one way, the other went another way and we had a rendezvous at Buckingham Palace.
"With the wedding on Friday, we spent Wednesday and Thursday building the cake and putting it on a priceless gold salver. It was a bit wobbly and at one stage I had it upside down with a pair of pliers trying to fix it until I was told what it was worth."
He said 24 hours before the wedding, he and the cake, which was adorned with white chocolate dahlias, milk chocolate leaves and a mixture of white and milk chocolate feathers, were visited by the Queen. "She had a chat with us," he said. "She told us how it was Prince William's cake because the middle bit was a recipe by chefs at Buckingham Palace that was his favourite afternoon tea cake.
"She told us how he always used to take some back to boarding school with him."
Mr Colenso said he and his cake-making team were also visited that day by the Duke and Prince Harry. He said: "They were very, very nice guys. Prince William knew all about the cake; they were absolutely fantastic."
The actual cake remained untouched during the wedding, so it could be displayed later. However, 1,000 separate pieces were specially made that were distributed to guests - and he has only now been given permission by United Biscuits to talk about it.
He said: "Even the cake made for the individual pieces had to be 'frock tests', to make sure the cake was the right consistency and didn't crumble onto someone's frock.
The recipe is a strict secret, it's in my head and I haven't even written it down, but it did contain 1,700 rich tea biscuits.
Each of the white decorative flowers took four or five hours to make, so it was very labour intensive. Everything had to be made and then transported separately to Buckingham Palace.
It was something completely new and completely different, but it was a once in a lifetime job; extremely exciting but very stressful. We even talked jokingly if they could move the wedding because we were really up against it."
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