Made With Love For Love

My sister got married this past Sunday and I was asked to bake the wedding cake. Gulp! OMG, my first wedding cake!

I took Friday off from work so I could do the baking and making of cake filling and fondant. Saturday was cake assembly day.

The cake was supposed to be a four layer, two-tiered concoction. Notice the key word "supposed". Things started off good. The plan was to have the first cake layer topped with  lightly lemon flavored buttercream icing, then another layer of cake with the homemade raspberry filling, another layer of cake with lemon buttercream followed by the last layer of cake. So much for plans.

The first two cake layers stacked nicely. I piped an icing dam around the cake to hold the raspberry filling in and then spread the filling. Looking good. Added another layer of cake and started to put the next layer of lemon buttercream on. Whoa! This layer started slip sliding away and before I knew it, I had raspberry oozing out and down the sides! I needed to remove the last cake layer and figure out what was going wrong. Only in trying to remove the 12" diameter layer, it broke into pieces. Now I've got buttercream and raspberry everywhere! On the cake where it is not supposed to be, on the counter, down the front of my kitchen cabinet, on the floor....talk about a mess!

I tossed the broken layer into the garbage and made the decision to go with 3 cake layers on each tier. I scraped off the remaining filling and re-piped the icing dam only farther back from the edge of the cake this time. A new layer of filling was added before topping it with the final cake layer. This time everything stayed in place as I put the crumb coat of icing on the top and sides of the tier. Hooray!

I built the top tier and then it was fondant time. I don't work in fondant much primarily because I don't care for the taste of it. However, I found a recipe on Cake Central for a Buttercream Marshmallow Fondant that had great reviews so I decided to give it a go.

I started with the smaller top tier and the fondant rolled out nicely to cover the cake. Then it was on to the bottom tier. Rolled it out and it stuck to my mat. Drats!! Roll number two stuck again. What the heck?? I ditched the mat and dusted my countertop with powdered sugar in preparation for the next attempt. Third time was not the charm. It stuck again!

Now I am getting spun up. It was bad enough to deal with the raspberry fiasco. I don't need the fondant to keep sticking. Solution - internet! I found a suggestion to use corn starch and to make sure to keep lifting the fondant as it is being rolled out. I mixed the corn starch with powdered sugar and presto! No sticking.

Bottom Tier Completed

I stacked and pinned the two layers together since we would have a ninety minute drive Sunday morning to the wedding. I wanted to make sure the top layer stayed on the cake. Then I added the ribbon trim, icing scroll work and the tiny fondant flowers I made the previous weekend. All that needed to be added was the fresh flowers before the reception started.

Ready for Fresh Flowers

 

The drive down on Sunday morning was a bit nerve wracking, especially due to a couple of tight exit ramps from the freeways that I thought for sure would send the cake tumbling sideways in the trunk. The cake was packed somewhat securely in a custom sized box I made, but you never can tell how it will truly travel a long distance in the car. But it made it to the reception with no damage!

Karen and Jim really liked it and best of all, it tasted wonderful - even the fondant!

 

Ready for the Reception

I don't think I could be a professional cake decorator though. It's fun, but a lot of hard work, too.

Congratulations, Jim & Karen!

Bake Me a Cake...For Friends

I thought I would share a couple more cakes that I have done for co-workers over the past couple of weeks.

For Nancy's cake below, I tried to use gum paste / fondant decorations but did not allow them to dry long enough. When I covered the cake overnight in my cake carrier, the moisture from the cake made the decorations all droopy. The leaves and flowers all went flat on top of the cake. Bummer. But chalk it up as another lesson learned. It still looked fine and tasted delicious.

Nancy's Birthday Cake

Two co-workers, one who used to work in our western Washington office who now lives in France and another from our French office, recently got married over here. They hosted a BBQ at work and we just had to have a cake for the event. I was asked if I wanted to do a cake and since it is good practice for me, I jumped at the chance.

Nico & Katie's Cake

This was another torted sheet cake - vanilla cake with my secret vanilla filling, and buttercream icing. I used the Cornelli lace technique along with the Wilton rose. A reverse shell border on the top and a basic shell border on the bottom with color coordinated dots completes the cake. Nico and Katie took the left over cake home to share with their family - they like it that much! Come to find out, this was their "wedding cake" since they didn't have the traditional cake at their reception.

Using recipes found on CakeCentral.com, I have steadily been tweaking my buttercream recipe. No more Wilton basic buttercream for me. At least outside of class.

Using a tip from my cake class teacher, I have become a fan of the Cake Mix Doctor, too. Anne Byrn takes your basic box cake mix and "doctors" it up to taste more like cakes made from scratch. I primarily use Duncan Hines cake mixes (no added pudding) and then add in sour cream, vanilla yogurt or flavored instant puddings just to name a few things. It must be good because my co-workers and friends sure do enjoy eating my cakes. I recently acquired a few books by the Cake Mix Doctor with recipes and other tips so who knows what I will bake next. I'm hankering for an Orange Creamsicle Cake or a Lemon Cake, filling and icing concoction. Ooh la la!

At some point, I will probably start baking from scratch, but for now, starting with a box cake mix has been working for me.

I'm still taking another Wilton course, so stay tuned for an update from that class in the very near future.