Wedding cake, the fourth

I made another wedding cake this weekend (wedding date: October 14th). This one was a bit odd in a couple of ways. For starters, I made the cake in one place then transported it to another to do the decorating. Second, I only had part of a day to complete the work (i.e. I started icing at 8:30 am Friday, and had to be finished by 4:00 pm for the wedding). Also different (although not the least bit odd), I used my very own stand mixer to make the cake. We've been saving up Canadian Tire money for months and we finally had enough for me to cover the entire cost of a Cuisinart Stand Mixer. It's beautiful, and fast and it's my new baby (although I'll still kneed my bread by hand).

I baked the cake two weeks ago—bottom layer of chocolate, middle layer of vanilla, and two layers (another middle, and a small) of chocolate-vanilla zebra-stripped—then slipped them into our new cube freezer. Last week I made the leaves and set them out to dry in an egg carton to achieve the curled-up look. Then on Friday I set to finishing the decorations. I should point out that the lovely Andrew assisted me a here. Being busy the couple of days leading up to the wedding he was kind enough to level out the cakes for me and apply the first (crumb) layer of icing. Then Friday morning I slathered on two more layers of buttercream plus the fondant. I had all three layers suited up by about 11:30.

I find that the application of buttercream and fondant almost always take the longest. This might be because I've yet to do a really complex cake design, but it only took me another hour and a half to complete the cake. I'd changed my mind several times over how I wanted to decorate it. At first I'd thought I might go for some type of medieval theme, but quickly recognized that I simply didn't have the time for that. Then I settled on the fall theme, but wasn't sure how I should accomplish the motif. I scoured through cake pictures, toyed with the idea of drawing with a paint brush and food colouring, to finally settling on this piping/brushing technique. Naturally I'd never tried it before. Whatever. It worked. I was reasonably happy with the result, and the couple seemed pleased too.

Full-length shot of the cake.

Close-up on the side, showing the piping/scrolling work.

Top down shot, catching the leaves on top.

Mmmm...cake. I'm thinking of doing one for the Hallowe'en party I'm going to.

Ciao,

Andrea

Wedding cake with flowers on top

I recently completed my third wedding cake. It was a smaller affair than the other two (3 layers, 8 inch, 10 inch and 12 inch); however, like the other two, I was more-or-less given a cart blanche to do whatever I felt like. This might seem like a great situation for a cake decorator, but I feel it's more nerve racking (maybe because I'm still new at this?). What if what I choose to do doesn't appeal to the couple, or what if my design idea doesn't work out in the end, etc, etc. I was given colours: red and white, but that was all. I opted for flowers, as it seemed the easiest/most appropriate, and chose to make them from fondant rather than icing (also due to ease). Below are pictures of the process.

The middle layer fondant-ed up. The red was so soft I was worried it might melt if the day was too warm.

I got free fondant at the end of my cake decorating course (so I suppose it wasn't really free since I paid for the course...). I figured a) if it was taken away from me at the airport it didn't matter; and b) if it turned out to not be very good I could just buy more. It nearly was taken away at the airport (they didn't know what it was, and seemed really concerned by it) and I ended up having to buy more white as the free stuff was too dry to roll out without cracking. The red as noted above was really, really soft, which made it easy to work with (getting it on the cake was a cinch) but it also meant it was really droopy. Some of the first roses I made with it turned to mush. Later on I added more icing sugar to it, which seemed to help strengthen it up.

My small army of fondant roses...I'd already used some by the time I took this picture. I think there were over 40 all told.

I was rather proud of my roses, the mottled ones in particular I thought looked really pretty. Andrew helped by rolling and cutting out of the petals while I did all the shaping. Making the flowers took...a couple of hours (I did make 40)? But setting them out on the cake took minutes.

The cake top after the first round of flowers.

At first I wasn't too sure how many flowers I would use throughout the rest of the cake, so I limited them on the top. Once I stacked it I realized there wasn't space for adding flowers on the other layers so I just kept arranging more on top.

The cake about 92.5% done, just a few finishing touches to add on the actual day of the wedding.

Once the cake was transported from my parents place to Andrew's parents place, I stacked the cake (transporting cakes is just a blast...really...) so it could sit in the fridge for the next day and a half. When I'm in Ontario I prefer to bake and apply the base layer of fondant at my parent's place as they have a lot of space (including multiple fridges), then I stack and decorate at Andrew's parents (or actually at his grandmother's). Being a small cake the staking took about five minutes and I used straws as supports--they're way easier than dowelling. You just slide the straws in, then snip them off at the desired height.

Completed cake. More flowers on the top with a few on the bottom section (partially to hide an unsightly mark), and ribbon for trim.

I added a little bit of shinny Christmas wrapping ribbon to trim the white layers and hide the bumpy edges at the bottom of the cake. Also, as you can see I did some quick, easy scroll work around the red cake layer. I think it gives the cake a bit of 'funk' and keeps it from being too traditional or boring. Also, at this point I can cover a whole cake in free-hand scroll work in about ten minutes, so it was a bit of a comfort zone-thing as well.

The full view from the side of the cake. I think the middle layer with the scrolling was really effective.

One more close-up on the flowers. This was actually the first time I made fondant flowers. They were fairly easy to do, even without the special flower tools (the ones that kind of look like dental equipment).

That's about all I've got. Unfortunately I didn't stay at the wedding for the cake cutting (did I mention that above? It was a family wedding), the term used to describe me after dinner was 'peeky.' Both Andrew and I have been fighting off head colds, and I didn't get much in the way of sleep the night before and simply couldn't stay. The drive from the wedding, which took place in Acton (why yes, it is worth the drive--Ontarians, you know what I mean, everyone else, you can scratch your heads) to our lodgings was around an hour and I fell asleep on the way.

Ciao,

Andrea

Cake-central at the Milne appartment

I worked on my second wedding cake this weekend--primarily the baking part. I'm a little nervous about this cake since this one's not for family and I'm getting paid for it--therefore it really needs to look good. I made a test cake back in December? January? for the bride to taste and see if she liked the flavour. I'd been asked to make a coconut cake, which I just happened to have a recipe for. The cake was given bride-approval. On Friday night I baked the top two layers of the cake (10 inches and 12 inches respectively), then on Saturday morning I finished off the bottom two (14 inches and 16 inches), plus an additional small layer (8 inches) since I had enough ingredients left to do one more half batch.

One of the biggest challenges this time around is that I only have my tiny apartment kitchen to work in. Back in October, I had my parent's giant kitchen, their huge (and much newer stove), plus my mom's industrial strength mixer. My oven is inconsistent at best (and so burning the cake was a concern), and I only have my trusty old hand-mixer to whip together the batter. To my great relief everything worked smoothly. I had to mix up 6 single batches of the cake batter as my equipment couldn't handle more than one at a time, and by carefully monitoring my oven and rotating pans I was able to avoid a charcoal catastrophe. The whole process took around five hours. Now all the cake layers are wrapped in plastic and taking up almost all of the space in my freezer until this Friday when I'll complete the cake.

All the ingredients I required for baking the cake.

The largest cake pan filled with batter.

My trusty mixer, plowing through a batch of batter--this was toward the end of the process where I'm adding in the egg whites.

The freezer filled with 5 layers of coconut cake. I'm sure I could figure out how many square inches of cake that is, but I don't remember all the mathmatical formulas to make the calculation.

Then on Sunday, in an effort to make my life easier come Decoration Day (possibly also judgment day?), I piped out around 3 dozen icing flowers. I used royal icing for this so there won't be any chance of the flowers going droopy on the Wedding Day, and coloured them a dark purple (with a little white to liven them up). I opted to make 'sweet pea' blossoms as they seemed relatively easy, and used instructions from an old (1970s) Wilton book my mom gave me at Christmas. It took less time than I would have expected to pipe the flowers taking me only around an hour (while watching Jane Eyre on YouTube).

Me piping a flower using my flower nail. By this time my icing was getting a touch soft from the heat of my hand, but everything still worked all right.

The spoils of my hour.

Finally, a few things I learned this time around:

1) Alberta Bulk Barns do not rent their large cake pans (even though they do in Ontario). I am now the proud owner of a set of four circular Wilton cake pans.

2) Cake Release is SO worth it. Each cake layer just slid out with next to no effort besides loosening the cake a little on the sides.

3) It's probably not a good idea to look at Cake Wrecks when you're a little nervous about the icing flowers you piped, either on Sunday when amazing cakes are featured, nor the rest of the time when the cakes are terrible.

Ciao,

Andrea

Wedding cake, phase 3: the final decorations

Around 1:00 pm yesterday afternoon Andrew and I headed over to his grandmother's house where the cake was being kept. Once again, things didn't go exactly as I planned. I learned something yesterday (that would have been helpful to have known earlier): there's a huge difference in the colouring abilities of Wilton gel products. The ones in the small tubes are not effective in colouring fondant--these are also what I tried to use on Wednesday. We attempted to transform the white fondant I'd purchased into vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges for leaves, but were only coming up with pastel pinks, and peaches--no good.

The cake, uncovered. I really wasn't happy with the base fondant colour, but now I know what to use in the future.

When Andrew had gone through the entire tube of orange we agreed we needed something else, so off he went to the Bulk Barn (thankfully only a couple of blocks away). He came back with more tube colourings, and also with the type of Wilton colouring that comes in little jars. I'm not sure what the difference is, I didn't look at the labels, but apparently I should have been using the jar colouring all along. We got the nice dark colours we wanted without using all of the gel.

Once we'd sorted the colour problem out we were on our way. I started cutting out leaves with various sizes of cookie cutters and drew little veins into them with a nut-pick. Then I placed them into an empty egg carton so they would curl like real leaves. Once I'd prepared a small selection of shaped leaves, I took the assortment of orange leaves Andrew had prepared and arranged them on the cake. As I stuck them to the cake, Andrew continued onto the yellow and red fondant, and after I thought I had enough of the other colours we marbled the leftovers together.

Leaves drying so they will rest curled on the cake,

Andrew, cutting out leaves.

The cake, with its first layer of orange leaves.

Two colours of leaves applied.

The cake, more-or-less completed, just a few finishing touches to go.

The second thing that didn't work out like I would have liked was how I arranged the leaves. Initially I thought I would create a spiral of leaves around the entire cake, but as I laid the decorations out I ended up covering half the cake and the other was bare. The cover side looked great, while the other half did not--surprised? Probably not, so then we had to roll out what was left of the coloured fondant and cut out as many new leaves as we could.

All colours of leaves applied.

A close up of the top.

Overall, I'm happy with the way the cake turned out. The bronze under-colour seems to photograph better than it looks in real life, but that's also part of why I decided to cover the entire cake. Ideally, I would like to take another cake decorating course, one for wedding cakes from NAIT so I can learn more advanced fondant techniques--we'll see if I ever get the time. Maybe next summer?

Ciao,

Andrea

Wedding cake, phase 2: covering

My parent’s internet was working yesterday (hurray for country living), therefore I couldn’t blog about my square baking experience. I thought since I still had three more types of squares to make, I would wait to write about them until I was all done. Today I worked on applying coverings to the cake; both icing and fondant. It took me all day starting around 9:00 am and I worked (more-or-less) straight through until 4:30 pm. I decided based on my previous cake making that one regular recipe of Swiss Meringue would be sufficient to cover all of the cake layers. The nice thing this time was that I had a proper stand mixer that was able to handle all 3 pounds of butter required at one time.

The first step of the icing, warming the egg whites and sugar on a double broiler.

The icing, all whipped up and ready to be spread.

By 10:00 am--possibly earlier, I can’t remember--I was applying the first layer of icing to the smallest layer of cake, which didn’t required support. Andrew was kind enough to spend much of the first part of his morning sawing doweling pieces and sanding off the rough bits so I could insert them into the cake. This was one bit of the construction I wasn’t too sure about, but I’d seen it done in an instructional video I’d watched to make sure the lower levels of the cake could uphold the top ones. I really don’t want the cake to collapse on itself.

Andrew measuring out the distances for the support doweling.

The icing process went along pretty smoothly, by which I mean I was able to speed along in the application, then spread the icing out so it was even and...smooth. It turned out I was just about spot on with the amount of icing required as I have only a small tub of it left, and I can use that to apply the ribbon or other decorations if necessary. The fondant was a bit of a pain...not really the rolling and setting part, but the colouring part.

Me applying the last layer of icing to the base layer of the cake.

What's left of the buttercream icing after four layers of cake.

In my mind I was going to create a nice, beige colour for the base. However, no matter how much brown colouring I added, the fondant didn’t get anywhere near brown, it just became a light pink--definitely not what I was looking for. Then when I rolled the first layer out I realized that I wouldn’t be able to cover the entire cake with the 3L of fondant I’d prepared. So, off came the first layer, and out came the remaining litre of fondant. I ended up with a pale peach colour that seemed passable, then when I decided to add my bronze sparkles to the fondant it became even more passable.

Me, adding the fondant, see how fast I move? My hand is blurry.

The base layer, sitting on the cake plate, covered in fondant.

Now all I’ve got to do is add ribbon, more sparkles and leaves. I’m sure this will take longer than I think, but not nearly as long as the first part of the icing.

Ciao,

Andrea

Wedding cake, phase 1: baking

Welcome to Andrea's Wide World of Baking! Today I bring you the process of baking enough chocolate cake to serve 100 people.

Err...or something like that. Yes, I'm coming up to the judgment day to see if I can really bake and decorate a wedding cake. I can tell you that the baking part went peachy-keen--really. After a good sleep last night, I woke up this morning around 8:20, had a quick bite of breakfast, and started on the first batch of batter. I made 6 times the recipe I used for the previous chocolate cake, in three rounds of mixing. I used something like 20 eggs, 3 lbs of butter, more than 4 kg of brown sugar, and approximately 1.5 kg of flour. Pan dimensions are 14", 12", 10", and 8" wide.

The main ingredients going into the cake.

Me trying to mix up the last of the first batch of cake batter, and trying not to over flow the bowl.

The batter. Mmm, chocolate.

The first cake pan, ready to go in the oven.

Two of the cake layers baking.

The mess after I'd finished mixing the batter.

The biggest layer (14") just out of the oven.

At this point in the afternoon (as I write it is 2:30 pm) all of the cake layers are out of the oven, and are cooling. They're a little crumbly on the outside, but that's why you lay down a quick 'crumb' layer of icing first, to seal the cake. Unfortunately, one of the cake layers (the second largest one--12") is still stuck in the pan and I'm not quite sure how I should proceed to get it out. I'm sure I'll work something out, I just hope I don't break it as I do.

Ciao,

Andrea

Tomorrow: baking enough square for 100 people.

Weekend accomplishments

I passed my skating test.


We visited with family (this is my nephew, Alexander, who is as cute as the proverbial button).


Caroline and Giancarlo were successfully married.



And we made it home again.

That's all I've got time for now.

Ciao,

Andrea

A quick note before heading off for Ontario for the weekend

This afternoon Andrew and I have a flight to catch that will take us first to Calgary and then on to Hamilton. My friend Caroline is getting married on Saturday afternoon. I suspect this will be one of the bigger and fancier weddings I'll ever attend, as I've heard the expected guest list is around 200 people. That and last Christmas (i.e. 2007) Caroline was already receiving fine crystal as wedding/engagement gifts.

Before that; however, I need to get done as much homework as possible and then I have to skate my preliminary freeskate test--as long as the judge stays on time. If I wasn't already a little nervous about completing a test in front of a judge it's compounded by the time crunch issue. Originally the test was set for Wednesday afternoon and was switched to today. From what I understand, there were too many skaters for the amount of time that was available on Wednesday.

I'm sure I'll be okay. I have actually passed this test once before, when I was twelve or so. And I'm inclined to think I've improved since then. I'm not worried about my jumps, but I'm a little concerned about my spins. They can be dicey. My upright spin will be fine, but all the others...my camel will be okay too, as long as I get up into the position. The sit, well, I can't get it onto the right edge (which hopefully new blades will fix) and the back spin...it make me a little nervous just thinking about it.

Right. That homework I'm suppose to be doing. Better go.

Ciao,

Andrea