Rick's Wedding Cake Page

Some time last summer, on a hiking trip with our good friends Dave Cornfield and Linda Archer, I opened my mouth a little too far. They had recently announced their engagement, and I offered to make their wedding cake. At the time, this seemed like a lot of fun, I'd done a lot of desserts, but never a wedding cake. Their weren't very many of my friends left who weren't married, and this seemed like an ideal opportunity. Well, it was fun, and I'm glad I did it, but it was pretty stressful for a couple days there, and I think the next one I do may be for Caroline's wedding!

I started planning for this soon after the New Year, about 7 weeks before the event (February 22). I pulled out all my dessert books and started scanning for information on baking large cakes, and on doing buttercream decorations. I dusted off the frosting tip set that Gem had given me for a gift several years back, and started practicing. The Cake Bible was my, well, bible, in making this cake. It had a section at the back on making wedding cakes of all sizes, large scale recipes, hints and tips, and a few disaster stories to which you could say, "well, at least that won't happen to me!"

I invited Dave and Linda over for an official tasting on the 18th of January. I baked a dozen each white, yellow and chocolate brownies, made a mess of buttercreams (apricot, orange, lemon, raspberry, plain, and a chocolate-hazelnut buttercream made with Nutella, which is one of Linda's weaknesses), and a mess of flavored syrups (rum, Grand Marnier, raspberry, Frangelico, etc.). Then we went at it, mixing and matching, sharing favorite combinations, and taking notes. Eventually, after much discussion, the four of us came to an agreement. The bottom layer would be yellow cake with raspberry buttercream for filling, and lemon on the outside, and the top two layers would be yellow cake with Nutella buttercream for filling and orange on the outside. This let Linda sneak in her fave without having a chocolate looking cake! Decorations and such were still up in the air.

A less than flattering photo of me, but you get the idea.

Dave and Linda working hard (or hardly working)

More practice followed. I went out and purchased the 12" and 6" pans I'd need (I already had 9" ones), and I decided that I had better bake a couple 12" layers as a test. Fortunately, our baby group was having a potluck, so we'd have some help eating it! I also used this cake as a way to try out some of the decorating ideas that I had for the cake, so Dave and Linda could see them and tell me what they liked. I'd gotten a mess of cake decorating books from the library, and they'd marked a few pages, from which I selected patterns I thought I might be able to actually make. I also started practicing making the white chocolate roses that would be placed around the base of each layer.

The practice cake, side 1.

The practice cake, side 2.

The trial cake actually came out surprisingly neat, and was eagerly devoured by the baby group, so it passed the flavor test as well. I had both single and double swags, ruffles and shells around the base, and shells, stars, and rosettes around the top. I overlapped the different levels so we could check out the combinations, and each rose is also set in a fan of shells. We spun the cake around and figured out which combination of decorations looked the best, and amazingly enough, all four of us agreed (Great minds think alike, or something like that)! I decided I need more practice doing the ribbons and swags, so I got a dummy cake layer made of Styrofoam to practice swaggering.

About a week before the big day I started work on the real cake. Fortunately, the roses keep very well at room temperature, so I could make them ahead. The roses are made of a mixture of white chocolate, corn syrup, and some orange and yellow food coloring to create the pale peach color. The corn syrup makes the chocolate flexible enough at room temperature to roll out like stiff pie dough.

First you make a small cone of chocolate, then you roll out the rest into a flat sheet about a sixteenth of an inch thick. Then you cut out small circles, one for each petal. I used the back of a frosting tube, which is about 1/2" across.	Then you flatten each petal out at one edge so you get a thin and delicate petal, and fold it around the cone base. I made about 30 roses over a couple of days, 15 petals to a rose, each attached by hand. For the five outer petals I used a wider circle to get larger petals.
Once all the petals are attached, I used a small piece of pointed wire (actually a skewer for sewing up a turkey!) to gently fold out the petals to make a more graceful shape.	The finished product. Plus scraps! Yum...Making wedding cakes is bad for my waistline, and I haven't even gotten to the frosting yet!

My plan called for baking all day Thursday, or at least until we scurried off to be at the rehearsal at 5:30, and then frosting all day Friday. This I figured gave me room to fix any problems that came up, and I had Saturday morning for backup. This turned out to be a good thing. I went to bed early on Wednesday night to get a good night's sleep, but of course I ended up lying in bed thinking and worrying half the night. Sigh . I got up early anyway, and got to work.

The cakes had to be made in two batches, to fit in the mixer. As it was, I had to borrow a 5 qt. Kitchenaid from my friend Eric Berman, as our 4.5 qt. one wasn't quite large enough (fortunately, the recipe mentioned this, so I didn't send batter everywhere). I did the two 9" and 6" layers first, and got them stuffed in the oven:

The 6" layers came out fine, but one of the 9" layers collapsed. I figured out that what happened was a little problem with the mixer. It turns out that the beaters on the 5 qt. model don't quite reach the bottom of the bowl. And therefore some of the batter at the bottom wasn't uniformly mixed. As a result, when I scraped out the bottom of the bowl into the middle of the last pan, there was some heavier stuff there (I actually noticed it was a little different in color, but I didn't think it was that bad. It was). Well, I thought, 3 of 4 isn't too bad. I'll made an extra layer at the end. So I started on the 12" layers. I got those mixed up (carefully scraping the bottom), and into the pans. I put them into the oven, and turned around. There on the counter, was one of the sticks of butter that hadn't made it in. The three that needed warming in the microwave had made it in, but the one that was already close to room temp hadn't. Damn. I pulled the pans out, dumped them back in the mixer, and tried to add the last stick. No go. The butter goes in earlier in the recipe, and adding it later leaves lumps. Geeeeeeeem. Help! Can you run to the store and get me more ingredients? Ouch, 3 of 6 isn't looking so good. I mixed up another batch of batter for the 12" layers (very carefully) and got them in the oven. These came out perfect. Then I quickly whipped up another smaller batch of batter for two 9" layers and got those baked. Phew. I wrapped the layers up as soon as they were cool and we blew across the bridge to the rehearsal. We even made it on time!

Friday morning, after another night of tossing and worrying, and I'm "ready" to frost. The picture above shows all 6 layers (2 each of 12, 9, and 6 inches) ready to go. Plus some of the butter and eggs. Once again, I had a plan, and once again, Murphy was conspiring against me. Each layer needed to go through three stages: 1. Filling and crumb coat. 2. Base frosting layer. 3. Decoration. The cakes needed to be chilled after each step, so I figured I'd alternate. I'd do one step on the raspberry/lemon layer, and then one step on the chocolate/orange layers. This sounded like a great idea, but it got me in trouble. The first stage went fine, I got the cakes filled with their respective inner frostings, and put the thin crumb coat layer on the outside. This is a layer that you use to "glue" down the crumbs of the cake, so they don't mess up the finish for the outer layer. The chilled frosting solidifies, and holds the crumbs in place:

Then I mixed up the lemon for the outer coating and decorations on the bottom layer, and got that on okay. I stuck that layer and the extra frosting in the fridge, and mixed up the orange frosting to do the top two layers. Here's the base layer going on:

Next, I pulled out the lemon frosting, and got it warmed up again, and pulled out the 12" layer for final decoration. Or so I thought. I guess I didn't get the buttercream warm enough, because when I went to beat it again to restore the consistency, it didn't look quite right. In fact, it was starting to separate. I tried to use it a little, and sure enough, I had drips of liquid running down the cake! Aaaaaah! Disaster! This, however, was why I had chilled the layers before decorating. Gem and I quickly decided that the best thing to do was to scrap this batch of buttercream and try again, so I used a spatula to just scrape off the stuff that wasn't working. I immediately pulled the orange frosting back out of the fridge before it got any colder. I kept it at room temp for half an hour while the orange layers were chilling, and then I went to work on them. I got both orange layers decorated, and then took a dinner break. Right after dinner I used the last of the butter and eggs in the house to made another half batch of lemon frosting, and finished the final layer. I was just cleaning up when Linda called to "see how things were going." I'm just glad she hadn't called an hour or so earlier!

Doing the top of the 9" layer. The top of the cake had a shell border around the edge (18 star tip), a scrollwork polygon pattern on the top (6 sides on the 6" cake, and 8 and 12 on the other two), and a lace center in the polygon (#3 round tip). You can see this a little better below.

"Swagging" the 12" layer (again). The toothpicks on the top of the cake are spacers so that my swags would come out even. I've already got the peach ribbon of frosting around the base of the layer, and I'm doing a double swag. The bottom swag is done with a 104 rose/ribbon tip, and I'm overpiping with a 18 star tip in a zig-zag pattern.

Done at last! Notice it's a little dark outside... Now I just have to get it there. And attach the roses, which I decided to do after transportation for safety's sake.

Transportation to Pier 70 was also an issue, as it's a 40 minute drive from our place, over some moderately bumpy roads. To protect the cake, I had each layer in a separate box. Each was on a foil covered cardboard round that was wider than the cake by a bit, so if it slid against the side of the box the cardboard would hit before the side of the cake. I also did some work on the boxes so I could open each box from the side, rather than the top. That way I could slide them in and out, rather than trying to lower them in without touching the frosting. Then we piled the cakes, all our formal cloths, me, Gem, and Caroline (and all her stuff for overnight) into the car. I was glad we had a station wagon at this point! I drove very gingerly over to the bay, and dropped Gem and Caroline off at the Edgewater Inn, where we'd be staying the night. Our room was being used as the changing room for the ladies, so she went to help Linda get ready while I headed off to Pier 70 to deliver the cake. I drove around to the end of the pier, where the event room was, and tried to get in. No luck. Nobody there. Nobody except the photographer, Richard McNamee, who was also trying to get in! I said hello to him, as he was the same man who did our wedding (almost 5 years ago now), and we hung out until the coordinator for Pier 70 showed up (late), a few minutes later. Meanwhile, the cake was sitting in the car, in the sun, on a surprisingly warm (mid 50's) February day. The weather was great for the wedding, but I was sweating about the cake. Fortunately, it wasn't an issue. The cake was fine. I got it out and into the walk-in fridge while I waited for the caterer to set up the table, and then got all the roses in place. The florist arrived, and we got together to put some real flowers on the cake (prettier than mine, but not as tasty). I couldn't resist putting the layers out for a few photos:

The finished 6" layer	The finished 9" layer
The finished 12" layer	The table before the florist got to it. I used three separate towers for the layers so I didn't have to worry about the engineering aspects for stacking them. Sorry dad, foundations are your specialty, not mine!

Then I stuck them back in the fridge during all the pictures and such, so they wouldn't have to sit in the sunny window. The sun was due to set just before the ceremony, so I figured by the time guests were starting to arrive I could bring them back out and they'd be room temperature by after dinner. I was quite gratified to find I was credited in the program, so of course people were asking me about the cake in the receiving line and during dinner. I waited until after things were served to tell most folks about the disasters along the way, though! I saved a few shots for the cake cutting:

The final presentation, complete with Gem's bridesmaid bouquet.

The happy couple!

Ahhh. Now I can relax!

Now according to the Cake Bible, this cake was to serve 150 people. Yeah, right. There were less than a hundred at this wedding, and there were no leftovers! Not a crumb. According to the caterers, all the plates came back clean, and people were lining up for seconds (gotta try both flavors), and thirds (really, it's for my husband who couldn't make it). We served all three layers, as this cake wouldn't keep well (the tradition of keeping the top layer for the first anniversary dates back to when wedding cakes were fruitcakes, which basically keep for millennia), and I promised I'd bake them a small cake for their anniversary.

All in all, it was fun, but it was also stressful and a lot of work. Fortunately, Caroline won't be getting married for a nice long time...