Project: Wedding Cake

You guys.. I made a wedding cake. Yeah it was back in June, but I am still proud.

My sister got married June 22 at my parents' lake house in Virginia. This was definitely a DIY wedding. In January she asked me to make the cake and after perusing her Pinterest board, I came up with this sketch:

We tweaked the size and flavors a little bit, but for the most part it stayed the same concept. 

Top 6"- Yellow cake with fudge buttercream

Middle 9"- Yellow cake with strawberry buttercream filling (it took me SO LONG to get a good yellow cake recipe. Seriously the practice cakes were all yellow and I ended up tweaking various recipes I found to get what I needed. The strawberry filling was a last minute change up and I spent a weekend or two testing and trying to make a filling that was sufficiently pink and strawberry tasting without being too watery.)

Bottom 12"- Chocolate cake with peanut butter buttercream filling (this is my standby and didn't require practice.)

I practiced several cakes over the spring- different sizes, flavors, fillings, and the fondant. By June I had so many lists and schedules for this stupid cake that I could have filled a notebook.

I decided to make the basic cakes at home, level them, fill them and cover in the base layer of white fondant and then transport, I would decorate on Saturday morning. The drive to Virginia is about 5 hours and I was SO WORRIED about it collapsing or even melting in the sun in the car.

John created this transportation device for me so they wouldn't slide:

Then they were covered in a loose blanket and we stuck some ice packs under the blanket. After a nerve wracking drive down to Virginia, we made it! Cakes in tact!

We left the cakes on the kitchen island in the boxes while we all did the rehearsal and went to dinner (Homeplace! yum!). When we got back at 9:30/10 at night some was amiss on the kitchen counter...

Yes, that IS a giant cat print smack in the middle of the cake!

You guys, I wanted to kill my sister's cat. All of the stupid work and stressing at home about the fondant being perfectly smooth and pretty and then the worry about transporting the cake. Whatevs- he crushed my dreams.

I couldn't look at it or think about it and went to bed. Saturday morning I tried to figure out the best course of action. I put my old school play-doh experience to work to fill the holes as best I could.

This was the bottom layer that would at least be covered in the center by upper layers and the whole layer was covered in sanding sugar.

Trying to smooth it back out..

Luckily, once the sanding sugar was on the cake it disguised the holes and patches pretty well. I could still tell, but we just made sure that side faced the back.

I made John do the middle layer with the criss-cross on it. The measurements seemed like something an engineer should do.

Then I took back over to do the finishing touches. I added edible pearls around each layer to finish it off.

Voila! Inside finished cake. We didn't want to move it outside too soon so that it wouldn't melt (it was June in Virginia!), but it also had to go outside before the ceremony so it would be in place after the wedding. Yeah.. I made John carry it outside too.

She used the same wooden cake stand that I had my dad make for my wedding and that our cousin Crystal used after me.The stand has quite a wedding record now!

Glad the photographer got a decent picture of the cake! It looks a little lopsided but it wasn't, I swear.

Cake cutting.

Apparently the amount of cake we had we still more than enough for 80ish guests. We had about half of the middle layer and the bottom layer left. We froze the top for their anniversary.

Cake destruction.