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.

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Crystal's Wedding!

This is a little late, but better late than never right!?

Crystal and Kelly got married July 4 at our church (the same one that John and I got married in) and then had an at home tented reception at her parents' house. It was awesome because you can see the Albany fireworks from the yard. At one point, I think that there were 4 or 5 sets of fireworks going on that we could see from outside the tent.

Crystal is originally from upstate NY and Kelly is from New Hampshire. A couple of years ago they moved together down to Florida. For the wedding, they brought the beach to NY!

The church before the ceremony.

Programs

The first kiss!

The new Mr & Mrs!

The table numbers.

The centerpieces.

The favors- sugar cookies cut into beach things and frosted!

The tent. The lanterns were so pretty!

The menus. I was in love with the shrimp.

Place/table cards.

On the table with the place cards were sparklers! These were so fun later on with the fireworks.

The bridal party. It was really windy & you can tell a bit in this picture.

The cake that my mom and sister made! Notice the cake plate??

Up close.

Cutting the cake.

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The Cake Cutting

Eventually, our DJ (Paul Malo) invited us to do the cake cutting. We had NO idea what to do for this, or how to do it, and Keira was awesome... I asked her what we should do and she just set us up perfectly and took a couple of pictures...


...then we went at it.

And stuffed each others faces.


After we stuffed each others faces, John wiped frosting on my nose, so I had to get him back.




Overall he was pretty good though. I was pretty nervous that he would stuff the whole piece into my face.


And our pretty cvake was destroyed :(

I've got to say- I LOVED our cake. It was so pretty.. and tasted SO good. Amy was awesome. She let us make up our flavors (top- chocolate w/chocolate mousse (and chocolate chips in there, middle- Boston creme, bottom- white w/strawberry filling), and not only that, but she customized her buttercream recipe to match John's mom's recipe that he loves.

The only thing that was a little sad was that cake was just brought out to people and they didn't get to choose their flavor. I had thought that the cake was going to just be laid out onto a table and people could choose their own flavor. Oh well.. I got what I wanted at least :-P


All pictures by Keira Lemonis.

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Meetings and meetings..

Whew- we are in NY. We got here on Wednesday afternoon, got our marriage license and then headed over to the DJs to meet with him. That went well.

Thursday morning it was up early to go to downtown Troy (with pretty much everyone else) and wait for my sister to finish the Turkey Trot so we could get us some Brueggers! Everyone came over to my parents house for dinner, so we didn't have to go anywhere- just clean up and watch some football!

Friday (yesterday) started off with my second shower. It was awesome. A bunch of my cousins were all there and I got to meet and hold one of my cousin's new baby! She was so snuggly. My parents got me the red Kitchenaid mixer!! We got so much stuff- it is very overwhelming.

After the shower, my cousin came over and played some violin for us so we could pick stuff for the prelude and processionals.

John and I headed to the cake lady's house and tried us some cake. Nom nom nom. We tried white w/strawberry filling, chocolate w/a Kahlua filling and a Boston creme that she made up for us. They were so good, we decided to go with all three- one for each layer! Since we are also having the chocolate fondue and the favors are chocolate chip cookies, we got less cake than people. Hopefully that doesn't turn out to be a bad decision,

After the cake lady, we headed right over to the flower shop. I loved the florist- she was only a few years older than me and just seemed so artistic/creative. She had some awesome ideas and is very willing to try and help find flowers that will be cheap but still nice. She had the idea of twisting brown branches on the inside of the mason jars so you don't see the stems, but still get a touch of the brown. Yay- I'm excited.

Last night John and I went to his FIRST hockey game ever! I grew up going to hockey and then I played for several years, so I was super glad to bring him to the rink. It was definitely better than he thought it was going to be- hockey on TV is definitely not as good as in person!

Today I tried on my dress! It was too big. Yikes. Luckily, the seamstress got back from vacation today and we are going to skip church in the am so she can check it out and hopefully get a set of alterations done before I come up in December.

We are about to head to the reception site to play around w/table layouts and ask a ton of questions. Then we are headed to another hockey game- college this time. Yay! Wish us luck!

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Have Your Cake...

Woo hoo! I confirmed with the baker last night. We officially have a cake baker. We will be having a tasting on the Friday after Thanksgiving while we are in NY.

Amy asked us to look at her website and see what flavors we would like to try when we go over to her house. We decided on: Kahlua Fudge with Chocolate mousse filling, white or yellow cake with strawberry filling, and we made a special request for John- a Boston creme flavor of some sort- I'm thinking yellow cake with vanilla custard and chocolate ganache filling. These will all be topped with a buttercream- and Amy's recipe is almost exactly the same as John's mom's and she is willing to test it out on him and see if she needs to modify it for him!

Amy sent me a picture of a cake she did a couple of years ago that is the shape I want- in order to confirm the layer proportions- its perfect!

Amy Mears

Picture this with no green, nothing on top and red ribbon at the bottom of each layer. Yay!

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Cake

I feel like I was a bit productive this weekend, but not as much as I would have liked to have been.. football Saturdays tend to get in the way of my productivity. That and I was all sneezy and the Benedryl put me right out...

Saturday I assembled our insert booklets (more on this to come soon!) and then Sunday, John and I printed the addresses on all of our invitations envelopes, he stamped our return address with a custom stamp and I hand wrote all of the guests/invitees names on the RSVP postcards. Whew. I promise I'll have pictures and posts on these soon...

Today's decision though- the cake. Originally we were going to just buy one. After a couple of quotes at $400 for a 3 tier cake that feeds around 100 people- plain, smooth buttercream with a ribbon at the bottom of each layer- I couldn't come to grips with the cost. My mom and I decided we would just make it ourselves. Its simple and plain- I mean how much easier could it get? Plus- bonus!- we could use John's favorite family buttercream recipe.

Well.. today I got an email from my mom that she didn't think she was up to making the cake (in addition to a couple possible grooms cakes), so I emailed one of the bakers (from my church) back and asked if she was still available.

The plus side to this is that we get to do tastings!! Woo hoo for cake!

I, for some reason, have an aversion to all things curvilinear- this made my decision to have a square cake very easy. We decided on a 3 or 4 tier square cake with smooth buttercream and a simple red ribbon at the base of each tier. That's it- simple & easy.

Some ideas that I liked (the proportions of the layers and/or the colors):

I love the proportions of the layers on this cake, along with its simplicity.
This would probably be my first choice if I went with a round cake.

This cake also has perfect layer proportions- not too wide and nice and tall.
I also love how squared off the edges are.
I doubt we will have flowers between the layers though.

I love how the cake is sitting in grass.
This wouldn't work so well for our winter wedding though I think.

This cake is by the coolest guy ever (besides John...), DUFF!! He cracks me up and just seems like he would be so nice. Since we live so close to Baltimore, I would LOVE to have a cake made by him someday.. hint hint.

I love how architectural this cake is- and the flowers spilling out from between the two layers! *sigh* Since we are using so many tulips, I would LOVE to do this. I am going to ask the florist about it when I meet with her in November.

I definitely want to get a candy mold and make chocolate "H"s (our new last initial) to put on all of the cake plates. I think it would be a cute and easy (cheap!) detail to incorporate.

So there you go.. are you hungry yet?



Several of these images are not credited- if they are yours, or you know whose they are please let me know, so that I can give them credit!!

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