Small wedding cake.

My husband's aunt called last night asking if there was anyway I could throw together a cake for a last min wedding.  The only thing she has been told it that it was for about 30 people.  So since there was no wedding colors or requests.  I went with something I'd been wanting to try for awhile.  Using stencils and royal icing on top of the fondant.  It didn't turn out as perfectly as I'd like, but I learned a TON from it and can't WAIT to try it again.  I might make a just for fun cake this week to try it again!  Getting the royal icing black was the hardest part, of course.  I used an entire container of black powder and half a container of black gel for just 1 cup of royal icing (started with chocolate royal icing).  My husband loved it, how striking the colors were together.  And his aunt said the wedding party liked it.  The only hitch was that the guest list ended up being much bigger than 30, more like 200+!  But the reception also included a full dinner, so hopefully most people ended up with at least a small piece! 

Another wedding cake!

This was the cake I made for the reception tonight. I wish I had gotten a shot of the inside. It was white almond, Sour cream dark chocolate and then white almond again. In between each layer was a pistachio mousse. It was SOOO good. And I made Marshmallow fondant for a change. It was delicious. A nice change from the normal chewy gross fondant. About halfway through the outdoor reception we got one of our famous Texan sized Rain/lighting storms. And even though we were undercover the rain came right on in~ The cake got soaked, and the fondant liquefied a bit and got all stick. Luckily it was near the end of the evening. Even so we had a lot of guest leave without cake and the entire bottom layer is left! Good thing cake freezes well! If it hadn't been for that storm I think there would only have been half of the bottom layer or less left. It was a huge cake, built to feed 154. The brides colors were brown green and white. The decorations were beautiful, the setting was amazing and the food and snack were all green, brown and white. It was really beautiful, even if I did get soaked.

Yellow Texas Rose

So here is the final cake, all she wanted was yellow frosting roses on white frosting, with white cake and white filling. I wanted to go all the way up the bottom layer, with roses, but after putting on the second row I knew it wouldn't make the car trip. I did have quite a few fall off in the car and had to do some damage control once I got there. But in the end it worked out well.
It took 48 cups of batter, 18 cups of buttercream, 12 cups of royal icing, 10 lbs of powdered sugar, but only 24 eggs! And I finally finished of a 50 lbs bag of powdered sugar I accidentally bought at Costco last year!

Yellow roses...

I've been working on this latest cake for a few days, just a little at a time. And now everything is baked, the filling is made and the flowers are almost done drying. So tomorrow I have to level, fill and frost the cakes, Stack and decorate them. And of course get them to the location in one piece and on time. Since I don't have my husband around to help like the other times I've done all this (he was on Christmas break from school when I did my other wedding cakes) it's been interesting getting it all done. So I promised some play by play. Here is the latest, blow by blow of making a cake.

Here are the royal icing roses I've been slowing getting done. I did 3 different colors and 2 sizes each. I did over 130 roses! The first batch took longer than I would have liked, I guess I'm a little out of practise. By the next 2 batches I wizzed through! A couple bit the dust (actually the mouth, my 3rd child ate them!), but 128 are keepers.

The cakes I did over 2 days in 3 inch pans. It creates a much taller cake that way, very elegant. *trick alert* to get an amazingly moist cake you let them cool for 10 mins in the pan- upside down- and then when they cooled enough to touch them- but still very warm, about another 10 mins- you wrap them twice in plastic wrap and freeze them. It freezes all the moisture in, instead of the steam leaving the cake as it cools. Then that them out of the freezer and let them thaw, cut and decorate. Make sure you let them thaw all the way, you don't want condensing on the side of a cake that's been frosted. Then this is the filling, a great mousse recipe that you can adapt to any flavor thanks to the use of pudding! I also have been known to use the extra for a pie!

And last is my 3rd child, the helper, look at the size of that tongue! We get it from my dad!

Another GINOMOUS cake

December 06,

This one was the biggest, tallest heaviest cake yet. Each pillar is 5 inches so you can see that the layers are ALSO 6 inches. I just loved how elegant and regal the extra height make the cake look! From the table to the top of the roses was 32 inches! This bride didn't want fondant so icing the cake smooth was really important. *trick alert* to ice butter cream smooth you boil a big pot of water, stick in 2 of your metal frosting spatulas. Then take one out, quickly wipe it dry, smooth it over the icing- once- and put it back in the boiling water and grab the next one. It's like "ironing" your cake. And works like a charm. In the end I thought it looked as good as a fondant cake, but tasted better, was cheaper and slightly easier to do! Even though fondant is really popular (it's what I had) unless it's an outdoor wedding I'll always suggest doing just the butter cream! This was my first pillar cake, and I was nervous about it falling over, it just doesn't seem as secure as the stacking cakes, but it made it through the wedding just fine, and that's really all that matters! Unlike the 3 days it took me to make a wedding cake a year ago this one only took 1 1/2 days! The decorating WAS simple, otherwise it still would have taken longer, but the baking is the most time consuming part! No short cuts there!

Bridal Shower

May 06

I just fell in love with this design so when one of my best friends was getting married it made the perfect bridal shower cake. I just love this cake, and would actually love to do a wedding cake like this, a bride on one and maybe even a second one with a groom facing the bride. Wouldn't that look amazing. But it wouldn't be super traditional so I don't think I'll ever get that chance, so doing a bridal shower was the perfect opportunity. It is a coconut pecan cake with cream cheese frosting, fondant flowers and a color flow bride. My husband still feels bad that he didn't replace the bulbs in the kitchen in time for me to take this picture. It really doesn't do the cake justice. It was phenomenal.

First wedding cake

December 05

This month I got to do my first wedding cake. It took about 3 days and I learned a lot doing it. Each layer was a different flavor and color. I baked one day, frosted the next and did the fondant the 3rd day. Then I transported the cake and put it together and did the final decorations. The bride designed the cake and said it was perfect. We used real flowers that matched her bouquet and center pieces. *trick alert* when using white on white adding a little ivory keeps the cake from looking flat and washed out. Here I used a bit in the fondant ribbon.