Making the Wedding Cake...
The Ultimate DIY Project
My mother used to work in a cake shop when she was young and has made numerous wedding cakes over the years, including her own. I grew up watching her make them (and stealing the little frosting roses off her sheets of wax paper). So, I wanted her and I to make my wedding cake together.
We used an orange cake recipe I found on the internet, and the Italian Buttercream Frosting recipe from the wedding cake book listed below. For some reason, our buttercream frosting, though white when we first made it, turned yellow as it sat out for hours while we frosted and decorated it. Luckily my colors were such that it looked okay, and everyone kept saying how great it was that we had something other than the traditional white cake.
The Making of the Cake
The Wilton Cake Leveler is a great thing, but you have to make sure that the cookie sheet you have the cake on is level, LOL. We didn't realize this one was not.
|
Though we bought the Wilton Baking Core that's recommended by the book, we forgot to use it, so one of the 14 inch cakes was not done in the middle. We ended up cutting the middle out and filling it with the tops of the 6 inch cakes that we had trimmed off with the cake leveler.
|
Cake Topper
We had a custom cake topper made by Lynn's Little Creations on Etsy.
Kevin and Sasha have really bonded since they met, but that doesn't stop her from stealing his poptarts when he's not looking (or, the other night, stealing his chips right from under his nose.) So it was a perfect way to incorporate her into the wedding.
Kevin and Sasha have really bonded since they met, but that doesn't stop her from stealing his poptarts when he's not looking (or, the other night, stealing his chips right from under his nose.) So it was a perfect way to incorporate her into the wedding.
Resources
I purchased the book Wedding Cakes You Can Make by Dede Wilson from Amazon.com. This book has everything you need to make a wedding cake -- recipes for various combinations of cake, filling and frosting, very thorough instructions on baking, constructing and transporting the cake, and instructions on simple decoration. This book does not have instructions for making flower decorations using fondant or frosting, so you will want to take some classes or that type of thing.
I will warn you right now, don't buy this book a week before your wedding. Though the book is very thorough, it is arranged in such a way that you can't just open the book up to page 63 and make a cake. There are base recipes in the front of the book, then the flavored cakes in the back of the book reference the base recipes, such as "Make the yellow cake recipe, but don't add vanilla and add orange essensia wine". So you need to flip back and forth between sections alot. Also, if you want to deviate from the cakes in the book (such as making different sized tiers or round instead of square), there will be some converting of amounts, etc. I would recommend sitting down for several hours and pulling out everything you need, and then creating your own written recipe that you can have in front of you.
For the record, the practice cake I made using the recipe from this book was very dry. It mentions that in the book, and you are supposed to use moistening syrup on the cake, but as I was putting it on, I felt that it was making the cake fall apart. In the end, because I didn't have time to mess around with making a lot of test cakes, I chose a different cake recipe. However, the Italian Buttercream Frosting recipe is to die for, and it has VERY thorough instructions on baking, constructing and transporting.
I will warn you right now, don't buy this book a week before your wedding. Though the book is very thorough, it is arranged in such a way that you can't just open the book up to page 63 and make a cake. There are base recipes in the front of the book, then the flavored cakes in the back of the book reference the base recipes, such as "Make the yellow cake recipe, but don't add vanilla and add orange essensia wine". So you need to flip back and forth between sections alot. Also, if you want to deviate from the cakes in the book (such as making different sized tiers or round instead of square), there will be some converting of amounts, etc. I would recommend sitting down for several hours and pulling out everything you need, and then creating your own written recipe that you can have in front of you.
For the record, the practice cake I made using the recipe from this book was very dry. It mentions that in the book, and you are supposed to use moistening syrup on the cake, but as I was putting it on, I felt that it was making the cake fall apart. In the end, because I didn't have time to mess around with making a lot of test cakes, I chose a different cake recipe. However, the Italian Buttercream Frosting recipe is to die for, and it has VERY thorough instructions on baking, constructing and transporting.
Though the Dede Wilson book contains very basic decorating techniques, it doesn't contain anything about making flowers with fondant or frosting, so we got the Wilton Decorating Cakes book for my mom to brush up on her flower skills. She knew how to make roses and a couple other types of flowers, but this book had a wide variety of different flowers. The cool thing about frosting flowers is that they can be made ahead of time and just stuck onto the cake. They are kind of old school, normally you see fresh or gumpaste flowers nowadays, but I grew up watching her make frosting flowers, so that's what I wanted on my cake.
|
I scoured the web for pictures of cakes that I liked, and instructions on how to make dark colored frosting (I knew it was a challenge because my mom had trouble with it when she did my brother's cake.) For what it's worth, here's some information I found. In the end, it was still really hard, though she did get a decent color while experimenting at home, and with the burgundy table cloth under the cake, it made the flowers look more the correct color than they looked just on their own.
Making burgundy frosting:
From Wilton Forums
Another post from Wilton forums
Color mixing tips
.
Making burgundy frosting:
From Wilton Forums
Another post from Wilton forums
Color mixing tips
.
Things I Learned
The Kitchenaid 5 quart mixer is the coolest thing ever. You MUST have one of these to make the Italian Merengue Buttercream, a hand mixer will kill you.
If you don't know anything about meringue -- yes, even a little tiny bit of egg yolk will ruin it, as will using a plastic bowl. Use glass or metal.
Wilton Cake Release doesn't really work. Use waxed paper.
Filling squeezes out the sides of the cake with each layer of weight you add on.
Use the wooden dowels to stabiize the cake as described in the book, including the tall one that goes down through the middle of the whole cake. Transporting was a piece of cake. errr... haha.
If you have a dog, don't forget to de-hair the car before you put the cake in it! Fathers are good for this.
If you don't know anything about meringue -- yes, even a little tiny bit of egg yolk will ruin it, as will using a plastic bowl. Use glass or metal.
Wilton Cake Release doesn't really work. Use waxed paper.
Filling squeezes out the sides of the cake with each layer of weight you add on.
Use the wooden dowels to stabiize the cake as described in the book, including the tall one that goes down through the middle of the whole cake. Transporting was a piece of cake. errr... haha.
If you have a dog, don't forget to de-hair the car before you put the cake in it! Fathers are good for this.
The Inspiration Cake
This is the inspiration photo for my cake. I found it on Flickr, but don't remember who made it, and couldn't find it again when I went looking for it.
My cake had buttercream instead of fondant because I don't like the way fondant tastes. Also, the flowers were not made out of sugar-paste, they were made out of frosting, which is the old school way of doing it, and how my mom always did it when I was growing up.
This is the inspiration photo for my cake. I found it on Flickr, but don't remember who made it, and couldn't find it again when I went looking for it.
My cake had buttercream instead of fondant because I don't like the way fondant tastes. Also, the flowers were not made out of sugar-paste, they were made out of frosting, which is the old school way of doing it, and how my mom always did it when I was growing up.
Other cakes I liked:
Filling - to look at, or to eat?
I love how this cake looks, but this is one of those cakes that's meant to be admired for its beauty and not eaten. Who could stand that much buttercream? There's more frosting than cake there. Though I like the tri-colored look, but it's not a practical cake. On my practice 6" cake, I tried to do a bavarian cream filling, but it squeezed out the sides as I added the weight of the torted layers. It also caused the layers to slide around, though that could have been remedied by putting a couple dowels through them to keep them together. In the end, for simplicity's sake, we did not torte the layers, so we only had one layer of filling for each tier. We just used the same frosting that was on the outside of the cake for the filling. |