My roommates were getting married in late April and had asked if we could make their cake. Wow! A wedding cake...what a scary thing! We all know that people only remember three things at a wedding: 1) whether the bride's dress was ugly or not, 2) the uncomfortable conversations between strangers at your table and 3) the wedding cake.
That week, the bride-to-be was so stressed out about the wedding planning that she was just a big, hot, crying mess the night before. It was a Saturday and she got ready to go into work that morning. Gin and I decided to do a mock up of her wedding cake so that we could get an idea of how to construct one and also bring the bride-to-be at ease. What an excellent surprise! We got to work as soon as the bride-to-be left the house.
Whenever we start a project, 9 out of 10 times, Gin wants to 'test a new recipe'. This was a three-tier cake and each layer was a different flavor. The bottom was what we call 'Death by Chocolate', the most intense of our chocolate recipes. The middle layer was 'Pistachio'. The top layer was 'Classic White'. We pretty much made a huge batch of cream cheese buttercream and used it for all three. We learned that it tasted best with the Classic White, but didn't go too well with the Pistachio or Death by Chocolate. In the future, I'd probably use Chocolate Ganache for the DBC and a Vanilla Buttercream for the Pistachio.
Baking these suckers and covering each one wasn't so hard. I felt like I was getting better at the fondant thing. Although, I did have a harder time covering the bottom tier because it was so large. But when all was covered, we were met with the task of stacking the cakes.
We never stacked a cake before. How the heck do they do it without the cake collapsing? Well, thank goodness for YouTube videos! We spent about an hour watching a bunch of them on cake stacking and followed the instructions accordingly using wooden dowels, cut to size, and cake boards. We did make a minor mistake...we cut the dowels too short on the bottom tier so the middle tier was weighing down on it a bit. :( But alas, the cake was stacked and centered!
Our next step was to roll out ribbons out of chocolate fondant and wrap them around each tier to conceal the bottom cake edges. What a task! Not only did we have to roll them out long enough to wrap around the diameter of each cake, we had to get the pattern on them pressed consistently without cracking. We must have rolled and re-rolled those things 10 times before getting them to how we wanted them!
The flowers completed the final touches on this cake and we set it up minutes before the roomie came home from her work shift. Our first wedding cake mock up was a success! And we learned alot of lessons along the way:
1) Make sure you cut all your dowels evenly and to the exact height of each cake layer.
2) Knead out your fondant thoroughly to keep it pliable and moist. If needed, microwave it for 5 seconds only before kneading with your hands. the warmth of your hands keeps the fondant from drying out and cracking.
3) Be sure to roll out your fondant a little larger than your cake surface, otherwise your dirty icing will peep through.
4) Test out your cakes with your frostings and fillings to figure out the best tasting combinations.
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