archived: wedding cake round 2

Making this cake is a very long process involving baking, leveling, slicing, crumb coating, cooling, and decorative frosting. Sadly the only part that really matters and that I need to practice is the last part...the decorative frosting! Well I tried a new frosting recipe this time and it turned out MUCH better than last time in terms of taste and consistency. But I still have quite a bit of work to do on my frosting technique. The good thing is that all the little mistakes don't look as glaring once it is all done.

Here is the mess I made making frosting batch number 1 (I made 6 in all...oh yes that means this little cake has over 24 cups of powdered sugar just in the frosting!)



These are the four layers that make up the top layer of the cake just before I add the 'crumb coat'



Here are both layers with their crumb coats cooling in the fridge. The crumb coat is a kind of protective layer of icing that makes the decorative icing easier to apply.



After the crumb coats were cool I was able to apply the basketweave decorative frosting. Here is the final product... We decorated it with Christmas holly to get the effect of what it will look like with flowers on it.

(It looks better if you stand back so this picture gives you that prospective)



Here is a close up just so you can see that I am actually improving over my last attempt!

archived: wedding fabric

I found it!! I saw a fabric in a wedding magazine that I loved and was perfect to use as a 'theme' for our wedding MONTHS ago. I've been in search ever since...and a few weeks ago I actually found it! I was just searching endlessly online one night and I saw it... I couldnt believe it!! YAY!! Anyway... the next task was to find a way to get it...I called every fabric store in Eugene and one of them agreed to order it for me!

I'm soo excited...my mom bought me a whole bolt (18 yards) and I ordered it on Monday...it should be here in a few weeks. We will use it for things like table runners, the guys pocket hankies, ring pillow, to wrap bouquet handles, etc. Its just perfect...poppys are my FAVORITE flower and it has all three of my colors!! OH and...we want to have guests sign a quilt square instead of a guest book and then after the wedding I'll sew them all together to make a quilt...this and some solid fabric will make up the rest of the quilt!

archived: wedding cake round 1

We've been debating about what to do for a wedding cake. We originally were going to make 150 cupcakes, but then I thought it would be weird to try to cut one of those. My newest idea is to try to make a cake to feed about 50 people and make 100 cupcakes. This would still keep it cheap, give me the opportunity to learn to make cakes, and we will have something to cut! SO... today was the first try! My wonderful bridesmaid Lindsey is in town this weekend and I couldn't have done it without her.

These are the cakes for the top layer in the oven...

We had lots of issues with this buttercream...but it looked pretty!

Whip it Lindsey!!!

There are lots of terms unique to cake decorating... Here is the 'crumb coat' for the top layer

Crumb coat for the other layer

I want the cake to have a basketweave pattern...here is our first attempt at actually doing it...not nearly as hard as we thought. It would have been even better with firmer icing!

Here is the final product! Definitely a much more successful attempt than we expected! Our next attempt will mostly focus on the frosting (it was really runny and didn't have enough flavor), but we are pretty impressed!