Ramblings of a Mexican Meshuggener: August 2011

I made my first wedding cake! Not on my own I might add, Emma has held my hand the whole way, and we also made our second wedding cake last weekend! Although our labors are dirt cheap I am gaining a wealth of experience in the world of confections. Emma has requested that I don't include any photos of her so I've replaced her face with that of Mr. Yuck, my childhood nemesis (or so my mom tried to convince me of)

This was our very first cake, and oh my goodness-if you ever offer yourself to make someone's wedding cake it's anything but a small undertaking! This took hours upon hours of preparation. Having 1 domestic sized oven I had to bake in several batches in the days leading up to the wedding (freezing the cakes before hand, my cake teacher taught me that it makes the cake moister once it defrosts).

We started out by mixing our gumpaste (which we used to make the roses) to match the sample tie given for the wedding colors.

Once we got the color down we started a-rollin and cuttin out them thar flowers!

Then we rolled the edges to give them that ripped petal look

impaled it with our rose base.

and started wrapping the petals around the base very carefully

Then we repeated that about a bajillion times to make a bajillion rose buds and had to do it about 4 bajillion more times to make full roses. Now this took several days as you have to wait for each layer to dry, and I work a full time job so...you get the idea.

At first we put them in egg cartons to hold their shape which worked out pretty well for the small rose buds...

...but the petals got too crouded and we started putting them in my "holy" ikea kitchen shelving.

We ordered some Damask stencils online at designerstencils.com which has some fabulous supplies. They are more on the spendy side but now we have it for keeps. Now I hope everyone will hire us to make damask wedding cakes so we make it worth its money! Here are some samples we made playing around with the stencils.

The bottom tier of the cake was 16" so we used a heating core the make sure it cooked evenly. there's nothing like a cake baked to perfection at the edges and goo in the middle.

I took the liberty of making my own cake boards. Why buy rediculously over priced circles of fiber when you can make them at home yourself?

I also lined each cake pan with parchment paper, it just makes it so much easier when lifting the cake out of the pan and you don't have to worry about the cake sticking.

The bride requested lemon cake with rasberry filling for all 3 tiers. I don't know about you but i'd be wondering where the chocolate was. Can I get a witness?!