Finally! The culmination of months of practice, weeks of stress, and many sleepless nights of worry. I can breath a little easier and actually sleep at night. The big wedding cake is done, the wedding is over, and there were no frantic phone calls concerning a fallen cake.
Sometime in January a bride and her mother came into Ton of Fun asking if we would do wedding cakes, and then all the fun began. I have been practicing for this cake ever since, and I found many opportunities to improve my skills.
First I had a couple of birthday cakes in January. A 1st birthday! This cake was fun. The mother wanted a small smash cake for the baby and a cake for all the guests. I had some fun with this one and formed most of the decorations out of fondant. She did not want the cake covered in fondant, and I don’t really blame her. My buttercream icing tastes so much better than even the marshmallow fondant.
Then we had Sam’s birthday. She invited all her friends over to watch a movie and asked that her cake be shaped like a ticket stub.
The next week I had two bigger cakes to do. We set up a booth from Ton of Fun for Kodiak’s annual Wedding Expo. Melanie had an idea that she wanted for the cake and it was perfect because it followed the idea that was requested for the big wedding cake. I also loved the cake topper that Melanie had ordered, it fit perfectly for Kodiak.
Like I said, that was a busy weekend. I set up the cake for the Expo Saturday morning and went to teach my class as the college. When I got home I had another big cake to do. This one was for a 40th Wedding Anniversary. The librarian at the college had asked me to do this after letting me into my class room one day. I was really excited to do this cake for her and to get the extra practice. She loved it, and went on about how yummy it was. I love hearing that kind of praise. I don’t think a cake is worth doing if it doesn’t also taste as good as it looks.
I managed to get a couple of weeks break, and then I was at it again. This time for a boy in our primary. I had known that Albert’s birthday was coming up, so I offered to make his cake in exchange for getting my hair highlighted; and Silvia was as excited about this deal as I was. They were taking a couple of his friends out to the shooting range, so that was the theme that I went with. I figured that if these kids were anything like mine, the cake might be wasted on them. My kids gobble down ice-cream, but don’t often ask for seconds on cake. So I cut out some sugar cookies to dress up the cake a little and add an extra little treat for the kids.
After than I did get more of a break for a couple of weeks. On March 1 I made another little practice cake for the wedding, just a single layer and had the bride, groom, and bride’s mother try some. I was concerned that they like it if I was going to really charge them. Plus, a wedding cake is a really big deal, so I wanted to make sure they were happy. The groom raved that he normally did not like cake at all, but he loved mine. I really hope he was not just saying that, but the bride and her mother was convinced.
During the next couple of weeks we were busy moving the store to our new location and I was trying to not worry about the up coming cake as the day continued to draw near. I had ordered the separator sets from Wilton the first part of February and they were not here yet, so I was nervously checking the mail each day praying for a packing slip.
Meanwhile, I had a call for another cake order. This one was for Wednesday March 15, just four days before the wedding. That is ok, I could do this, and it would be extra practice. The party there was Nerf War, and she requested a two tier cake. She did not want fondant, so I covered the cake with buttercream, but I could not think of any other way to make to decorations. Chad had suggested just buying some Nerf darts, but I really wanted everything to be edible. I formed each dart by hand, and then used Connor’s dart gun as a model to form the guns. The darts all looked very real, and one even fit into Connor’s gun after it had dried, but was not solid enough to fire.
So Friday dawned and bright and early I heated up my oven for a marathon baking day. I had finally received the hardware I ordered the day before (from the order I placed the first part of February) as well as the second order I had to place and have sent 2 day air. I knew there was a possibilities that the first order would come in, but could not take the chance that it would not. I had anticipated needing 10 cake mixes, so I bought 12 for good measure. I wish that I could say I make my cakes from scratch, but they don’t turn out consistently, and for this I needed consistence. The cake sizes were to be 14”, 12”, 10”, and 8”. I began with the 14” cake which required 2 mixes for a 2” deep pan. It baked for an hour and came out of the oven perfect. At least it was perfect right up until the moment when I was getting ready to dump it out of the pan and it went onto the floor. Not a great start to the day, but I mixed up another set of cakes and began again.
The round pan set that I have is 3” deep, and I love them. It means less baking to get a taller cake. Unfortunately the biggest pan I have is a 12”, and I needed a 14” for this cake. Melanie had a 14” pan that I barrowed, but it was only 2” deep. She had suggested baking at least 2 and possibly 3 of the 14” cakes to get the height, so I started with that. Once I got going I realized that to get everything else to match up I would need to bake 3 of the 14” cake and 2 of all the rest. My oven was running non stop from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm. As I said, it was a marathon baking day! Chad helped me get cake boards cut from some scrap plywood sitting in the shed, and I had everything ready to go for the next morning. It still turned into a really late night as I decided that I would get the 14” cake assembled and iced smooth. This would be that much less that I would need to do Saturday morning, and I was starting to worry that I would not have enough time. I wanted to get the cake set up around 1:00 to make sure that there was plenty of time and I would not be rushing to finish for the 5:00 wedding. I got the first tier of the cake assembled and set it out in the entry way to keep cool for the night, finally got the kitchen partially cleaned up and went to bed around mid night. However, I woke up at 4;30 with my stomach twisted in knots and got up to begin another long day.
I checked on the big cake to make sure that nothing had happened to it during the night. I was terrified that I would need to redo the who thing and I knew that they was no time for that. That cake had faired well during the night, and I started to prep everything to be ready to begin again once daylight appeared. The next several hours were spent cutting more cake boards, whipping up batch after batch of icing, and going to Walmart for drill bits since our were currently MIA. I would need to drill holes in the cake board so that I would be able to push a dowel through the bottom two cake layers to prevent them from shifting.
Once everything was ready I was set to begin. I carefully assembled each cake layer measuring to keep everything level. This cake was going to extraordinarily tall and needed to be perfectly level. Chad continued to measure and cut dowels for each layer of cake as I assembled and iced each one. By lunch time he took the kids to grab some lunch while I put on the finishing touches. By the time they were back I had it all assembled and we were amazed at the height, sitting on the table the cake towered above me. Now I had a chance to jump in the shower before delivering the cake to the reception hall. I was scared to death that it would all collapse during transition, but we boxed up each piece separately, and had put in as many supports as we could to make sure it would hold the weight.
We arrived in the reception hall to see it all beautifully decorated and easily found the spot for the cake. It took us each a couple of trips to carry everything up the flight of stairs, but it all made it in one piece with almost no touch up required.
It looked good set up, but I wished there were some flowers to add a little more color and definition to the cake. They had planned on filling in the space between the spiral plates with flowers, but the one ordered had not turned out and the mother was still trying to get something worked out. My part was finished and we walked away with a prayer that it was still be standing when the reception started. For the rest of the night my heart stopped each time the phone rang. But 8:30 I figured the reception was over and I could relax.
We were amazed when we sat down and figured the numbers that went into the cake.
16 cake mixes (including the one that went on the floor)
2 quarts of oil
4 dozen eggs
There was over 20 lbs. of frosting using:
12 lbs. of powdered sugar
6 lbs. of butter
3 lbs. of shortening
2 1/2 lbs. of raspberry jam for the filling
Chad says never again will I do a cake this big, and at the moment I agree. I am gratified to know now that I can, even in my teeny- tiny kitchen. And we all survived it, this time.
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