A few months ago, a very dear friend, who will be getting wed this weekend, (wed as in married, not shortform for wednesday), asked me if I could bake her wedding cake. The initial reaction, was, "Wow, I am honored that you would entrust me with such a task". And that was six months ago, so I figured, hey, what the heck, I'll have time to attend cake decoration classes, cake baking classes, etc in that time, to prime myself up for this gargantuan task. As it turns out, 6 months flew by faster than you can say, FONDANT, and here I am, facing this mountain of flour, eggs, butter.... very stressed. So I am writing this, so that yall can cheer me on to the finishing line.
Anyway, yesterday, before heading off to the gym, I had to assemble together a birthday cake for my little niece, who wanted a butterfly cake.
I didn't want to use the usual butter icing method, with butter cakes or chocolate cakes, so I took a risk, and used fresh whipped cream instead. The cake is basically the chocolate oreo cake that I posted here earlier. I found out that whipped cream is not an easy medium to use for decoration....especially real dairy whipped cream. And coloring it, AIYO, made it into a flowy stream of pink mush. Very stressful. Nevertheless, thankfully 5 year olds aren't too picky about their cakes, and as long as its colorful, I guess can get away with it. The cake itself of course is quite nice to eat.After the birthday party, it was time to embark on my wedding cake. Actually I had already spent 1½ hours the night before kneading about 5kg of fondant (sugarpaste) icing, which comprises about 5kg icing sugar, loads of liquid glucose, glycerin, gelatine, AND a workout equivalent to an hour of body pump!!! AHHH, now I know why my thumbs are aching!!! I'll never make it as a masseur.
Decided to get the bottom tier of the 3 tier cake out of the way. It is a 14" diameter pan, which is 3-3½ times the volume of a normal 8 or 10 inch pan. The batter had to be made in two batches, as the mixing bowl could not accommodate that much ingredients.
In short, I used 5 blocks of butter, ie, 1.25kg, 1½ kg self raising flour, 1 kg sugar, 20 eggs, 1 litre milk, 1 bottle of vanilla essence, and the equivalent of a half hour shoulder workout. Had to stay up till 1 am watching downloaded episodes of Desperate Housewives, as the cake went into the oven at 10.30, and took that long to cook. ie, nearly 2½ hours. Now I worry it might have been overcooked, as the crust looks a tad hard.....behold, the finished cake. Stay tuned for further developments.
8 comments:
hmm..how come u didnt use fruit cake for the wedding cake? will definitely be more solid for the support of the tiers. and i thought it was a custom for the couple to keep the highest tier for their 1 year anniversary.
wow, what a gargantuan task indeed! *kagums*
good luck, have fun decorating it, will look forward to the updates eagerly!
p/s: can give your fondant recipe or not? mine uses liquid glucose and egg white, no glycerine or gelatine... would like to try yours to compare.
anon: yar, couple din want fruit cake...thankfully actually. for that size bottom tier fruit cake, it will take 6 hours to cook.
snowdrop: yup, will post the fondant recipe for you.
hl: ;)
Wow, fatboy, a real layer layer wedding cake! Cool man, I too can't wait to see how it goes along and especially the finished look!
"whips out pom-poms to cheer*
Like I said in my blog - I have the latest BBC Good Food mag that talks abt baking wedding cakes. It's a 3 tier one with different flavours: fruit cake for traditional, zingy lemon syrup cake and chocolate cake.
They put marzipan on the fruitcake one and buttercream for the choc one plus lemon curd for the zingy lemon one. Then they coated it with the fondant and scattered rose petals around it. Maybe u can consider the rose petal thingy - will be nice depending on the colour scheme. And based on the mag, they have these dowels which look like plastic sticks to stick on the cakes so they are easily stackable. Not sure if the AWWeekly also has that.
The best person to contact on fondant/sugarpaste is Teepee from http://www.tpcalcake.net/. She is an expert in dealing fondant. If u need urgent help, u can call vide ms. jess. Good luck!
thanks spot.
boo...i've been reading various literature (had 6 months to learn, left it to the last minute), and am getting confuser and confuser by the minute. the plan is for bottom layer to be vanilla butter, and the top two tiers, chocolate butter. i was just gonna stack em one on top of another, with some skewers to prevent sliding....based on the engineering principles of "piling". (i am a retired civil engineer, btw). then, to my horror, some books say that every layer needs a cake board in between... shock horror!! but yet ANOTHER book seemed to omit the cake boards in between stacked tiers. AAAAAAAAIEEEE!!!!
hahaha, I did not know u're a r'td civil engineer. Now u mention it, u are suppose to add those sticks and a board to keep it level.
Nvr mind, I guess skewers can support it but how will it look when u dismantle it?
i think whether or not you have a cake board in between depends on the 'ketegapan' of the cake? as in if the cake is quite solid then can just stack, but if cake is soft, then need support?
never attempted anything quite so exciting before... show us the step by step developments ya? :)
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