Next stop...Cape Cod

So I've just returned from a run to the market for the materials I'll need for my brother's wedding next weekend on Cape Cod. They're expecting about 100 guests for the big day. I'm kinda hoping that Friday will be grey and cool like today because we're going to have to transport the cake to the Cape and there's a huge melt-factor if it's too hot or sunny out and we're sitting in traffic. The day of the event there will be a shaded area for the cake, so that's a plus. The bride wants to keep the flavors simple, so we'll be doing vanilla for a few tiers, and chocolate for the others. The bottom tier will be half chocolate and half vanilla. There isn't an 18" pan that's a complete circle; you need to make it in half circles, so we'll use the natural split to vary the flavors. The 14" tier will be Styrofoam as the bottom tier alone will serve 100 guests and we don't want to have too much left over. The 10" tier will be chocolate and the 6" top tier will be vanilla. Decorations will be simple, ivory colored fondant (I broke down and bought some because I'm really afraid that the marshmallow will melt. It's not the Wilton brand, so it actually tastes really good. Brad said it was pretty close to the taste of the MM fondant.) with ivory ribbon at the bottom and a bead of pearls at the bottom of the ribbon. Erica's florist will be providing flowers, hydrangeas I believe. Photos of the process will follow shortly.

And here it is...

Brad had already emailed the vineyard cake photos before I did that last post. Didn't realize it though. So anyway, here is the topper for the vineyard cake. Please pretend you don't see the white cardboard under the cake. That was just so I could move the cake around before assembling it. There was no visible white cardboard on the finished project. I'm going to have to get a photo of the entire cake from the shower coordinator as I couldn't put it together until it arrived at the venue. However, if you're good at imagining, you can probably picture it assembled. Basically, the bottom tier was the same as the top tier except for the size. 14" base tier - 10" top tier is shown. Enjoy!

Shower Cakes

Two cakes this weekend. Photos will follow soon. Saturday's cake was for a shower that was being held at a vineyard. The coordinator of the event wanted something elegant and simple that fit with the theme of the shower. So, we decided on off-white buttercream with a wine colored ribbon around the bottom edge of each tier. Then, piped over the buttercream we did grapes, vines, and leaves in almost the same shade of buttercream. Brad suggested we add a little color to the piped icing to make it stand out just a little. Had some trouble with the piping icing. It was very warm and I used a butter/shortening combo. But enough extra sugar helped fix that problem. The bride requested yellow cake with raspberry filling and lemon-flavored buttercream.
Today's cake is for another wedding shower. This one has a beach-y/summer-y/fun theme. So we're going with a 12" tier topped with a 10" tier. Then, I found a rather unorthodox topper for the cake. I was really struggling with design for this one. The problem was that I didn't want to re-do a design I'd already done for someone else, so I needed to incorporate elements of the beach wedding cake without copying it. Ended up finding a birdhouse at Christmas Tree Shops that's shaped like a sand castle. I figure if I use some flowers and chocolate shells in a creative enough fashion, I can make it work. Plus, the bride-to-be gets a new birdhouse out of it. I'll put parchment under the castle to keep it from touching the cake, but otherwise I won't have to do anything special. It just works!! Hopefully someone at the event will be able to take some decent photos, as my live-in photographer is working at a wedding today and had to leave before the cake was finished. This one's another marble with vanilla buttercream.

Baseball Birthday Cake!

For your viewing pleasure today, we have before and after shots of Baseball Cake. The cake is French Vanilla with red raspberry filling. The icing is butter cream - vanilla with some almond flavor.

Daisy Cake!

Here's the most recent project. This one was for a bridal shower. It's a ten inch round at the bottom - marble cake with butter cream icing and a six inch round at the top - yellow cake with butter cream icing. There are pillars holding the top cake about an inch off of the bottom one. I wanted to put more space in there but the daisies didn't want to stack. As suggested in one of the Wilton Year Books, there's parchment under the daisies on both cakes. I used a blob of frosting in the middle of the parchment to keep the flower stems steady. There was a slight snafu on the way to the event and the six inch shifted in its box. Thankfully there was a spatula in the kitchen, as I neglected to bring a travel kit.
I'm working on trying out some new cake recipes. Thinking of picking up a copy of The Cake Mix Doctor. I'd like to be able to offer more flavors than are available in a box, but I'm still not sold on from scratch cakes.

Thanks for waiting...

Here's a photo of the wedding cake I made for Nicole and Corey. It is a French vanilla cake with French vanilla butter cream icing. The seashells are white chocolate. There is fondant under some of the sand to keep the paint from the fence and chairs out of the cake/frosting that people would be ingesting. The sea grass was plastic; not sure what its intended purpose was, but after thorough washing, its new purpose was cake decoration! The sand is brown sugar.

Stay tuned for photos of the wedding shower cake I'm working on for next Saturday.

Please hold...

Well, my first wedding cake is finished and has been delivered. I won't have pictures for this one until...well, I don't know when. In the mean time, consider these photos the blog version of the type of music you hear when you're on hold.
The blue spotted one was for Brad's grandmother's birthday; the sailing one was for my grandfather's 90th birthday cake.