6 posts tagged “wedding”
Entirely tired and grateful that the wedding is over – at least as far as I am concerned. The kids may still be there dancing away, I don’t know. I spent a couple days making a wedding cake and we demolished that thing in less than 10 minutes. This is the first wedding cake I’ve done since I left the bakery. It came together very nicely.
I think it may have been the best tasting cake I have ever made. After my conversation with the bride about the flavors she wanted I tested out a number of things. Banana cake was new to me, but it turned out beautifully. I also kind of “invented” a filling for the white cake. It was white chocolate almond ganache. And I used some vanilla bean paste in it. Oh! Yum! So of the six tiers two were chocolate with crème de mint filling. Two were white cake with white chocolate almond filling and the last two were banana cake with butter cream filing.
Once I got my knives on that cake it came apart easily and away we went. I cut that cake up and hubby helped and we demolished that thing in no time flat. I didn’t even take the time to look up and say “hi” to the people I knew that were at the wedding.
It was a beautiful location, the bride and groom were beautiful and everything was gorgeous. It was just too hot, and too loud. As the evening wore on the temp outside cooled off and it became really nice. Inside it was really hot and the music kept inching louder and louder. I am not a loud noise person! We tried to communicate some at the cake table, telling people what the cake flavors were but you had to yell to be heard and sometimes someone would put their mouth right by my ear and I still couldn’t make out what they were saying. As I walked by a couple of 50 something folks sitting quietly at a table, I realized they were both wearing ear plugs. Too funny! Next time I’ll know.
The cake was beautiful, it tasted great, the people were happy and enjoying the celebration. And the bride and groom are hopefully well on their way to their honeymoon. All is well with the world.
I am making a wedding cake. It's my first one ever.
Well, that's not entirely true. I've made so many wedding cakes I've lost count years ago. I made my first cake in the late 80's - maybe 88? Not sure. And most of the time I'm pretty good at it. I'm finally out of the bakery so when someone wants a wedding cake I get to bake the thing myself.
Well… this afternoon I started baking the wedding cake. I'm doing it at church because there are two huge ovens and other great equipment and lots of room. So tonight I am realizing that I screwed this cake up every which way. WHAT?! Am I NEW at THIS? WHAT IS my problem?! (Same as usual – my back is killing me!)
So… I made the banana cake and then a little while later realized that I had too many bananas left over. Hmm… so I cut into the banana cakes and they look fine, it’s just that they don’t have the planned amount of bananas in them.
So… I made the white cake and then a little while later realized (yeah, this sounds familiar so far) that I had the pudding mixes left over. Hmmm… I had intended to use a white chocolate pudding mix in each batch and there they are sitting on the counter top just laughing at me. So the white cake is missing its white chocolate, the banana cake is light on bananas. I think I managed not to screw up the chocolate so far. But there is still time.
When I arrived at the church kitchen to work there was the Mother of the Groom there with her stuff all over the work space. Ok, so I had reserved the space but that doesn’t really mean anything. And the parents of the Groom are paying for the cake. I’m not a big fan of having the client watch the cake making process. I'm already feeling a little strange toward her because she's done a number of things to try to change the order away from what the bride asked for. I had never thought of her as being overbearing or anything but I have observed her making decisions without the input of the bride or groom. I guess I'm working from the bias that it's their wedding. But families are different. I wasn't real keen on starting the wedding cake with her in the kitchen. I already feel a little like I'm going behind her back because I've chosen to take instruction from the bride rather than then her on a few details. She kept putzing around and didn’t leave until I was well into the process. And when I pulled out the olive oil I thought she was gonna freak! Seriously! You should have seen her face!! Olive oil is good for you and I think it does something earthy, rich and marvelous in cake. Not that I could really tell the difference between a canola and olive oil cake in a blind taste test. But anyway. I was glad when she finely left, I found her presence there really distracting.
Oh, did I mention... I knocked two dozen jumbo eggs off the counter on to the floor - kersplat! They were still in their boxes so I only lost a few, but boy that is the stupidest feeling in the world.
I consider baking a cake as part of the creative process as much as anything else I do. I use a cake mix but I don’t follow the instructions on the box. Over the years I’ve developed a formulation that has worked very nicely for me. I add things and subtract things. All that to say, this is a cake mix cake, but it is better than the usual cake mix result. (And cake mix cakes are usually better than scratch cakes, they are lighter and the texture is finer.) Right now I'm feeling protective of that formula. And the mother of the groom peppered me with questions. How many times in the course of a conversation does one have to repeat that the details of my recipe will remain a mystery?! I wanted to just tell her that I wouldn't be answering that question just like I didn't answer her the first five times she asked the question.
The commercial dish washer was malfunctioning and it was very distracting. I did’t know what it was doing, but it was really loud and driving me crazy. I had to call hubby to help with that one. He walked in, pushed one button and there was instant silence. Grrrrrr! I was grateful for the relief from that racket but annoyed that it was that simple. If he had told me to push that button on the phone – I could have attained the blissful silence myself. That thing has a three minute cycle. I guess the dishes that were in there for 30 minutes could be considered clean.
And the back is killing me again today. It doesn’t make sense but there ya have it. And I got the lecture from hubby about how something is seriously wrong with me, the little tiny bit of work I’ve been doing shouldn’t result in this big pain… yibidy yibidy. ‘Little bit of work’ my a$$. And it's not that I didn't ask for help this time, I did. He thinks I’ve got to go back to the doctor and on and on he went. I’ve been to the Doc and after a whole pile of tests they don’t know any more about it then they did to begin with. So… what do I have to gain by going back there? I know I could blow another $1000 on tests, and that’s WITH health insurance. I’ve been hitting the pain meds, but clearly not enough because tonight I forgot the bananas and dropped the eggs. And even though I took a cute little blue (not viagra) pill, I'm still really feeling it. What's a girl to do?!
Hmmm… just another day here in the loony bin.
This cake went by so quickly that I hardly remember that I made it. The highlight is the fondant bow on the top. I made the loops early in the week and they had powdered sugar dots on them. Boss Lady fretted all week that the powered sugar wouldn't come off and I just told her it would be fine and not to worry about it. (Like telling Bush to complete an intelligent sentence with proper pronunciation.) In retrospect I should have gone over and cleaned one loop off so that she could see that it was going to be fine and quit worrying about it but I didn’t. Anyway, the powdered sugar came off fine and the cake came together nicely. The colors were gold and burgundy but I called it peanut butter and jelly. The consensus around the bakery was that those colors weren’t anything special. But the cake turned out fine. With this cake and the one last weekend, I am really tired of doing swirls.
The bride brought us a napkin with a really pretty monogram on it. So I made a fondant medallion and carefully copied the monogram, bit by tedious bit. It is hand painted on the dried fondant with a mixture of vodka, food color and luster dust to match the color of the ribbon. I wish I would have gotten a photo of the napkin I copied but it is there on the table on the lower left of the photo. The reception was in a barn on a lake in a rural area, very picturesque. And the barn was decorated beautifully with lots of flowers and those pretty blue table cloths. I was happy with how the cake turned out. As far as wedding cakes go, the kind with ribbon and a few simple borders are just about as easy as it gets. Carefully place a few flowers and it’s done.
I decorated a wedding cake this weekend. It was the first one of the season. The bride wore a white gown with apple red beaded embroidery. She wanted the cake to match. So I studied the photographs of the dress and set about making an icing version of the design. I’m happy with how it turned out. It would have been prettier with lots of flowers and greenery on top, but they chose that tiny little figure for the top. Oh well, it still looked pretty good. I wish I could have seen her in the dress with the cake. I’ll bet that was nice.
The groom’s nickname is “Yeti” because he is apparently rather hairy. So they asked for a groom’s cake that had a yeti on the cake, like Harry and the Henderson’s. So I looked up Harry and put him on the groom’s cake. I was happy with how he turned out looking kind of cute. I started giggling as I was finishing up the cake because it kind of looks like a friend of mine. LOL!
And they had only set up one cake table, so Harry had to share the table with the bride's cake. The bride's cake is white and the inside of the groom's cake is chocolate with raspberry filling. Yummm!!!
Sometime in early December a frantic woman called me and asked if we’d take a wedding cake order for December the 22nd? She’d tried everyone and we were her only hope. I talked briefly with BL and we agreed to do the cake. (Yeah, like we had nothing better to do on the busiest week of the year.)
She came in and chose a simple cake from out of our books and put down a deposit. But she didn’t know how many guests so she left without finalizing the order. She hadn’t heard how many guests her fiancé would be inviting.
It got kind of close to the date and I wondered if we were ever going to hear back from her but finally we did get her number and we worked out the sizes of the tiers to get the right number of servings for her event.
The next time I talked to her she sounded pretty rough and told me she had strep throat. That was the week of the wedding and she had been told to stay home and rest. Was the wedding going to go on with a sick bride? Yeah, she went shopping for ribbon and brought me a few spools the next day. Strep throat and all.
Our business manager elf worked with her to get directions to the reception. It was a private home in the boonies and they were not sure of the house number and she called us three or four times just to change the house number. That should have been a clue.
We used Map Quest to get directions to the house number she gave us. Uh… yeah. That might not have been our best choice. So we got to the area where the directions said there should be a house. And we drove around the area for a while looking but nothing looked right.
Finally we spotted a huge house back off the road and it had a big white tent beside it. We decided that was our house and we set off in search of the road that would take us to that house. We found a mailbox with a big bow on it that looked like it might be for a wedding. So we entered a really really long lane. We drove down this really bumpy dirt road for a while, having completely lost sight of the house. We really began to wonder, but there was no choice really… drive delicate decorated cake down bumpy windy gravel road hoping that it came out in the right place and the cake would be ok once we got there. Oy!
Whew! It WAS the house we saw from the road... And it was huge. HUGE! And there was the big white tent beside it. Yeah, but no cars anywhere. Nobody on the grounds. Nada! We were a bit late but it was about 4:00 and the reception wasn’t until 7:00.
The tent was open and everything was beautifully decorated, but no people anywhere. We went to the door and we could see through the glass the table that looked like it was set up for the cake. So we knocked…
And got nothing.
I heard barking dogs from the inside, which made me curious but nobody came to the door. BL and I looked at each other, and looked at the door. In houses this big one expects an alarm system. She tried the door while I cringed waiting for sirens to start blaring. The door was unlocked and no sirens went off. Whew!
I looked around for dogs. We could hear them, and it sounded like a lot of them. I've heard stories about dogs taking out whole wedding cakes! Which is really funny to me because it was NOT my cake, my dog or my wedding! LOL! But at that moment I just wanted to know that the animals making all that racket would not be coming near this cake.
We entered the biggest house I’ve ever been in (well, besides Pat Robertson’s house but that’s a story for another day.) We felt like intruders involved in a dangerous caper. Someone was going to jump out and pounce on us any moment. Then we found a huge flat screen TV blaring 101 Dalmatians in the living room. So THAT was the doggy noise! Whew! That was a relief...
I took a look at the table and it was a pretty rickety little thing... I hate rickety tables for big heavy wedding cakes! So we set up the cake, added the fresh flowers, put on the bows, took the photos and left. We joked about what a nice gift we’d given those marvelous people who were planning a big Christmas party. Wouldn't they be surprised at our contribution to their festivities? We could have loaded up the car with the huge TV and the 101 Dalmatians if we’d wanted to.
(Uh, we didn’t.)
The bride called and told us how lovely it all was. It WAS the right house. And that is the story of the "in sickness and in health" "Lost" "101 Dalmations" "Home Alone" Christmas wedding cake decorated with strep throat ribbon. Whew! Could I make this stuff up?
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