Red Velvet and Roses

For my next wedding cake, I must say networking is a blessing. At my co worker's wedding, I met a sweet lady from my friend's church that was planning her wedding for 4 months later. I gave her my card...

We talked later about what she had in mind for her cake: red velvet and roses.

Now here I must say that I'd been burned in the past by red velvet. I'd made a red velvet cake for a co worker's boyfriend using my family's time honored recipe. She came back and told me that they'd gotten more flavor out of a Betty Crocker cake mix from the box... ouch! Feeling uneasy, I decided to put it to the test. I bought the cake mix and prepared two identical cakes in look and decoration, one with the mix, and one with the family recipe. I let the bride and her mother try them both so they could decide which they wanted, and the family recipe won. Take that doubters!

So a finalized design in mind, construction began. I spent one whole day baking this cake from scratch using every drop of red food coloring in the house and almost all of my sugar. Somewhere 3 hours after my bedtime I miscalculated how many batches I still needed and made one too many (well, my sister's significant other really enjoyed the extra cake).

Three tiers of square cake later, we filled it with the traditional white ermine and covered the cake with white butter cream to make storage and setup easier. The bride asked for red roses in between each tier, so I designed the cake to be easily assembled and disassembled. The layers could be lifted from the bed of roses and cut on the table, then the roses removed to allow access to the next tier. The topper as a hole could be easily removed for memories later.

A close-up of the top of the cake...El Fin.