The Temple... II

Remember a while ago when I was obsessed with the leaning temple I did for Stake Women's Conference? My BFF Amy and long-time squeeze Mike decided to get married in the Washington DC Temple... and guess what they wanted for their wedding cake?
This time I got brave and added the annex and annex bridge. Most of the cake is regular cake. 7 standard layers of 3 chocolate, 3 yellow, and 1 strawberry iced in cherry flavored buttercream. Most of the bridge is strawberry, and the annex (the little building in front) is a strawberry cordial for their anniversary.I took a page from Duff and made gum paste panels for the walls and spines of the temple. I also got smart and made the towers from foam. See? Less wasted cake! And I even got the doors on the eastern walls. Now that's detail.Here they are before the cake-in-the-face-smashing event. How sweet!And of course, the obligatory aftermath pictures...I should mention that the little round cake behind the temple is a gluten free chocolate cake for Amy's FIL and was made for him as a special request. Because of an allergy he can't usually partake, but this is one of very few receptions where he can actually enjoy the cake.

Something borrowed, something blue!

My friend from church asked me to make a cake for her oldest son's wedding. Doug and Amy met at WVU and were married in the Washington D.C. Temple on Tuesday. They had a reception in WV on Wednesday for his family, and one on Saturday for her family. This was their cake... The quilt in the background was a wedding gift made for them by my friend's sister-in-law in their chosen wedding colors.I started the week prior making flowers out of gum paste. The irises and violets started out as the same shade of light blue, then I painted the irises for the variance in color as I've seen the real thing. I didn't have, and couldn't find anywhere, the flower nails needed to make the irises, so I improvised and made a strip of wood with 12 nails of alternating heights topped with cotton balls. Once the petal sections were formed, rolled, and veined, I draped the sections over the cotton balls to dry.I tinted the gum paste a darker shade of blue for the blue bells and did those after the other flowers were done. There were 80 violets, 12 irises, and 80 bluebells on the cake.

The cake itself was tasty. Unsure of what flavors Doug and Amy wanted, JaNae opted for a variety. The top two tiers were yellow cake with strawberry flavored butter cream, the third tier was lemon with lemon flavored butter cream, and the bottom tier was chocolate with raspberry flavored butter cream.

I got to do some new things on this cake... 1. ribbon on the tiers, 2. gum paste flowers, 3. flavored icing besides chocolate and white chocolate, 4. a little flower arranging.

Lessons I learned on this cake: 1. Even if you think you have enough ribbon for the cake, get an extra roll just to be safe. 2. If you live on a bumpy road, don't stack the tiers but take them separately and stack them on location (my cakes shifted a little on the trip there). 3. Leave a little earlier on rainy days so you have time to be careful driving. 4. Allow for extra time to make gum paste flowers (they never go as quickly as you'd think they would). 5. Raspberry flavoring oil will tint your icing pink no matter how much sugar you add to avoid it. 6. Lemon butter cream is surprisingly good.

Renaissance attire optional...

This has been an interesting week. I finished my little ferocious guy earlier while baking the layers for this cake. I constructed the center of the castle and covered the towers Friday night and finished the walls and remaining details Saturday morning. This is what the cake looked like on my kitchen counter...

(from the back) (from the front)

I ended up having to line the walls (cake) with a piece of cardboard toward the inside of the cake for stability. I must have used at least a dozen bamboo skewers! I was worried that the walls would fall over during transit, so I used some shortened skewers inside the "court yard" to support the walls.

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We only had two of the towers fall during the trip, and when we got to the reception, we found that the tip of the dragon's tail and the sword arm of the groom had broken off. Grrr! While I was setting up everything else, my faithful assistant (my husband) went looking for super glue to reattach the arm. Unluckily for us, the weather took a turn for the worst, and humidity coupled with rain and a strong gust of wind blew the front wall of the castle over. I'm glad now that I kept some extra skewers with me. I ended up propping up the front wall with some shortened lengths, and used to full sized skewers on either side of the draw bridge. Hubby and I stood behind the cake to block the gusts that threatened to tear down the wall again.

Here it is at the reception...

The humidity also wreaked havoc on the fondant covering the turrets, and some of the flags leaned a little more than I liked. I ended up sticking them in strategic locations elsewhere. The sword arm of the groom kept sliding off... apparently Loctite doesn't set up well with gum paste. My fingers are now a permanent shade of blue and purple from all of the adjustments.

You remember this guy, right? Here he is with his new dye job (and attached tail). He looks a little more vicious in green than he did in white!So, lessons learned: 1. Bring the hot glue gun. 2. Make the walls out of foam. 3. Bring an extra set of gloves to prevent finger dying. Got it. Ready for round two?

The Hadlers' Wedding Cake

So when I first talked to Mr. Hadler, he wasn't quite sure what he wanted. He would have preferred a small wedding, but family insisted on a church, etc. So we started out with quite a larger cake; three tiers of yellow cake with white buttercream icing. He asked for roses in pink and yellow and the sides of the cake to be "combed". Later on the guest list shortened some as a compromise between families, so this is what we ended up with...When I asked him about colors for the roses, he said something springy, but not bold colors, but also not washed out. I was worried that these might have been a little "Easter eggy", but they loved the colors. Right before the wedding when I confirmed details, he also asked that I put their names and the year on the cake. I thought it was a cute gesture, and from what I understand, these two have a long history together. Here it is, the finished cake!

Snowflakes and Cordials

Here it is, folks, my crowning achievement: my wedding cake. I spent the month prior to the wedding making snowflakes on the backs of cookie sheets out of royal icing and storing them in parchment-separated layers in a box marked "Fragile".

The cake was baked 1 week before the wedding, wrapped in plastic, and stored in the garage (thank you Jack Frost for cold temperatures). Monday, I filled the cake with layers of cordial and strawberries and raspberries (my groom likes raspberries, and I like strawberries). Adding nothing more than Knox gelatin to the fruit set up remarkably well; I was impressed with the texture and stability of the filling when it was completed. Crumb coat on, and back out the the garage for another day. Tuesday, I started decorating... white chocolate icing covered the cake; white on the top, but I decided to tint the sides blue for contrast (it took almost all of the blue dye I had because I tinted the entire mass of icing at once for consistent color). Still using white chocolate icing, I piped the lines, beading, shells, and swirls, then attached the snowflakes to the cake in the void beneath the line work. I sprinkled the tops of the tiers with edible cake sparkles to give it that "just snowed-on" effect and called the tiers done.

Construction with standard 1/4" dowel for support and stability, and my sweet groom made the separation using 1" dowel and rounded hexagon plates.

Over all, this cake took about 30 hours to complete (if I condensed it down), but if I do say so, I am rather proud of this work, and it tasted as good as it looked. With the extra snowflakes, I scattered them over the ruffle and around the cake on the table to carry the theme and decorations over.

In case you're wondering, my groom picked out the cake topper... she started out as a blond, and he started out as a light brunette. I dyed her hair red and his black to more accurately depict us as a couple.

Here I am the day of with the cake.
** Note: These pictures courtesy of Sonja's Photography in Winchester, VA. Check out her website at http://sonjasphotography.smugmug.com/galleries

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.

Marble and Roses to Eternity

One of the ladies I work with asked me to do her wedding cake. I know her and her husband very well, and it was a pleasure to do it for them. I sat down with them to see what they had in mind. They wanted yellow and chocolate marble, lattice with roses, and 3 circle tiers; the rest they left to me.

After some consideration, this is what I came up with. The bride and groom had chosen "Eternity" as their cake topper and pink and blue for their roses.