Congratulations to breezefromwest!!! (Cake pics!)
My wonderful "little sister" (through Big Brothers/Big Sisters) got married this past Saturday. She and I were matched through a special program in BB/BS for Deaf littles. We've been close pretty much since then, even if we lost touch for a bit here and there. We always reconnected, and remained close.
I was stupid enough to seriously think about whether or not I could afford to miss school to go. And then one day, I had a real DOH! moment. Of *course* I wasn't going to miss her wedding. What on EARTH was I THINKING!?!? I offered to make their cake, and they took me up on it. Alethea and Steven knew they wanted something beachy, and with sea shells. We looked at several pics on flickr over the last few months, and Alethea finally came up with something sort of like what she wanted, more or less. And then gave me free rein to do what I wanted after I had a good idea of what she liked and didn't. She and Steven decided on lemon cake, with cream cheese frosting, with lemon curd filling. They wanted it cream colored, about the shade of sand. They never got around to finding a topper, but I told her I had it covered. I had seen an idea I liked, and was pretty sure I could replicate it.
She needed cake for 130 people, and wanted to save the top. She wanted a traditional stacked cake. So I figured I'd make 14", 10", and 6" rounds, and a 9"x13" backup cake.
Now the only issue was ... the wedding was in Oregon, and I, and all my cake stuff were in California. No worries... I just rented a beach house with a full kitchen. My requirements when I was looking, was for a real kitchen, and internet. That netted me a cute little place whose only real downside was that it was up 18 stairs. (not that I counted, or anything.)
I'm delighted with how the cake turned out ...
First of all, I didn't want to try BAKING in a strange oven. I love my ovens. They bake evenly, and beautifully. So I baked at home, then froze the layers, the week of the wedding. Getting them up to Oregon was an exercise in bagged ice, taking corners slowly, and a LOT of saran wrap and protective garbage bags. I'm delighted to say that they all made it in one, non-soggy piece (each.) It was a fridge FULL of cake when I got there! (Also seen in this pic is a bucket of frosting I made, and some lemon curd. And a container of our eggs, brought from home.
Mmmmm... now that I have frosting, and lemon curd, it's time to build a cake! Mmmmmm... lemon curd!
A good solid crumb coating. It's great when I actually have the time, and ample fridge space, to do a good crumb coat step like this.
There! Everything's crumb coated!
And there they all are, fully frosted!
And now, for the white chocolate shells! I had an abundance of molds, so I could do a real variety of shells. I got the GOOD white chocolate (Guittard) and it really just melted in the mouth. So I made bunches of shells. I wanted to make sure to have at LEAST 130, so every slice served could have a shell with it. (This was a great plan until the kids found out the shells were chocolate!) I got a GREAT tip from Linda, at Spun Sugar. I have terribly hot hands for chocolate work - but latex gloves made a HUGE difference in allowing me to work with the shells, shave off the little bits (see the shavings?) and hold them long enough to dust them. We warned the guests that if they had a latex allergy, they might want to avoid the chocolates. Only one woman seemed to be concerned.
I used about half a dozen different lustre dust colors to brush on the shells, and give them both color and shine. Most people thought the shells were real until told they were chocolate. They really came out beautifully!
I spent a LOT of time melting chocolate on low power in the microwave.
For the topper I had a mold for a large clam shell. The shell had two halves, and I was going to have to do some chocolate-surgery to get it put together. The first shells I made broke as they came out of the mold, so I was a little worried that the large shells wouldn't be sturdy themselves, and that any join/hinge I made wouldn't be terribly sturdy. I shouldn't have worried - it held together just fine! Here it is, setting. A little paper towel holding it at just the right angle until the chocolate was completely dry/hardened.
While that was left alone (and wow, was it hard to leave it alone!) I used my airbrush (thanks again, Dad!) to make blue wave-like patterns on the bottom of the cakes, and to put a bead border on the spare cake, and the bottom round cake. The top tiers would get their borders on site. Borders are for hiding things you don't want to have seen, like the join between tiers, as well as for decoration!
That done, the shell was completely solid. I shaped a small piece of fondant for the fleshy part of the clam, and two round pearls of fondant. I painted them with dry pink, and pearl lustre dust, and checked it out.
I also tried out stacking the cakes, and put the supports in the lower layers.
Time for BED!
Next morning, I got it all ready to transport the 6 blocks to the wedding site. There's a loop of packing tape under each of the cakes holding them to the buckets they're on. The base layer was on a large enough serving circle that I just left it like that in the car.
The site was only 6 blocks away, and I had checked it out on Thursday, and it was a breeze to get there - 3 minutes, tops! On Saturday though, there was a HUGE car show in this dinky beach town - and ALL the streets between my place and the wedding site were blocked off. It took about 10 minutes to get there - geez! A lot of REALLY cool cars though! I finally got there, and stacked the cake.
Son of a @$%@#$!!! I forgot my piping bag at my room!!! Back in the car... back to my place ... BACK through the traffic ... BACK to the wedding site! Sheesh! Good thing I left a LOT of time for everything!
I remembered to hand the camera to someone else! One of the speakers at the wedding, Karen, was sitting there writing out some of her poem on index cards, and I asked her if she'd take some pics of me while I was working on it. She took some great ones, I thought!
With the borders!
The spare cake, with a few decorative seashells. This then went to the hotel fridge until we asked for it that evening.
Just about done! One more hand off of the camera!
The final cake, with all of the surrounding hotel-provided napkins, forks, etc. That's raw sugar for "sand". The jar on the left holds the sand that Alethea and Steven poured from their individual jars at the wedding. Gorgeous!
A close up of the shells and border paint.
A look from the top, down.
This little blond girl, one of the flower girls, VERY nearly had her hand IN the cake before she was stopped. After that, there were guards posted to help children look, but don't touch.
Ahem ... that's "don't touch" ... I love the expression of the older girl, when she saw the topper, and found out it was made of chocolate.
Cake cutting! Doesn't Alethea make the most gorgeous bride? :)
Even after "promising" each other to be good - they did a small cake-smooshing to each other. It was pretty sweet, though, and not a big mess.
I'd LOVE to find out how folks serve up big cakes like this, quickly, and neatly. This was an unholy mess. They asked me to help serve it (sounds like my thing, right Zp?) and I was glad to... but sheesh - serving 100 quickly was no easy feat! The groom's sister was a HUGE help there!
We plated each piece with some extra lemon curd (that was divine, truly!) and a chocolate shell.
It was a really gorgeous wedding, and wonderful time, and I couldn't be happier for the two of them.
Finally, if you would like to see their wedding vows, in American Sign Language (with voice interpretation off screen), I've put them up here:
I was stupid enough to seriously think about whether or not I could afford to miss school to go. And then one day, I had a real DOH! moment. Of *course* I wasn't going to miss her wedding. What on EARTH was I THINKING!?!? I offered to make their cake, and they took me up on it. Alethea and Steven knew they wanted something beachy, and with sea shells. We looked at several pics on flickr over the last few months, and Alethea finally came up with something sort of like what she wanted, more or less. And then gave me free rein to do what I wanted after I had a good idea of what she liked and didn't. She and Steven decided on lemon cake, with cream cheese frosting, with lemon curd filling. They wanted it cream colored, about the shade of sand. They never got around to finding a topper, but I told her I had it covered. I had seen an idea I liked, and was pretty sure I could replicate it.
She needed cake for 130 people, and wanted to save the top. She wanted a traditional stacked cake. So I figured I'd make 14", 10", and 6" rounds, and a 9"x13" backup cake.
Now the only issue was ... the wedding was in Oregon, and I, and all my cake stuff were in California. No worries... I just rented a beach house with a full kitchen. My requirements when I was looking, was for a real kitchen, and internet. That netted me a cute little place whose only real downside was that it was up 18 stairs. (not that I counted, or anything.)
I'm delighted with how the cake turned out ...
First of all, I didn't want to try BAKING in a strange oven. I love my ovens. They bake evenly, and beautifully. So I baked at home, then froze the layers, the week of the wedding. Getting them up to Oregon was an exercise in bagged ice, taking corners slowly, and a LOT of saran wrap and protective garbage bags. I'm delighted to say that they all made it in one, non-soggy piece (each.) It was a fridge FULL of cake when I got there! (Also seen in this pic is a bucket of frosting I made, and some lemon curd. And a container of our eggs, brought from home.
Mmmmm... now that I have frosting, and lemon curd, it's time to build a cake! Mmmmmm... lemon curd!
A good solid crumb coating. It's great when I actually have the time, and ample fridge space, to do a good crumb coat step like this.
There! Everything's crumb coated!
And there they all are, fully frosted!
And now, for the white chocolate shells! I had an abundance of molds, so I could do a real variety of shells. I got the GOOD white chocolate (Guittard) and it really just melted in the mouth. So I made bunches of shells. I wanted to make sure to have at LEAST 130, so every slice served could have a shell with it. (This was a great plan until the kids found out the shells were chocolate!) I got a GREAT tip from Linda, at Spun Sugar. I have terribly hot hands for chocolate work - but latex gloves made a HUGE difference in allowing me to work with the shells, shave off the little bits (see the shavings?) and hold them long enough to dust them. We warned the guests that if they had a latex allergy, they might want to avoid the chocolates. Only one woman seemed to be concerned.
I used about half a dozen different lustre dust colors to brush on the shells, and give them both color and shine. Most people thought the shells were real until told they were chocolate. They really came out beautifully!
I spent a LOT of time melting chocolate on low power in the microwave.
For the topper I had a mold for a large clam shell. The shell had two halves, and I was going to have to do some chocolate-surgery to get it put together. The first shells I made broke as they came out of the mold, so I was a little worried that the large shells wouldn't be sturdy themselves, and that any join/hinge I made wouldn't be terribly sturdy. I shouldn't have worried - it held together just fine! Here it is, setting. A little paper towel holding it at just the right angle until the chocolate was completely dry/hardened.
While that was left alone (and wow, was it hard to leave it alone!) I used my airbrush (thanks again, Dad!) to make blue wave-like patterns on the bottom of the cakes, and to put a bead border on the spare cake, and the bottom round cake. The top tiers would get their borders on site. Borders are for hiding things you don't want to have seen, like the join between tiers, as well as for decoration!
That done, the shell was completely solid. I shaped a small piece of fondant for the fleshy part of the clam, and two round pearls of fondant. I painted them with dry pink, and pearl lustre dust, and checked it out.
I also tried out stacking the cakes, and put the supports in the lower layers.
Time for BED!
Next morning, I got it all ready to transport the 6 blocks to the wedding site. There's a loop of packing tape under each of the cakes holding them to the buckets they're on. The base layer was on a large enough serving circle that I just left it like that in the car.
The site was only 6 blocks away, and I had checked it out on Thursday, and it was a breeze to get there - 3 minutes, tops! On Saturday though, there was a HUGE car show in this dinky beach town - and ALL the streets between my place and the wedding site were blocked off. It took about 10 minutes to get there - geez! A lot of REALLY cool cars though! I finally got there, and stacked the cake.
Son of a @$%@#$!!! I forgot my piping bag at my room!!! Back in the car... back to my place ... BACK through the traffic ... BACK to the wedding site! Sheesh! Good thing I left a LOT of time for everything!
I remembered to hand the camera to someone else! One of the speakers at the wedding, Karen, was sitting there writing out some of her poem on index cards, and I asked her if she'd take some pics of me while I was working on it. She took some great ones, I thought!
With the borders!
The spare cake, with a few decorative seashells. This then went to the hotel fridge until we asked for it that evening.
Just about done! One more hand off of the camera!
The final cake, with all of the surrounding hotel-provided napkins, forks, etc. That's raw sugar for "sand". The jar on the left holds the sand that Alethea and Steven poured from their individual jars at the wedding. Gorgeous!
A close up of the shells and border paint.
A look from the top, down.
This little blond girl, one of the flower girls, VERY nearly had her hand IN the cake before she was stopped. After that, there were guards posted to help children look, but don't touch.
Ahem ... that's "don't touch" ... I love the expression of the older girl, when she saw the topper, and found out it was made of chocolate.
Cake cutting! Doesn't Alethea make the most gorgeous bride? :)
Even after "promising" each other to be good - they did a small cake-smooshing to each other. It was pretty sweet, though, and not a big mess.
I'd LOVE to find out how folks serve up big cakes like this, quickly, and neatly. This was an unholy mess. They asked me to help serve it (sounds like my thing, right Zp?) and I was glad to... but sheesh - serving 100 quickly was no easy feat! The groom's sister was a HUGE help there!
We plated each piece with some extra lemon curd (that was divine, truly!) and a chocolate shell.
It was a really gorgeous wedding, and wonderful time, and I couldn't be happier for the two of them.
Finally, if you would like to see their wedding vows, in American Sign Language (with voice interpretation off screen), I've put them up here:
Click to view