Congratulations to my dear friends Wes and Linda Swan on their sweet, new marriage, and a sincere thank you for trusting me to make my very FIRST wedding cake for their wedding! Hopefully this blog will help anyone with tips on making cakes- what to do, what NOT to do!
They wanted a 3-tiered, square wedding cake and we needed about 80-100 servings. Their original ideas came from Zilly Cakes out of Buffalo, NY and we just adapted colors to their particular wedding. The result: light lavendar buttercream icing (Zilly's design was for the entire cake to be in fondant), with a mustard yellow fondant for cutting out the damask pattern, and a plum ribbon around the bottom of each tier with fresh irises laid around the cake. I decided on a 12", 9" and 6" square for each tier- the bottom tier being only 3 layers and the top 2 being 4 layers.
Flavors: a lightly-flavored lemon cake with raspberry filling. After experimenting with some great lemon cakes (my personal favorite was from this awesome recipe, and yes, I did make the entire recipe with ganache even though I just needed to try the cake!). The ultimate cake for what they wanted, though, was using Wilton's Classic White Cake recipe and simply adding in the zest of 3-6 lemons per batch. It yielded such a light tasting, aromatic lemony hint to the cake (and the cake is not too sweet- and beating the eggs and folding them in after made the cake amazingly light and fluffy).
The Swan household's favorite raspberry preserve is Whole Foods' 365 Raspberry Fruit Spread- It took 5 jars to fill the cakes. The combination of the all-natural, not-too-sweet raspberry spread and seeds with the light lemon cake was incredible!
I started baking off the layers on Monday afternoon- immediately freezing them to preserve their freshness until Friday and Saturday when I would build and decorate the cakes. Friday morning I picked up 9 lbs. of Publix buttercream icing (I don't have the capacity to make 9 lbs of icing, YET). I used Wilton's violet icing dye- so concentrated, so great! I began building by chiseling out a little pit in the inside of each layer- to keep the raspberry filling from seeping out, and piped a smal bit of icing around the outer interior of each layer before stacking.
All 3 tiers were built and trimmed by Friday night- I began icing each tier individually (well, first I iced to seal in crumbs. Thinly ice each tier, refrigerate to harden or crust, then continue icing for aesthetics) which took a painful amount of time, way longer than I expected. My tendency when icing is to keep scraping until virtually no icing is left- I kept having to go back over with tons of icing to keep a thick layer to prevent cake from showing through, or too thin icing, etc.
Saturday morning I finished icing each tier to satisfaction.
For the fondant I used Wilton's Ready-to-Use Fondant, the $20.00 bag- and used Brown and Golden Yellow dyes to work in the color. Rolled it out and cut the designs out. The design on Zilly's cake was drawn to scale by my incredible friend Katie, then re-drawn into a simpler design more appropriate for our downsized cake, and we cut each part of the design out of the fondant. The fondant lays so nicely on the buttercream icing.
We delivered the cake in 3 tiers, and stacked when we got there
At the wedding site, we finished up with a Plum (lots and lots and LOTS of Violet icing dye) "ribbon" around the bottom of each tier- because of my uneven dowel rods (so careless on my part. I hated myself) we ended up using TWO plum ribbons to hide the uneven stacking.
We finished up with the fresh irises.
In a subsequent blog I will list my tools and ingredients and credit the great stores and shops from which I found what I needed.
They wanted a 3-tiered, square wedding cake and we needed about 80-100 servings. Their original ideas came from Zilly Cakes out of Buffalo, NY and we just adapted colors to their particular wedding. The result: light lavendar buttercream icing (Zilly's design was for the entire cake to be in fondant), with a mustard yellow fondant for cutting out the damask pattern, and a plum ribbon around the bottom of each tier with fresh irises laid around the cake. I decided on a 12", 9" and 6" square for each tier- the bottom tier being only 3 layers and the top 2 being 4 layers.
Flavors: a lightly-flavored lemon cake with raspberry filling. After experimenting with some great lemon cakes (my personal favorite was from this awesome recipe, and yes, I did make the entire recipe with ganache even though I just needed to try the cake!). The ultimate cake for what they wanted, though, was using Wilton's Classic White Cake recipe and simply adding in the zest of 3-6 lemons per batch. It yielded such a light tasting, aromatic lemony hint to the cake (and the cake is not too sweet- and beating the eggs and folding them in after made the cake amazingly light and fluffy).
The Swan household's favorite raspberry preserve is Whole Foods' 365 Raspberry Fruit Spread- It took 5 jars to fill the cakes. The combination of the all-natural, not-too-sweet raspberry spread and seeds with the light lemon cake was incredible!
I started baking off the layers on Monday afternoon- immediately freezing them to preserve their freshness until Friday and Saturday when I would build and decorate the cakes. Friday morning I picked up 9 lbs. of Publix buttercream icing (I don't have the capacity to make 9 lbs of icing, YET). I used Wilton's violet icing dye- so concentrated, so great! I began building by chiseling out a little pit in the inside of each layer- to keep the raspberry filling from seeping out, and piped a smal bit of icing around the outer interior of each layer before stacking.
All 3 tiers were built and trimmed by Friday night- I began icing each tier individually (well, first I iced to seal in crumbs. Thinly ice each tier, refrigerate to harden or crust, then continue icing for aesthetics) which took a painful amount of time, way longer than I expected. My tendency when icing is to keep scraping until virtually no icing is left- I kept having to go back over with tons of icing to keep a thick layer to prevent cake from showing through, or too thin icing, etc.
Saturday morning I finished icing each tier to satisfaction.
For the fondant I used Wilton's Ready-to-Use Fondant, the $20.00 bag- and used Brown and Golden Yellow dyes to work in the color. Rolled it out and cut the designs out. The design on Zilly's cake was drawn to scale by my incredible friend Katie, then re-drawn into a simpler design more appropriate for our downsized cake, and we cut each part of the design out of the fondant. The fondant lays so nicely on the buttercream icing.
We delivered the cake in 3 tiers, and stacked when we got there
At the wedding site, we finished up with a Plum (lots and lots and LOTS of Violet icing dye) "ribbon" around the bottom of each tier- because of my uneven dowel rods (so careless on my part. I hated myself) we ended up using TWO plum ribbons to hide the uneven stacking.
We finished up with the fresh irises.
In a subsequent blog I will list my tools and ingredients and credit the great stores and shops from which I found what I needed.
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