What it takes for a Wedding Cake

My, oh my, oh my. What I didn't know about what it takes for a wedding cake.  THIS is what it takes for a wedding cake:

1 day off + Saturday morning
1 patient husband
1 hell of a messy kitchen
8 lbs of butter
14 lbs of powdered sugar
4 lbs of shortening
2 lbs of raspberry preserves
1 qt heavy cream
2 lbs bittersweet chocolate
4 oz egg whites
2 oz food coloring
80 eggs
~2 cups (yes, cups) vanilla extract
~20 combined pounds of flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and all the other stuff that goes into a cake.
~2 years' worth of stress

And, folks, yes, two of the layers in the above picture are fake--styrofoam--at the bride's request. And thank God for that. The list above doesn't mention the ribbon, or the zip top bags, or the fake flowers, or the floral tape, or the cardboard rounds, or the cake drum, or the boxes for the sheet cakes I made for the actual serving, or the special-order baking pans, or the parchment paper, or the materials to make your own damask stencil... but you get the point.

This was my first wedding cake. Looking at these pictures, I can see little imperfections that I couldn't see while I was there in person. And neither could my husband. And we made sure to look at it from all angles, from near and far before we left. In fact, as we were pulling out of the parking lot to leave, I looked at these photos and made my husband turn around so I could go back in and try to fix them.... and then I got back inside, face-to-face with the cake, and could no longer see them.

I haven't heard from the bride, so I assume she's happy. Or just had much better things to do than call the amateur cake maker and bawl her out. Yeah. I'm gonna assume she's happy.

To be fair, I would not have used nearly as much butter, shortening, vanilla, and powdered sugar if I hadn't botched four batches of frosting--four!!--and had to scrape it off. Weather was not my friend (hot and humid), so it took me too long to realize that I needed to modify my traditional buttercream recipe. This resulted in a whole wasted sheet cake which is currently lurking in our fridge, mocking both my husband and I, who have psychological problems with the waste associated with just tossing it in the garbage. To top it off, it was the raspberry-filled one. I really don't like fruit-based fillings. Why couldn't it have been the chocolate ganache one I messed up? Wait, scratch that. This probably works in my favor. I'm less likely to chow down on the raspberry-filled one. My husband complained that it doesn't have a high enough cake-to-frosting ratio (all it got was a crumb coat of frosting before I realized that it just was not going to work), so then I just handed him the massive bowl of scraped-off frosting, and he created his own perfect cake-to-frosting ratio.

And then there was the problem of matching the color of the royal icing for damask print on the double layer... it was supposed to match the ribbon that the bride supplied. I used one whole bottle of burgundy gel food coloring, and it turned out far too grape-y. So then I called my mom, the artist, and asked her how to make maroon. Half an hour later, after endless mixing of red, blue, black, and a hint of yellow, I had something that wasn't quite a match, but it had to be close enough for government work--the frosting had reached a saturation point and the color was no longer changing. I figured it was ok anyway, because it needed to darken a couple shades to match the ribbon, and royal icing tends to darken as it dries.

So, I swallowed my nerves and piped the damask print, and then put it in the fridge. And to my horror, it darkened not just one or two shades as it dried, but more like five or six. It was no longer close to the brilliant burgundy of the ribbon. My heart was in my throat in full-fledged panic mode, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had only two hours before I had to leave for the wedding, and there was too much else to get done. I couldn't scrape it off, re-ice the cake, chill it, mix new icing, and re-pipe it in time. I just figured I could offer the bride a discount if she was angry.

But then, oh, then... in a crazy twist of fate, the buttercream frosting stained the burgundy ribbon once it was on the cake. I had expected some mild staining of the ribbon--it wasn't waxed, and a frosting that is entirely composed of fat and sugar tends to result in a staining grease. At first I panicked, and then I realized that the ribbon was now stained the exact same shade as the damask. It was like it was on purpose! As though I had planned it! The ribbon on one of the fake layers actually wasn't staining because the frosting had crusted too much, so I literally removed the offending ribbon and smeared my emergency repair frosting on it until it was uniformly stained, and then put it back on. Fortune favors the inventive, my friends.

I'm sure with practice, wedding cakes would be easier. I'm sure with a better-equipped kitchen with a fridge that can accommodate all the layers, things would be better. But I think I'm going to stay away from wedding cakes. I don't want the responsibility of so many hopes and dreams pinned to my shoulders. Yeah, so no more wedding cakes for me.

Oh, shoot.  Wait a minute... didn't I already offer one to my other friends for a wedding gift? Crap.


Maybe they'll be happy with cupcakes...