the wedding cake

The wedding cake was delivered today, assembled on site, and probably long gone by now. Even though Mark has done a handful of simple wedding cakes during his time as pastry chef, this was the first one we did together. Can’t say it was free of minor disagreements and bickering, but I suppose that goes with the territory when you’re in business with your spouse. I think we’re pretty happy with the way it came together, though of course you always want the buttercream to be smoother and the bead borders to be more perfect, but all in all, the cake looked like, well, a wedding cake. We just hoped it survived the trip from restaurant refrigerator, up a steep flight of stairs to the outdoor patio without any incident. I swear you could put a dent in the buttercream if you just looked at it wrong! I now know why so many wedding cakes are covered in rolled fondant – it’s certainly smoother and sturdier, but fondant just doesn’t taste very good and we’re all about the taste.

I’m still convinced that I’ll be able to rock the icing flowers when I get around to practicing a few, but there’s nothing more festive than fresh flowers on a wedding cake. We used spikes filled with water inserted into the cake which made the dome flower topper fairy easy to compose. In addition to the cake flowers, I put together a half dozen smaller bouquets (posies, if you will) to place around the base of the cake (which I really hope the waitstaff did! They seemed a bit clueless as to what to do with the cake). Can you tell that I also want to be a floral designer? Mark and I joked that we could be a one-stop wedding shop: cake, favors (we also delivered cookie favors), floral arrangements, and graphic design for invitations, favors and place cards. And since we were (are?) both musicians in a former life, might as well throw in musical entertainment. Ha! I can’t really think of anything more stressful, actually!

We have quite a few odd-looking cake scraps leftover from trimming the sides and leftover buttercream, so I’m actually enjoying some cake right now. I must say, as nervous as I was about the whole thing, I do feel like we accomplished something today.