Some of you already received the album of these pictures, but I figured I'd make it "official" and put a couple of pictures up on here too.Apparently the word is starting to spread at my work place about my cake making. . . so someone asked me, a few months back I think, about making two cakes for a joint 50th Wedding Anniversary Party. So of course I was excited. I just needed to know all of the details. I found out it was going to be for about seventy people, and they wanted two cakes, each with two tiers. After consulting many times with Jenni, Cake Art, and the internet, I figured out how big each tier should be, what I should be charging for the cakes, how to support them, what kind of icing to use, how to decorate them, etc.
Each two-tier cake had a white cake and a chocolate chocolate cake. I filled the chocolate cakes with chocolate mousse (yes, Jenni, the recipe from our cake decorating class!) and the white cake with a strawberry swiss meringue buttercream -- I just mixed some strawberry jam into the swiss meringue buttercream that I used on the outside of the cakes to frost them.The border you see was suppose to be gold instead of purple. I tried REALLY hard to make gold, but it just wasn't working. I couldn't find any Wilton dye in gold. The closest thing I could find was copper, so I bought that. Well, it was very. . . copper-y. It was actually pretty gross. I then noticed that I had "golden yellow," so I tried mixing some of that in with the copper. That didn't work either. I tried it the other way around, starting with the golden yellow, and adding some copper. Nope. I did also have a back-up plan though. . . this gold dust powder stuff. I think it's usually used to "paint" decorations, but something more solid, like fondant or modeling chocolate. It wasn't working so well with the frosting. I mean, it was okay, but not super fabulous enough for a 50th wedding anniversary. So purple it was.
What else is there to say? It was a stressful week, from baking the cakes, freezing them, making batch after batch of frosting, going through more butter than I ever have EVER, figuring out the flowers to go on top, etc. . . and I was working every day! But all in all, I think they came out pretty well. The family kind of raved about them (and luckily didn't care that the border wasn't gold) and I gained more experience from doing it. And that's my story.
4 comments:
I can't say it enough - these are fabulous!! I'm not surprised though, I expected that they would be. I can't wait until we can open a bakery and just do this all day long...mmmm, butter!
I'd like to see fewer flowers and more of this. Since my vote counts.
Thanks guys! Haha, I love the Star Trek cake. I don't think I'm quite there yet though, you know, the whole making people thing. Damn!
Hi, you don't know me, I was just random blog surfing and happened upon your blog. You mentioned you couldn't get a Wilton gold color... I decorate cakes as well, and I fell in love with some British products when I lived over there. Happily, the website I found will deliver to the States, without charging an arm and a leg. www.design-a-cake.co.uk, under "consumables and sundries" - Sugarflaire. I highly recommend their no taste red and black. Truly no taste, vibrant and rich colors. They have a product that is metallic lustre. Golds, Ivorys, other colors. Check it out! And great job on the cake, the flowers look good. :-)
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