Lessons learned:
1. Planning ahead and setting timelines for each activity was a complete life saver. Making all of that buttercream, gumpaste and candy seashells, cake stands - doing all of that up front made the final hours less stressful. I had a binder with all my recipes, a timeline for each activity, and inventory of all tools, ingredients, and equipment I needed.
2. Don't leave your cake planning binder at Publix. Yep, that happened - thankfully I was able to retrieve it.
3. Practice, practice, practice. I practiced so many recipes, troubleshooting, tweaking - all of that helped me find the right balance of flavors, texture, and quality of cake and frosting.
4. Some cake recipes do not do well with freezing. I tried baking all my layers and freezing 3 days ahead - the chocolate cake and gluten free cake came out fine - but the regular (middle and bottom) tiers ended up having a different texture and flavor. I decided to dump it all and bake fresh layers with a back up recipe and the cake came out tender, fluffy, and delicious. I recommend testing the freezing method with recipes first before your final batch. Sometimes the flavor or texture can be changed - and I found this out the day before the wedding. Yikes! For this particular recipe baking fresh layers the night before worked out best. I was up very late because of the emergency baking - but it was well worth knowing that I was going to provide cake that was up to my standards.
5. Take the time to set up your cake boxes with no slip pads to ensure your cakes to not slide around when driving. All my cakes were delivered in good shape.
6. Do NOT look at cake disaster pictures. Just, No.
7. Make your own cupcake wrappers - it is so much cheaper and extremely easy. I saved about $60 making my own.
8. Little imperfections are OK - I didn't get the buttercream as smooth as I wanted it to be, or piped the perfect waves, but don't stress - those imperfections are minimal and are only really noticed by you, the cake maker. Everyone else is looking at the whole picture and plus, the cake will be eaten anyway!
Now, some snap shots of the process:
Filling, layering, and crumb coating
Bavarian cream and chocolate ganache
Vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream
Smoothing top and bottom tiers
Piping blue ombre buttercream waves
Applying gumpaste seashells
Inserted dowels for stacking tiers
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| Gumpaste seashells hand molded, painted, and dusted. |
Filling and frosting cupcakes
Topped with white chocolate molded seashells
Edible pearls
Frosting grooms cake
Topped with chocolate covered strawberries
Boxed the cakes, placed in my trunk
and drove to the venue (1 hour drive)
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| Fitted snugly in the car and placed towels around to ensure nothing moves and also to keep the cold temperature insulated. |
Finally, I delivered the cakes, set up everything and was able to breathe! My hands were shaking while I was stacking the tiers, I was so nervous. I had some smudges here an there, but I brought a back up kit of extra frosting, smoothing tools and spatulas, etc.
After I stacked the tiers I touched up the cake, piped the borders, and applied the finishing touches with the cake topper and the coral pieces on the sides. Last, I sprinkled raw sugar on the top and the sides for a sandy effect.
I set up the Grooms cake, the strawberries were juicing a bit since the chocolate was pulling the sugars out but I just dabbed with a paper towel and touched up the frosting. Luckily, I was going for a rustic look for the grooms cake so I could get away with irregular texture.
The cupcakes were set up and they looked so adorable!
Finally I cleaned up the table and was able to stand back and admire all the work put into these desserts. All of these ideas swirling in my head finally came into fruition. The cake looks very close to my sketch, no?
I was so nervous until the cake cutting - I knew everything looked pretty, but I had to wait and see if everyone thought the cake tasted as good as it looked! Since I have been taste testing for the past month my tongue has become weirdly numb to sweets so I can't always tell if everything tasted well balanced - which, thank goodness for Meghan, she helped me out on that one and let me know if something was too sweet or needed more vanilla, etc.
To my relief, after the bride took a bite, she looked over at me and gave me a thumbs up... haha! That had to be my favorite moment. Then sadly, I watched my cake get whisked away and chopped up by the servers. I watched a graveyard of cake appear in front of my eyes:
It was all worth the effort as I saw lots of empty plates and cupcake wrappers. The little ones all wanted the cupcakes, which was my goal - kids love cupcakes! It was so cute. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, I was really happy.
Special Thanks
Danielle and Cody - Thank you for the opportunity and experience to be a part of your special day. Best wishes to both of you for a long and happy marriage!
Liz - Thank you for letting me use your kitchen these past few months! It was a huge life saver to be able to prep and store everything in one place that was close to the venue. Thanks for also letting me use your co-workers as taste testers.
Meghan - Thank you for your support. Sorry for shoving buttercream and cupcakes in your mouth almost every day as a taste tester, and subjecting you to molding gumpaste, cutting cupcake wrappers, and even helping me cook! You are the best and I couldn't have gotten anything done on time without your help.
Bert Fish Rehab Center - Thanks for being my cupcake guinea pigs! You all gave great feedback and motivation during this project. I truly appreciate it.
My co-workers and friends - for your wonderful comments!
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