Operation Wedding Cake: It's Done!

I've been an absent blogger lately but this is what happens when you have to write a business plan, graduate from culinary management, extern, and what's that last thing again, I can't remember...oh right, GET MARRIED!

So I had a plan for Operation Wedding Cake. It involved writing a number of posts and it also involved me being calm. The fact is, my plan for the wedding cake involved me making the cake over a number of days but it got compressed into a number of frazzled hours. As such, here is what is likely the last Operation Wedding Cake post: unless I decide I need to make our wedding cupcakes in which case you will see another post and I will be self-medicating...

For our wedding cake, Collin Murray and I wanted a small cake. We weren't going for tons of tiers or gaudy decoration and I promise you that I spent (along with some of my faithful pastry friends) hours trying to decide what size pans to use and in the end, I purchased a 7 by 3 inch, 5 by 2 inch and 3 by 2 inch set of pans to use in making the cake and I was pretty happy with the scale of them all together.

Pretty pans lined and buttered

When you paper a 3 by 2 inch pan, the parchment round is teeny tiny!

Collin Murray also insisted on having red velvet cake -- you may remember from this post, the man loves his red velvet... Me, I'm less fussy on it, it is not that I don't like the cake but I just would always rather have chocolate. The recipe that I used was from epicurious.com and I think it was rather good. The cake had a nice moist crumb and good flavor. I won't post the whole thing it, but I will include a link to it at the end of this blog -- I didn't change a thing!


One thing is forsure -- this was a RED red velvet cake recipe!

I made the cake the evening before I needed to decorate simply because I had to. Normally, you make the cake a few days ahead or ideally, you use a cake that has been frozen and thawed. I know it sounds weird, but in pastry school, our chefs taught us to make our lives easy with these little tricks and having a firm cake to work with, or a partially frozen or even just a cold cake (which doesn't affect the taste at all) makes the decorating and shaping of the cake easier. Since I didn't have time to freeze the cake or even really make it in advance, I had a hell of a time shaping the cake because it was so moist and fluffy.

I'm just glad the pans fit in our mini oven!

The cakes rose well and retained their lovely red color after baking

So cute (PS: don't you love the color coordination with the cake and the apron?!)

You will notice in the pictures below that the cake goes from being iced and stacked to being covered with fondant -- that there are no pictures of shaping or the covering, this is because I had a pastry chef melt down during this part of the process. For one, I forgot to trim the sides of the cake before I iced it; I cut my cardboard rounds too small so it was hard to ice the outside of the cake properly (usually you use the cardboard as a guide to help you evenly ice the cake) and I was just super stressed and fretting the whole time. It is hard to be a perfectionist with your own wedding cake on a time crunch.

If only it was that easy!

You can't see it, but there are raspberries in the middle of the cake!

Next time I make a wedding cake, I will require more counter space!

With that being said, I finally got all the cakes covered in fondant, I stabilized them with lollipop sticks in the middle and stacked them. I had pre-made all my gumpaste flowers so all I had to do was arrange them and I also had purchased ribbon that I was going to use to accent the cake. My plan had been to pipe on the middle layer with red royal icing but I simply just ran out of time and patience. I ended up finishing the cake off with a ribbon detail instead and I was really happy with that.

The finished product!

Though I don't have any pictures of the cake being sliced yet (our photographer has those), I will say that the end result was pretty tasty and looked good. Naturally, I'm not 100% happy with it but I would say that for my second cake ever, my first three-tiered cake, and my first cake without professional supervision, I think I did pretty well. And, if you are wondering where the penguins are, they didn't fit on top of this cake -- we will be using them for our reception wedding cake and I will be sure to post a picture of the finished toppers when they are in fact finished!

Gumpaste carnations made by moi!

 And finally, for the Epicurious Red Velvet Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting Recipes, click here.