Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Wedding cake - Gluttony of cakes




It's been awhile, I know. But in case you haven't heard, I'm making a wedding cake for a good friend of mine. Over the past few weeks, I've been scouting the world for answers: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/678484

Meanwhile, there is recipe testing, cake tasting, and decisions to be made. I was elbows deep in cake baking and filling making last week. With my overly ambitious agenda, I baked a freezer full of test cakes and a variety of fillings. With a slight headache from missing lunch, tired, and unsettling sugar-high... The plan was to find a base white, yellow and chocolate cake that we like and match them up with a combination of fillings and embellishments.


The lovely couple shows up at my apartment around noon last Sunday, skipping breakfast and lunch in anticipation of the calories ahead... they dug in... and even took notes with numbers and little hearts.




They wanted to have two flavors, one chocolate oriented another, fruit/nuts. After eating almost all the little cake cubes and scoops of filling and brushes of syrups, the verdict is (don't read this if you are invited to the wedding).

Chocolate tiers: A dark toothy German chocolate cake layer, thin layer of ganache + thick slather of dark chocolate vanilla bean mousse. Served with creme anglaise, chocolate sauce and berries.
Fruit and nut tier: Yellow buttermilk cake, fresh mango curd folded in whipped mascarpone cream and an added bonus of almond dacquoise for crunch.
All of the tiers will be covered in swiss meringue buttercream decked out with flowers with a help of a friend

The guest list is close to 115- people. I plan to make enough for 150 + some rolled and molded truffle candies. I got less than 2 months to get my stuff together, including making a full sized replica of the cake, fully decorated as a "dry run". who wants cake? I'll have 100+ pieces of "sample cake" in a few weeks!! yikes!

I got a lot of work ahead of me... at the mean time, I'm glad I got my CSA box yesterday. Yums, celery and carrot season... and lot of cake "test cakes" for visitors..

Jon and I polished off all the crumbs...

4 comments:

  1. I'm up for a taste! I can't wait! - Janet

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  2. It's about time for the update!! When did you take the pictures? I didn't even notice...

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  3. whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
    I wish I could be there!!!!!
    So much cake!!!!

    -cindy

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  4. Jeni no one wouldd ever know this was your first wedding cake. It is awesome. Having sampled many of your past cakes I know it will be fabulous. Can't wait to taste it.
    You are incredibly gifted and awesome
    Dani

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