Dry Run, Mom's unofficial birthday cake

Hello. Yes, I'm back for more.

(I even made a little rose)

This weekend I made a wedding cake in its entirety and figured I should transport it an hour away to my sister's. We left the cakes out next to a big sunny window for an whole day to test the frosting and construction. The moussline butter cream held up quite well; no crusting, no gummies etc. though it has gotten a bit soft in the process. The wedding will not take more than 4-5 hours, so we are safe.

It has been a while since I baked the test cakes and I've partially forgot the texture of the cake I
was going for- so there is more tweaking needed. The cakes were great, but I wish they are not as delicate and crumbly (personal preference, really), I might run the machine a little longer or introduce a bit of regular flour for protein/gluten in the mix to build more structure. Also forgot the brush the cake each cake layer with syrup (too sleepy).

Of course, I've procrastinated until the last few days to get the components together, so I was filling and frosting till 3AM on Friday night. Yep, we know how to have a good time, we party hard..

Nic's wedding will coincide with my mom's birthday, so we pretend, for the moment, that this is mom's birthday cake.


My tubby self eating a cake-filled boba straw that was used for support.


The cakes were nonetheless delicious. the moist issue will be solved with brushing syrup and the creme anglaise and chocolate sauce that will be pooled @ the bottom of the plate.

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...