Going to the Chapel

Here is the story of my first wedding cake.

I met Lori in college.  We sang in the Women's Chorale together and we ran Project Infiltration together (remember how much fun that was?).  Our senior year, we lived in the Long House with 8 other girls.  That's right, ten girls and two bathrooms.  Don't ask me how we did it.  The Long House doesn't exist anymore, but it lives on in spirit.  The thing I love about the Long House Girls is that I know that they would drop everything and be there in five minutes if I needed them.  They are pretty awesome.

They are also fans of my cakes!  So when Lori asked me to make her wedding cake, I was very excited.  I know, I'm always excited to try something new.

We decided to do a two-tiered cake with blue flowers on each tier.  Lori bought a Disney castle cake topper made of white chocolate for the third tier.  

It looked something like this:

We have pictures of it, but they are on Lori's phone and since she is on her honeymoon,
I'll just have to wait until they get back to add them.

The Wednesday before the wedding I went over to Lori's parents and painted the towers blue (so they would look like the actual castle).  It took about two hours of carefully painting royal icing, but I managed to finish without getting it anywhere it wasn't supposed to be.

Painted Disney Castle

Pretty awesome!

I started working on the flowers a few weeks before the wedding.  The roses were more time consuming, so I did them first.  

Drying Roses

I made varying sizes and also made sure I had enough extras in case some of them broke.  The lilies were much simpler because I just piped them using royal icing.

Lilies ready to go on the cake.

The night before the wedding I baked the cakes and added the filling.  They turned out really nice and flat.

Around this time my friend Rachel showed up.  Rachel is also a Long House girl and she has been my cake assistant in the past (see Oh Boy).  She was such a tremendous help with this cake.  She stayed up with me as I worked, catching me up on her life and keeping me awake so I could finish.

After I frosted the cakes, it was time to put the fondant on.  Now I had only covered a round cake completely with fondant once - and that was in one of my Wilton classes.  So I was a little nervous about it.  It can get tricky when you try to smooth it out.  But everything went great!  I have a lot of action shots because Rachel had the camera while I was working.

Smoothing the fondant on.

You have to be careful when you cut the excess fondant off.  If you cut exactly where the crease is at the bottom, it will be too short.  Both cakes came out great.

Trimming the fondant

And then it was time for bed.

DAY OF THE WEDDING:

(Note: I was super nervous about this.  It wasn't anything I hadn't done before in some way, shape or form, but it was for Lori's wedding.  I mean, if I messed up, there was no time to get a replacement cake.  That's a lot of pressure).

Since I had to assemble the cake at the venue, I had a game plan all set out.  We got ready in the morning and brought our wedding clothes with us so we could change after finishing the cake.  We arrived around 9:30.  The wedding started at 11.  I was feeling the time crunch, but Rachel kept encouraging me that we would make it.

The cake needed support (especially with that heavy topper), so I was going to have Rachel cut the plastic dowels while I piped the border on the bottom cake.  Of course as I showed her how to cut them,

My scissors broke.  I couldn't believe it!  I had done this so many times before, and now, on the day of Lori's wedding, with the clock ticking, my blasted scissors decided it was a good time to snap!?!?!?!?

Rachel promptly went and asked someone for scissors.  She saved my butt a lot that day.

I piped a beautiful shell border in record time.  Then we added the supports.

And the next tier went on.  Repeat process.

No one really wanted to touch the cake topper for fear of breaking it.  But that went smoothly too.  The cake seemed to be slightly leaning to the side, so we countered that by putting the topper on a little off-center.  Didn't want the whole thing to topple over.

I added the final border.

Then we had to arrange the flowers.

Since the lilies were bigger, we built the setup around them.

We were almost done.  Rachel started cleaning up while I added the final touch, and my favorite part, the leaves.

I finished around 10:40, giving us plenty of time to change and make our way across the street to the sanctuary for the wedding.

The leaves just add that extra pop of color that makes it look so nice!

Here's the view from the back.

Back view.

And from the side.

Side view.

And let's look at those flowers again . . .

Of course there is always time to take pictures.

The cake did not topple or sink, nothing fell off, the topper didn't break - I'd say it was quite a success.

The bride and groom

Jason, Lori's husband, cut the cake quite expertly, managing to avoid the cake boards as well as all the supports in the cake.  It was impressive.

The cake was also a great success with the wedding guests.  I've never seen so many people trying to take pictures of the wedding cake.  That was pretty cool.

Congratulations Lori and Jason!  Here's to many years of cake eating together!  Thank you for taking a risk and letting me give this gift to you.  You never forget your first wedding cake.

I Could Have Danced All Night

So I'm skipping ahead a bit because I'm really excited about this particular cake.  Yes, I made my own birthday cake.  Not because I HAD to, but because I wanted to.

I have wanted to make a shoe cake for a very long time.  The only problem was that it didn't really fit anyone that I knew.  Then last November I started taking dance lessons from Brian Wong at Chicago Dance Factory.  And suddenly, I had a reason to make a shoe cake.

Almost every Wednesday you can find me swing dancing at West Coast Wednesdays at Galway in Elmhurst.  If you have ever wanted to learn to dance - you should come try it out!  There is often some kind of cake or dessert whenever someone has a birthday.  So when my birthday landed on a Wednesday - I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

A dancing shoe cake.

SUNDAY NIGHT:
First I had to make the shoes.  Thank you so much to Christina who gave me some of her old dancing shoes to use as a model!

Started with a dancing shoe.

First, I cut apart the shoes.  This was kind of fun and kind of scary at the same time.

Dancing shoe cut into pieces.

Then I made a pattern using the shoes pieces.  The shoes were a little big for the size cake I was making, so I made the pattern a little smaller than the actual shoe.

I covered the real shoes with plastic wrap and laid the fondant piece on top of them.  That way they would dry in the correct shape.

Next I made a pattern for the back of the shoe.  Cut and paste.  I like to use plastic wrap to help the fondant hold its place because it is easy to form, comes off easily and holds its shape well.

Then I cut out strips for the front of the shoe and for the straps.  I used one of my tools to make stitching on the straps.  (I used this technique before on the baby converse shoes).  First I glued the straps together.  Then I carefully lifted it and placed it on top of the plastic wrap on top of the shoe.  I cut down the straps to the right size and glued them on.

And now they had to dry.

MONDAY NIGHT:
I made the cakes and they turned out great!  Yay for figuring out the new oven!

TUESDAY NIGHT:
The usual late night.  Hem hem, I mean I went to bed really really on time!

I found a bunch of silhouettes of dancing couples online and printed them out.  I tried to pick ones that were simple so they wouldn't be too difficult to cut out of fondant.  I could hear my mother's voice in my ear saying, "Really, that's simple????"

Then I rolled out the white fondant, traced the silhouettes with a knife and voila!  Beautiful, simple decorations for my chocolate cake.  I did four on the sides and one on the top.  It took a lot longer to make them then it took for you to read this paragraph. 

I was a little worried that they were going to fall off the sides of the cake.  It is really really warm in my apartment and I wasn't sure the gum glue would hold.  But they managed to stay up!  I love how these turned out - especially with the contrast of the chocolate frosting.

Then I had to finish the shoes.  I took the fondant pieces off of the shoe and added the heels.  Then I glued on the strap and buckle.

The only problem was that the shoes looked, well, pink.  I had kind of been going for the black white and red look.

So then I had a brilliant idea.  Wilton sells this color spray for decorating purposes.  I figured I could spray the shoes red and that would be perfect!

WEDNESDAY:

Well, the spray didn't work exactly the way I thought it would.  It was very runny and the color ran down the shoe as I tried to make sure I covered the entire thing.  Oh well, I thought.  It made the shoe look more realistic and, well, used.

The finished shoe.

I had to cart the cake and the shoes (separately) to work, then to my dance lesson, and finally to Galway for West Coast Wednesdays.  And then I put the whole thing together.

Of course I forgot my Ipad at home that day, (you know, the Ipad that comes to work with me every single day of the week, so annoyed).  So I didn't have a camera with me to take pictures.  Instead, I borrowed my friend Ken's super awesome camera to take these shots (thanks Ken!).  These are probably the best cake pictures I will ever have.

The shoes looked so good, more than one person was concerned about eating the cake that had someone's dance shoes sitting on it . . . . .

Beautiful and realistic looking fondant dancing shoe.  It looks like you could try it on!

My friend Beth graciously offered to provide plates and forks.  She and Rosa helped me pass out the cake.  I cut about three quarters of it, left some slices on the counter and walked away for about 10 minutes.  When I came back, the cake had disappeared!  As always, it tasted as good as it looked.

Happy Birthday to me!