Wedding Cake -- FINALE

It is HIGH TIME I finish and post the following. It has been sitting in my draft folder for ages.


My niece's wedding came and went Friday, August 20, and I have to say that was one of the most beautiful weddings I've been to. The bride was so organized and detailed; when they came to our house a week or so after the engagement to start making plans (a year ago), she already had a thick binder with dividers, filled with ideas and plans. All the planning really paid off.

Her colors were black, hot pink and white, and those colors were carried through everything. The "flourish" was the main design image. The bridesmaids wore cute, black dresses. The flowers were hot pinks, purples, whites. Gorgeous.

So.... the CAKE!

After all the cake tastings, a white cake with lemon curd filling was chosen. They wanted a five tier square cake, with simple decorations. We decided on squares of 6", 8", 10", 12" and 14". That really was more cake than they needed, but it would make a nice presentation.

Plan, plan, plan... organize, organize, organize... spreadsheets, shopping, pondering in my head. How to allow the right amount of time for baking, decorating, etc.

I had taken the whole week off of 8/15 since my K had her college orientation (which I went to). The wedding was at 6:30pm Friday night. We could get into the facility at Noon Friday. We had to be at the place by 4:45pm for family photos. Thursday night was the rehearsal and dinner.

Plan, plan, plan...

When I got back from the Western orientation, I started creating spreadsheets and charts calculating the ingredients I needed. Overall, I would need about 17 batches of cake batter, 5 batches of lemon curd, and 10 batches of buttercream (frosting).

With that many ingredients and batches, weighing is the quickest, most accurate and easiest way to go. Instead of scooping out flour one cup at a time, use a good scale. Mine is a Salter kitchen scale that has a "add and weigh" function. You can add ingredients to your bowl, then zero out the weight to measure a second ingredient. VERY handy. I use my scale ALL the time. (However, bathroom scales are strictly prohibited! haha)

Wednesday night I did all the ingredient shopping. I also made the fresh lemon curd. OH -- is there anything better than lemon curd? It smells SOOO great. (Cross "fresh baked bread" off the "is there anything better than..." list. Now I'm voting for fresh lemon curd!)



There is a huge Costco bag of lemons in that bowl!

Bright and early Thursday I started to stage the kitchen for the day.

Pans were washed and prepped. (I cut parchment paper to fit in the bottom of the pan, then sprayed with oil, set in the parchment, sprayed the parchment, then floured.)


Spreadsheets were printed and hung on the cupboards for easy reference.


Luckily I have three Kitchenaid mixing bowls, so I could weigh and prep three batches of batter at a time. Each bowl fits just about three times the recipe.

I calculated how many batches per layer, and which size pans I could fit in the oven at the same time. For example, I needed two 14" layers, and each of those layers was just about 3 batches of batter.

I started weighing, mixing, baking... for the curd and batter, I needed over 100 egg yolks. Ever crack and separate a FEW eggs, much less over 100? NO shells allowed! It is amazing how much egg yolks vary in weight. Sometimes I would end up using part of a yolk to get to the required weight. That's another good reason to weigh ingredients rather than use a count.

The day was going along great. It was getting closer and closer to rehearsal time. I needed to cut off about 3:00 in order to get a shower and cleaned up. A cake was in the oven -- I ran off to the shower. Shower done. Cake done. Cake on rack cooling. I'll go dry my hair. Cake done cooling. Time to come out of the pan onto the rack.

Ever turn a cake out onto a rack? You have pan on rack. You run a knife around the sides of the pan between the cake and pan to loosen. Put rack on top of pan. Grab both sides of pan/rack combo and turn the whole thing over. If all goes well, cake is now on rack and you can pull the pan up and off the cake.

If things DON'T go well... you have a cake in the sink and MANY SWEAR WORDS UTTERED!! T minus 15 minutes to rehearsal and cake is in the sink. The last of the 10 layers baked today... the largest of the layers. The 14" layer is now IN THE SINK!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh... I can laugh NOW! At the time, I was horrified. I have NEVER, EVER in all my years baking cakes flipped a cake into the sink. I guess there is "a first time for everything." Unfortunately, it was my niece's wedding cake.

Off we went to the rehearsal. We returned about 10:00pm ish, and another cake layer went into the oven.

And other assorted cake related tasks until um, er... late into the night... (early in the morning)?

And up and at em Friday morning. WEDDING DAY! 6:00am. Facility opens at 12:00pm. That is my target time for leaving the house. 6 hours. Cakes are baked. Time to SUPERCHARGE and get this baby to bed.

Massive amounts of buttercream... weighing, mixing... (didn't we do this yesterday??!)


My plan was to get all the layers filled (No, you CANNOT dip your fingers into the lemon curd for sampling! I need every bit of it! Plus I have a kitchen rule -- no dipping fingers into food, ESPECIALLY if what I am baking/cooking is for someone else. Spoons only. And NO double dipping. A very strict rule in my kitchen.)


Fill all the layers, and frost with a very thin layer of buttercream to seal in all the crumbs, refrigerate all the layers so the buttercream is firm, then start refrosting, re-refrigerating, then piping the decorations.



Thinking the whole time "How am I going to get this cake 20 minutes away to Lord Hill Farms?" Assemble or not assemble? Transport separate layers, then build it all at the site?

Plan: Get all layers ready to go and decorated, lay a blanket in the back of my car with the seats down, place individual layers on blanket, transport to site.

Everything is going swimmingly. All on schedule.

12:30pm. Time to load it all up. Extra frosting. Extra everything: knives, cutting boards, dish towel.

Drive to Lord Hill Farms. "Is that cake shifting around in the back??" (I only stopped once en route to check on the cake. All good.)



Thank you, K and R, for honoring me with the privilege of making your special cake. It was so much fun!

Love you both!