The Making of A Wedding Cake

 I had the privileged to make a wedding cake for my friends' wedding, H and C about a month ago.  They asked me if I could make their wedding cake many months prior to the wedding, before I found out I was pregnant. Their request was pretty specific, they wanted a fondant-decorated dummy cake, and fancier cakes for the actual cake. The wife, C, had a specific cake in mind, that I would make my chocolate-hazelnut cake as one of them. I had made this cake countless time here and here and here (and many more not posted since it is the same cake) and each time, I changed it a bit. She wanted two kinds, so I suggested a fruity one. I came up with mango-passion and raspberry cake, similar to this cake, but with a bit of passion fruit added.

Then I found out I was pregnant and that I was in bed for 2 months, literally could not get up. I got worried and there was no way I could cancel this since there was not much time, but thankfully, I started to gain my strength back as the wedding got closer. I had to do a whole lot of prep work and tried to start planning, finishing up the design, budgeting, bought materials and everything way before as I could not stand for too long or do much at one time.

Thank God everything went well, I also had my super DH helping me throughout the whole thing from giving opinions to the design to helping me on site. H and C are also very easy to work with, they pretty much left the design of the tiered cake to me, they just supplied the topper, which makes it easier for me. All I needed was to try to find out what kind of design they like and don't like, the rest is up to me. The theme color was white and brown, which is a bit dark in my opinion, but good thing she had a pink bouquet, so I could incorporate that. Last minute, they told me that they also had royal blue on their decor. After much going back and forth between one design to the other, I decided that I am going to stick with white (mostly), brown, and a bit of pink flowers, and not incorporate royal blue to the wedding cake at all as the colors clash. The royal blue would just be on the cake tablecloth.

This is the final design that I decided on. I especially wanted to try to put separation between the top two tiers and put flowers in between. I saw many wedding cake design with this flower separation on each tier and I am not a huge fan, but I love the idea of using only one. It adds height, color, and feminine side to the cake, and I am so glad that I did it! I would say the most challenging part of this wedding cake is rolling the fondant. the top two tier was easy peasy but the bottom two was a struggle. With my then-limited energy, I had to knead and roll 10lbs of fondant alone for the bottom tier!

 Now that the tiered cake design is done, I had to concentrate on the real cake. I needed to make enough for a bout 180 people. I made about 2.5 half-sheet cakes for each flavor, totaling in 5 sheet-cake size. Everything went smoothly, but I don't think I can manage if I had to make one more as I was out of freezer and refrigeration space. I think I did better this time compared to my previous one as I have more experience making multi-layer cakes doing time management.

In summary, it was a very tiring but yet rewarding experience. I love that everyone loved the cake. I liked that the chef in the kitchen (where the wedding was held) kept taking pictures of the cakes when I was prepping them. Even though worrisome that we might not have enough cake, but I like hearing the waiter/waitresses coming back to the kitchen saying that they could not stop people fighting to grab the cake from the tray they are carrying and a lot of them were taking two instead of one :)

I was very relieved that it was all done. I also made a big version of each cake for the bride and groom and their family based on their request. I think after making this cake, that's when I started the baking frenzy that I am currently experiencing :)