This may already be news to you, but, I made a wedding cake guys! My first very own three tiered wedding cake. My first tiered cake period. And it was a cuhhh-razy experience to say the least. Let's talk all about it! :)
Going into this what I like to call adventure, I knew what kind of filling I was going to do, what kind of cake flavor, frosting, etc. Everything was planned out to a T. I also knew that transporting the cake to a hall that was an hour away, was probably going to be the hardest part for me. It turned out that that part wasn't that bad, but more on that in a minute.
The first road block that I encountered when making this cake was that my two bottom cake layers sank upon coming out of the oven. Because I never baked the particular cake recipe I was using in a 12 inch cake pan, I made the rookie mistake of underbaking it. No big deal though. I just ended up baking two additional layers, correctly this time, and then gave myself a pat on the back for deciding to bake the layers a day in advance. Super smart thinking.
Then when it came time to transfer the cake layers to their boards for filling and crumb coating, I ran into my second roadblock. Again, with the 12 inch cakes. Because of their width and because of how soft the cake was, it was difficult to handle them without worrying that I was straight up going to split them in half. So, I called upon the help of my mother and with lots of spatulas, we managed to successfully transfer the cakes to where they needed to be. If anyone has any tips or tricks for handling soft cakes, leave them in the comments section below!
After all my cake tiers were filled and crumb coated and chilled, I began decorating. I chose the rose technique because it's what I am most familiar with and if you mess up, it's easily fixable. This part went very fluidly.
Then came the dreaded dowels. I would definitely say that this part was the hardest for me. I purchased bamboo dowels because I read that they were better than the wooden ones. I also purchased kitchen shears because I read that they were best for cutting dowels. Well, I guess mine weren't. At all. Because they barely managed to cut through the dowels and they left me with a whole lot of uneven-ness and mad splinters. Never again.
I then had to figure out what exactly I was going to use to cut the dowels and after trying many things, I settled on using a butcher saw and a nail file to smooth out any frayed edges. It actually worked out quite nicely but it took forever. Again, if you guys have any tips for cutting dowels, shoot them my way in the comments sections. My sore hands would LOVE to hear it.
After the dowels, it was pretty much smooth sailing. I was a little nervous about assembling the tiers, but it turned out to be pretty simple. I used the Wilton cake lifter to help get each tier into my hands, and then I slowly but surely dropped it into the middle of the respective bottom tier. The last thing to do was pipe a pearl edge at the bottom of each tier and then praise the Lord and call it a night.
I let the completed cake firm up in the fridge overnight and just so y'all know, wedding cakes are REALLY HEAVY. Just something I learned when transferring the completed cake from my dining room to the fridge in my garage like four times.
I know that a lot of cake decorators choose to assemble their cakes on site, as it is the safest way, but I really just wanted everything to be done beforehand. So, I did some research on cake boxes, and I found this company called Bake A Box that sells tiered cake boxes. They're a dream come true guys. I ordered their 14x14x22 box and it was perfect. I had my cake on a 14" cake board so I wasn't worried that the edges would get messed up by the box, but I was even more assured when I built the box around the cake and saw how sturdy it was that there was no way anything would happen to the cake in there.
That said, I didn't just leave the cake on the floor in the van. I sat with the cake in my lap the whole way to the hall and held on to it for dear life while my dad drove and I yelled at every car in the road for their ridiculous driving mistakes. It was definitely a stressful ride. But we didn't hit any serious road bumps, physically or metaphorically, and the cake got to the hall in one piece and all was good with the world.
And that's how I made my first wedding cake! I am super proud of myself and I've already gotten some requests for future wedding cakes and I'm so ready to tackle them!
Side note: I hope you guys understand that with Ramadan and preparing for this cake, I haven't found much time to bake or cook anything so that's why my posts have been so sporadic. But I promise that things will be back to normal next week, and to make up for my lack of posts, I have an awesome giveaway coming up later this week. Stay tuned!
Update: Here's a clearer picture of the cake, taken at home prior to delivering it!
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