Project Wedding Cake 2015: The Result!

The weekend was a success! Yay! I made it through TSA (on the tightest timeline...but that's a different story), carried it on the plane, and was able to frost/assemble with plenty of time before the wedding. I am really happy that it's over, and extremely happy that it turned out so well!! Here are photos of the process:

I packed the cake in a large insulated bag and took it as my carry-on. I was even allowed to take two ice packs in the container.

Layers wrapped and placed in the insulated bag

9 layers, ready to fly!

We got to the airport pretty late, so the Pre-Check line was closed and I had to go through...regular security ugh! ;) The TSA agent did select my bag for extra screening and tested it for explosives. When he opened the bag, he saw all of the layers and asked "What is this? Bread?" I said no, it's a wedding cake, and I'd REALLY like to take it on the airplane. He looked at it and said "I don't know......." (insert my heart beating SO FAST) "......it looks pretty tasty!" I thanked him and snatched the bag and ran to my gate (did I mention we were really late for our flight?). Luckily we made it, and there was space in the overhead bin for the cake to safely sit for the 1 hour flight to Oakland.

Just a normal carry-on?

We stored the cake in my friend Jason's fridge overnight (thank you Jason!!!!) and the next day was frosting/assembly time! The bride and groom were home for the day, and let me assemble the cake in their new house. I got to work in the most beautiful kitchen!! It made the assembly process so enjoyable to have all of that space! And I got to break in their wedding present - a new Tiffany blue KitchenAid mixer :)

Beautiful kitchen to work in!

First up was the bottom layer. They only wanted frosting in between the layers, so I leveled the layers, then lightly brushed them with water mixed with a couple of drops of vanilla. I REALLY wish that I had brushed them with simple syrup, or had a heavier hand with the water mixture. When I tasted the layer as I leveled it, they seemed moist, but at the wedding, I thought the bottom layers were a little dry unless you ate it with a bite of icing. Luckily the icing helped the dryness, but I really wished that I had the simple syrup. I think the several freezer trips + refrigerator trips contributed to drying out the layers (freezing at home, thaw on the plane, freeze overnight, frost, fridge overnight, transfer to venue, fridge until serving...) so I think the syrup would have helped. But like I said, the frosting saved it :)

Bottom layer stacked

 I made sure to add dowels to support the weight of the tiers. The cake was HEAVY!!!! Buttercream weighs a lot... I made 2.5 batches of the "wedding cake" size of the Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe... (I made half a batch at a time due to the mixer size, but it worked really well. I also made sure to carefully measure the dowels to the same size, to avoid the leveling mistake from last wedding cake.

Dowels in place

 Next up was the middle tier. This was my favorite chocolate cake, and I was planning to just use raspberry jam in the middle. I realized that I needed the height of the buttercream to make the tiers even, so I first spread jam on the layers, then spread buttercream in between each layer. Fortunately the jam made the chocolate layer nice and moist!

Chocolate cake being frosted

I also added dowels to the chocolate layer, then made the top tier just like the bottom tier (vanilla cake with buttercream filling). Then I stacked it all! Here it is with only the crumb coat, and the stacked tiers, not pretty, but it's getting there!

Stacked and ready for final frosting!

I added another layer of frosting on all of the tiers, and also covered the cake boards that the tiers rested on. Then I dragged my spatula and made some texture in the frosting for a "rustic" effect :)

Frosting done!

Ready for the flowers!

At this point, the cake was stored in the fridge until the florist brought flowers to put on the cake. They placed the flowers on top and on each corner of the tiers. We also added a cute pennant cake topper. Here is the final product!!

The finished cake!

The beautiful bride and groom loved the cake, and were so happy to cut it at their wedding.

Cake cutting!

 I am so happy with how it turned out! It looked really elegant and tasted (mostly!) great.

True love!

 Also, the bride and groom are Polish, and had so many Polish traditions at their wedding, including this amazing sausage wagon. It had tons of sausages, pickles, bread, lard, and vodka. If you were hungry at any point during the reception, you could come slice off a piece of sausage for a snack!

Sausage wagon!

Congratulations Beata and Marcin!! I'm so happy we could celebrate your wedding and that I was able to make your cake, even from long distance! Love you guys!

Project Wedding Cake 2015: Baking!

I'm happy to report that the cake is baked! I did the whole thing last weekend, and am happy to be over that hurdle. I had forgotten just how much time it takes to bake a 9-layer cake. The problem with not having a commercial kitchen is twofold: (1) I have only one pan of each size, so I have to at least have 3 rounds of baking, (2) a home oven is only so big, so it can only accommodate one large pan, or two smaller pans. If I had two ovens, or more pans, the process would have been faster, but alas.

I made the bottom 14" square and top 6" square tiers a vanilla buttermilk cake, and made the middle 10" square tier a chocolate cake. I actually had to do some math to get the proportions for the 14" square cake, as the recipe only went up to 12" square. Also, because making the batter for 3 layers of 14" square would NEVER have fit in my kitchenaid mixer, I did even more math to scale the recipe to make it one layer at a time.  It actually worked really well! Here are some pics:

Cake ingredients and pans ready to go!

The batter for one 14" layer... it filled my entire mixer!

The first layer is baked, and looks great!

All of the cake triple wrapped in plastic, set between cake boards, and stacked in the freezer

I had to do a lot of creative freezer organizing to get everything in there, but it worked out in the end. There's even room for ice cream, because priorities!!

I also did a lot of research on TSA regulations for carrying frozen foods on the plane. Apparently you can take frozen liquid (and ice/gel packs) as long as they are completely frozen at the time of going through security. They can't even melt a little bit. As for other food, if it's not liquid, it's permitted on board. But the caveat is, everything is of course subject to inspection AND the final decision is left at the discretion of the screening agent. So I'm feeling better about my odds of getting the frozen cake on board, but not 100% confident. I may need to take a cupcake or something as a bribe, just in case ;)

I think my true backup plan might be that if they don't allow me on the plane, I'll just go home and drive to Oakland with the cake. While that's not ideal, the 5-6 hours it will take to drive, is actually LESS time than it would take me to re-bake the entire thing, not to mention acquiring supplies and ingredients once I arrive, and the stress on top of it all!  Let's hope it doesn't come to that...

Project Wedding Cake 2015: Planning

I mentioned last post that my next big project is a wedding cake for some good friends in Oakland. Because of the distance between Oakland and LA, I am not making the entire cake at home and driving it to the wedding (like I did last time). That means I have a LOT of pre-planning to do, if I want to make this happen. So here is my plan:

1. Bake the cakes a few weeks in advance at home, triple wrap in plastic wrap, and store in the freezer. (I always bake big cakes at least a week in advance, and typically 3 weeks out, and freeze the layers, because they are SO much easier to work with when they are frozen!)
2. Fly to Oakland with the frozen cake layers. I still haven't decided if they will be my carry-on (which I prefer) or if I should put them in a suitcase and check them... I get really nervous when I think about the cakes getting tossed around with the luggage, but I am a little more nervous that TSA won't allow me to carry on frozen cakes... I have carried on baked goods plenty of times, but never a large quantity of cake, and never frozen. I'll need to do a little more TSA research...
3. Day before the wedding, make the frosting and filling and assemble the cake - I can do this at my friend's apartment where we're staying, or I can do this at the bride and groom's house. I want to be as out of the way as possible, but I also don't want to have to transport the cake after it's assembled. I may take the approach that I did for Heather's wedding, and make all of the tiers separately ready to go, then transport them to the bride and groom's house to stack them and store them in the fridge. I just hope their fridge is big enough!
4. Day of the wedding, the caterer will transport the cake from the bride and groom's house to the reception venue down the street. No stress for me!!

So aside from the whole flying with frozen cake issue, I think the plan is pretty solid. I will bake the cakes this weekend. The bride and groom requested a three-tiered square cake to feed approximately 120 people. They want the top and bottom layers to be vanilla, and the middle layer to be chocolate. The chocolate layer should have fruit filling, and the vanilla layers should have buttercream filling. The entire cake will be frosted in white buttercream, and decorated with flowers from their florist. I haven't decided what kind of fruit filling I'll make yet, but I'm leaning toward raspberry, as that is usually a crowd pleaser!

I am going to bake the chocolate and vanilla cakes this weekend. Check out the ingredients I'll need for one 14" and one 6" square vanilla cake, and one 10" chocolate cake (each cake will have 3 layers):

• 17 cups of flour
• 12.5 cups of sugar
• 6.5 tbsp baking powder
• 12.5 sticks butter
• 7.5 cups buttermilk
• 29 eggs
• 8.75 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups cocoa powder
• 2 cups coffee
• 3 tsp salt
• 4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon

As always, the wedding cake recipe I use comes from the amazing cake book Sky High. I use both the chocolate and vanilla cake recipes for every big cake project that I've done, including the gluten-free wedding cake! They always turn out spectacularly.

I think I will go to Smart and Final to get bulk flour, sugar, buttermilk and eggs!! I'll post again once I've finished the baking, and all cakes are wrapped and in the freezer. Here we go!

Cake Chronicles pt 5

Hi. I had to take a long break from posting (and baking!) after pulling off the wedding cake. I know you've been anxiously awaiting the finale of the Cake Chronicles series, so here we go :)

As you may recall, I needed to make three cakes for the 300-person wedding: a big tiered chocolate cake, a vanilla sheet cake, and a carrot cake sheet cake. I split the baking into two weekends. Over memorial day weekend, I baked the tiered wedding cake. The following weekend, I baked the two sheet cakes. All in all, I think I spent around 16 hours baking and assembling all three cakes. This is serious business, people! (This shows how much I love you, Heather!!) It's no wonder professional bakers charge so much for their cakes! Now, to be fair, I don't have multiple ovens, or even multiple pans, so each layer had to go into the oven on its own, which means for a 3 tiered cake, that was 3 rounds of 3-pan baking, and then 4 rounds of sheet cake baking. Plus washing and preparing the pans before each round. The baking probably took the most time!

I didn't take any pictures of the chocolate cake baking, but here are some of the carrot cake!

Carrots processing for the batter

 For the carrot cake, I used my favorite carrot cake recipe, omitting any nuts and raisins. I used my engineering degree math skills to determine that for a 2-layer sheet cake, I would need 3 batches of the recipe (which normally makes enough batter for two 9-inch round pans). I made 1.5 batches at a time because I only have one sheet pan.

Carrot cake batter!

 After baking nine layers of chocolate cake (three 14" squares, three 10" squares, and three 6" squares), and four layers of sheet cake (two carrot, two vanilla), I put everything in the freezer (and...nothing else). I used creative stacking techniques to make sure it all fit! The freezer door piece posed a problem, so I had to raise the big cakes to clear the door shelf that stuck out on the bottom. But everything fit, and it gave me a great excuse to clean out my freezer!! The 14" square tiers are stacked on the right side, the layer cakes on top, and the 10" and 6" tiers on the bottom.

Cake for 300 people in my apartment freezer!

 On Thursday night, I flew home from my job in Portland, and started the frosting component for these cakes! Here are the ingredients: buttermilk, cream cheese, strawberries, sugar, maple syrup, and lemon juice. Not pictured: LOTS OF EGGS.

Frosting ingredients!

I made swiss meringue buttercream for the big tiered cake, and colored it VERY light pink. And I made strawberry swiss meringue buttercream for the vanilla sheet cake, and maple cream cheese frosting for the carrot cake. Here is the swiss meringue buttercream starting! Yes, that is 10 sticks of butter you see. I was making a LOT of frosting!!

Egg whites heated over simmering water, and frozen butter thawing.

A pro-tip: if you have frozen butter (or frozen anything) it thaws significantly faster if you place it on a metal surface, like a baking sheet, rather than a counter. The metal conducts heat and thaws the frozen items much faster than a counter-top can. How's that for an engineering degree? :)

Time to assemble! Here is the big 14" layer. First, I leveled the layers, and then I spread a centimeter or so thickness of frosting on the layers (not a technical measurement... it may have been 1/4 inch...but it was enough to be a nice layer between the cake layers!). Also - I always frost frozen cakes. They are so much easier to work with, and as long as you leave plenty of time to defrost (overnight is best) then you're fine!

Frosting the cake

 I just used a plain white meringue buttercream for the filling and crumb coat (thin layer on the outside of the cake) because I would be covering the cake in pink icing later. Here is the 10" cake filled and the start of the crumb coat!

Crumb coat

 Once I filled and crumb-coated each of the three tiers, they went into the fridge overnight.The next morning (Friday) was the big frosting day! I started by making the pink buttercream for the big tiered cake. I made another batch of swiss meringue buttercream and put a few drops of red food coloring to turn it a light pink. FORTUNATELY, I had plenty of frosting. If I had to make another batch, I have no idea how I would have matched the color. I did count how many drops I used...but color matching is hard! Make more frosting than you need!!

Pink frosting ready for the cake!

 When you're making a large tiered cake, you need to use dowels to support the tiers. I ordered these paper dowels to use and cut them to the height of my cake. Here's where I nearly encountered disaster. I DID NOT MEASURE THE DOWELS. I can't believe that I did this, but I was in a big hurry, and I laid the dowels next to each other and cut them to what visually was even. However, later in the day when I was stacking the cake at the venue, it was clear that the dowels were slightly different heights, and the cake was lopsided!! Luckily I had extra frosting and was able to put frosting on the lower side to even it out, but it was NOT something I wanted to have happen, and I really lucked out that I was able to fix it. Please measure your dowels and don't trust that they "look" even. A slight difference can really throw off the tiers :(

Dowels going into the cake

I frosted the cake with pink frosting, and added a strip of burlap and lace to the bottom of each tier. Each tier was on its own cake board, and went into its own cake box and back into the fridge while I made the frosting for the sheet cakes.

For the vanilla sheet cake, I made a strawberry swiss meringue buttercream. This is the exact same buttercream recipe that I used for the chocolate cake, but I pureed strawberries and poured the puree into the finished buttercream and mixed it in. I didn't strain the puree, because I liked the look of the seeds in the frosting. Plus, this was not a cake that would be on display! I also sliced some extra strawberries to go in the middle of the layers :)

Strawberry cake being frosted!

After the strawberry cake was done, I made the maple cream cheese frosting. I was WAY overzealous on the ingredients for the frosting. For whatever reason, I thought I would need 5 batches of frosting for this cake (even though I only made 3 batches of batter!) so if you are in need of cream cheese, I have plenty in my fridge :) I ended up only making 3 batches of frosting, and still had tons left over.

Carrot cake being frosted!

And here is the finished carrot cake!

Finished carrot cake!

I boxed up the two sheet cakes and packed up the car to go down to Clovis. I was planning to take the cakes directly to the venue, where they would be refrigerated overnight and I could assemble the tiered cake in the morning before the wedding. As we were driving to Clovis, I got a phone call from my friend telling me that there was no refrigerator space at the venue! So my mom came to the rescue and had me take the cakes to her office, where they were stored in a big commercial refrigerator. Thanks, Clovis Unified District Office! :)

The day of the wedding was 100*F in Clovis...which means certain death for buttercream frosting. Luckily there was an air conditioned room at the venue. We went out to the venue and I got to stacking the cakes. As I mentioned previously, I had a little scare with the uneven dowels (ugh) but was able to fix it and the cake came out beautifully!!

The cake!

 The florist saved some flowers for me to put on top of the cake, and they were really beautiful!

Burlap and Lace

 Heather ordered this really cute custom wooden cake topper. I hope she saved it! :)

Heather + Jonathan

 Congrats to the beautiful bride and handsome groom!!!

my best friend is married!!!!

I've taken a full month off baking after these three big baking projects, but look forward to more delicious things soon!

Read the rest of the Cake Chronicles Series:

(1) Cake Chronicles
(2) Cake Chronicles pt 2
(3) Cake Chronicles - Intermission
(4) Cake Chronicles pt 3

(5) Cake Chronicles pt 4

(6) Cake Chronicles pt 5 (you're here!)

Cake Chronicles

I am about to embark on a few very large cake projects, and I want to document this process so I can look back one day and remember how absolutely crazy I was :)  In the span of a month, I have offered to make cakes for three very important events. Here's the rundown:

• May 18: baby shower for one of my best friends. There will be 80-100 people at the baby shower (can you tell how loved that baby will be?) and the cake will be chocolate with the possibility of fondant (cowboy theme). I have never made or worked with fondant. Photo inspiration: http://goo.gl/AKMhE
• May 19: baby shower for another dear friend. There will be 40-50 people at this shower. It will be a dinosaur cake. I have no idea what that means yet, but I'll have to figure that out within the next two weeks! Also the cake will be a yellow cake, with buttercream frosting. Photo inspiration: http://goo.gl/kq4ht
• June 8: my best friend's wedding. There will be 300 people at the wedding. This requires a lot of cake. I plan to make one big "show" cake (three tiers, chocolate cake, pink buttercream frosting), and two sheet cakes to keep in the kitchen (one carrot cake, and one vanilla cake with strawberry lemon buttercream). Photo inspiration: http://goo.gl/p55xZ

The location of each event is also important. The baby shower on the 18th is in Fresno, the baby shower on the 19th is in Oakland, and the wedding on June 8 is in Clovis. Aside from the Oakland shower, the travel time to Fresno/Clovis is 3 hours, which means I'll need to transport the cakes long distance.  Here's the game plan:

• Bake the baby shower cakes in advance and freeze
• On Friday May 17th, decorate both cakes
• On Saturday May 18th, drive to Clovis with the big cake, leave the other cake in the fridge in Oakland.
• Weekend of June 1, bake the wedding cakes
• On Friday June 7, drive all the wedding cakes to Clovis.

Next up - baking the cakes!

Read the rest of the Cake Chronicles Series:
(1) Cake Chronicles (you're here!)
(2) Cake Chronicles pt 2
(3) Cake Chronicles - Intermission
(4) Cake Chronicles pt 3
(5) Cake Chronicles pt 4
(6) Cake Chronicles pt 5

Making a Wedding Cake

It is such a treat to be asked to make a wedding cake for my friends.  I love sharing in their special day, and making a beautiful, yet tasty cake. (And of course, sparing the couple the expense of a $500+ cake!)  Having only made two wedding cakes, I'm no professional, but I have learned some very helpful tips and tricks along the way.  So with that, let's make a wedding cake!

First: plan, plan, plan!  Almost every part of a wedding cake can be done ahead of time, so you don't need to have one day of stress - spread out the tasks to make it easy on yourself!  You can bake the cakes up to three weeks in advance, just triple wrap the layers in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer.  Also, freezing cakes makes it very easy to work them later: frosting a frozen cake means fewer crumbs to deal with.  Fillings can be made several days ahead, as well as frosting.  Just keep in the refrigerator, and bring the frosting to room temperature before using.  Now that you've planned, let's bake the layers!

This particular cake was intended to serve 30 people.  I wanted a two-tier cake, with the bottom tier an 8" square, and the top tier a 6" square.  Each tier was 3 layers, making a nice, dramatic height.  I've used the same recipe for both wedding cakes that I've made, and it is GOOD.  It comes from the best cake book of all time, and it is chocolate!  Everyone loves chocolate!  And the best thing yet: the recipe adapts perfectly for a gluten-free cake!  I just substituted the cake flour that the recipe called for, with a gluten-free all-purpose flour mix that I made. It worked so well!  The texture was lovely, the cake was moist, and it was oh-so-chocolatey.  I will post the recipe in a separate post later. Once the cake is made, triple wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer.

Next, make the filling. The couple requested a cherry filling, so I got dark canned cherries, and added brandy, lemon juice and corn starch to thicken the filling.  I heated the ingredients on the stove until the filling simmered down into a delicious syrup-y sauce studded with sweet cherries. Then I let the filling cool as I leveled the cakes.

To level the cakes, there are a couple of approaches, that I like to call the Easy Way and the Hard Way.  The Easy Way: purchase a fancy cake leveler, then use it to create nice, even layers. The Hard Way: measure the height at various places and place a toothpick at the desired height, then cut using the toothpicks as your guide.  Can you guess which way I chose?  Yep. The Hard Way.  But it was kind of fun :)  Here are some photos:

Now that the cake is leveled, wrap them in single layers of plastic wrap and place back in the freezer as you make your frosting.  The frosting that I like to use for wedding cakes is Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  My kitchen is a No-Fondant Zone (the stuff has no taste! give me frosting!) so I turn to buttercream to get a nice smooth finish, that is actually delicious to eat!  Swiss Meringue Buttercream may seem scary, but I think it's fairly easy to make.  Deb has a really great post detailing how to make the buttercream.  Join with me - Say NO to Fondant!!

Once your frosting is made, it's time to assemble the cake!  Take your layers from the freezer and lay it on whatever surface will be easiest.  I am terrified of moving the cake once it's frosted, so I filled and frosted it directly in the cake box that I was going to use to transport the cake.  Put the first layer down, then spread on the filling, leaving about a half inch space before the edge.   Repeat with all layers.  Now the cake is ready to frost!

Let's start with the crumb coat.  This is a thin layer of frosting designed to seal in all of the crumbs.  This is especially important for a dark cake and white icing, because you don't want dark flecks of cake showing through in the frosting!  Spread the frosting so that the cake is neatly covered, then add a second coat!  Now you have a finished tier.  Repeat with the remaining tiers, then place in the fridge until the wedding day! This can be done up to three days in advance.  I frosted this cake the night before, but a few days in the fridge is fine.

You've made it to the wedding day!  It's time to transport the cake to the reception location.  I had a 50-mile drive...and I was terrified!  I put the cakes on a towel in the back seat of my car so that they would be as level as possible during the ride.  I also drove the entire route in the slow lane...which is a feat for me ;)  I nervously avoided all instances of speed bumps, slamming on my breaks, or sharp turns.  Thankfully, the cakes all survived the drive without any issues!  I also packed a cake "doctor's bag" to take to the reception location.  I packed: two containers full of extra frosting, pastry bags, tips, an off-set spatula, a plastic spatula, a roll of paper towels, a wet rag in a plastic baggy, aluminum foil, and a bag for trash.  I also packed raspberries to decorate the cake, and extra filling to serve with the cake.

Now it is time to assemble the cake!  First, cover your stand or plate with little strips of foil or parchment paper to keep the edge clean.  Carefully remove the bottom tier from the cake box and place in the center of your stand.  Now add more frosting!  Clean up any imperfections from your original frosting coat by running the spatula along the sides and top of the cake with a thin layer of frosting.  It's important to put more frosting on the top so that the next tier will have something to hold onto.  I didn't use any dowels in this cake because it was small, but if it were a large cake, I'd have used dowels to hold the tier together.  The tiers each sat on a cake board, though, to make it easy to separate the tiers later when slicing and serving.

Next, carefully add the top tier.  Repeat the smoothing and additional frosting.  Again, put more frosting on the top so that the decorations have something to hold onto.  Now you are ready to decorate!  The raspberries are ready.

I covered the top of the cake and the top of the second tier in raspberries, keeping it very simple.  I also piped a little row of pearls along the bottom of the cake to hide the cake board, and because I think it looks pretty :)

Ta-da!  The wedding cake is done!!   Here is a picture of me with the finished product:

But more importantly, here are photos of the bride and groom with their cake! (Photos from Hagop's Photography)

Lastly, I baked one extra top tier so that they could freeze it and eat it on their first anniversary.  Here's a pic:

Congrats Jay and Jenn!