Wedding Cake: Day One

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m making a wedding cake for one of my friends from school as my wedding gift to them. Renee had mentioned that she needed a cake a few weeks back, since cakes are so expensive, and it got me to thinking that I could make the cake. I needed a wedding gift for them anyway, and I’ve made legit cakes before-just never a wedding cake. So I talked to Renee about it and we decided on a design and I’ve been thinking/worrying about the cake for about a month now. I’m so excited to be doing it, but it will be a relief if I actually pull this off.

These are a few pictures of the designs we wanted to sort of mimic and mesh together. [I probably shouldn't show these because my cake will not hold up to these expectations, but they're so pretty I'm going to do it anyway. :)]

I began the wedding cake today. I’m exhausted from it, but it was SO fun! And I’ve only just begun. I took some pictures along the way, just to document how the whole cake went down! Three cake mixes (yes I use mixes, they are easiest and taste amazing!), six cups of shortening, nine eggs, four bags of powdered sugar, and five cakes later…the cake is baked, iced, and I had an extra little cake to just practice with and eat for fun! I didn’t really run into any problems like I expected. I guess I shouldn’t go into things expecting problems, but this is a first for me, so I was definitely expecting a disaster! Even though it took me all day to do, it was so much fun to just bake and decorate all day. The trick will be getting it to Arkansas this afternoon! Luckily, my good friend Amy is coming with me! Road trip 2010!!!

[There they are. They all turned out perfectly! There was a little bit of the center falling in in one of them, but that was fixed with icing]

I decided to go with a few different options for the butterflies. The white ones are made of Fondant, and are dependant. I know they'll make it to Arkansas. If not I can easily cut more out. These blue ones are very dainty and will stand out on the white cake. They're made out of Royal Icing. I made tons so that if they break I'll have extras. I'm a little nervous about getting them to Arkansas.

My absolute least favorite part about making cakes is the clean up. Ask my mom, and she'll tell you that usually I just leave everything in the sink for a "later time," meaning when Mom or Dad get around to cleaning up after me. Well this time I really was going to clean them up, I promise! But my wonderful mom beat me to it, and so I'm very thankful that I didn't clean up that part of my mess. (I did clean up the icing part later, which is way worse than the cake batter mess)


Now to load the car, pick up the Best Friend, and get safely to Arkansas with a cake. Wish me luck! [more pictures and Tales definitely to come!]