Anatomy of a Wedding Cake

This weekend my little brother, Erik, married a wonderful girl named Amanda in the upper peninsula of Michigan. It was a beautiful wedding, and I was honored to be asked to make them a cake. Originally we had talked about cupcakes because it would be the easiest to transport from Chicago to Michigan. But after thinking about it, I decided that I wanted them to have something really special. So I ended up designing a four tier wedding cake that reflected the style and colors of their country wedding.

First, I had to bake eight layers of cake. This required six pans (some used twice), seven boxes of white cake mix, eighteen eggs, a lot of canola oil, a very large mixing bowl, and several hours of baking in my mom's kitchen because it was 101*F outside. Ideally, I would have made them a scratch cake but I have yet to find a white cake recipe that I really like. They just end up too crumbly and have a tendency to fall in the middle. Box cake, on the other hand, has great texture, great flavor, and most of all is incredibly consistent. In case you're interested, the cakes are 12", 10", 8" and 6" in diameter, and end up being about 4" tall. 

Next, you have to fill and ice the cakes. To make things extra special, we decided on four different fillings: chocolate peanut butter, vanilla buttercream, fresh strawberry, and Nutella. I like to make Italian Buttercream icing, which involves egg whites, boiled sugar, and LOTS of butter. It is so smooth and rich, and not too sweet. And it mixes with fillings perfectly. And it is the best icing for decorating and holding up to high temperatures and humidity. The icing takes about an hour to make for each batch. I made five batches. The picture below is missing the 4 lbs of strawberries that were purchased later in the day. 

 

I knew that traveling with a four-tier cake was going to be really hard in my tiny little car, so I used a multi-level cake stand. I wrapped the pillars with dark brown raffia that I also used on the cake. It gave the stand a nicer, rustic feel than just the stark white plastic. And ta-da! The whole shebang:

It's hard to see the details in one picture, so here are pictures of the individual tiers. The top tier has the chocolate peanut butter filling, with buttercream icing and buttercream scrollwork. I had put the cake in the fridge for a while after icing it, but before doing the piping. That was a mistake. The warm icing wasn't adhering to the cold icing, accounting for the somewhat squiggly appearance of the scrolls. Let's just call it whimsical. The second tier was filled with the same buttercream  that was used to ice the whole cake. Then I wrapped it in a chunky burlap ribbon (backed with wax paper so as not to get the fibers stuck in the icing), tied up with the same dark brown raffia from the stand, and finished off with pretty 'mini' sunflowers. 

The third tier was filled with fresh sliced strawberries mixed with just a bit of melted strawberry preserves to give them a little bit of sweetness. I had planned on icing this layer in yellow buttercream, to be an interesting contrast to the rest of the cake and make the small white candy balls, called dragees, really pop. But for some reason the icing turned this horrible, fleshy, salmon color. I really don't know what happened. The dye was fine. It turned my hands yellow, the Kitchen Aid yellow, and the sink yellow. But the icing turned gross. I used a new bottle of vanilla, so maybe that made it react weird? I don't know. So I had to throw out a whole batch (an hour's worth of work!) and make a new one. I actually like the simpleness of the just plain white with the offset flowers quite a bit. 

The bottom tier was filled with Nutella mixed with some of the buttercream to give it some body. It's decorated just like the second tier, so I won't go on about it. 

I don't have a picture of the happy couple with the cake yet, but I will add one as soon as I get a copy. 

This was a TON of work, but I'm really happy with the way it all turned out. I learned a lot doing it, as well. Like how to transport a cake 300 miles by car with a toddler. And how to cut 150 slices of cake all the same size. And how important it is to always have extra ingredients on hand in case you end up with salmon colored icing.