All In A Week's Work

So. Whadoya think?! Not bad for a first attempt at a wedding cake, eh? Granted, I don't know that I would actually call it a wedding "cake"... more like wedding cupcakes. Although the top layer is a real cake, so I guess that counts for something. :)

Anyway, I saw this cupcake/cake idea done for the first time in some pictures from a cousin's wedding and I thought it was absolutely ingenious. You still get the tiered wedding cake concept, but you serve cupcakes instead (so much easier, more convenient, and you don' have to cut up the whole gorgeous wedding cake). I loved the idea and would have gladly copied it for my own wedding except that... wait. I'm already married. Dang it! :) Luckily for me there is a fabulous family that recently moved into our ward and they have a son who had recently returned from a mission and was now getting married. Well actually, I guess he got married about 3 months ago in Nauvoo, but they were going to now be having an Open House here. So I begged the mom to let me do the cake. She was excited because they were just going to do sheet cakes originally and I was excited because now I had an excuse to be crafty/creative on a grand scale. Perfect! I told her this would be my present to the bride and groom, and off I went to get started on the whole project. It really was a week long event.

On the Saturday before the Open House I had Jim build me the boxes (side note: they were not originally going to be this TALL (yes, I know... they're tall!), but it turned out we had some spare wood boards in our garage that measured perfectly to the lengths we needed. And although they were taller than I would have liked, I took it as a sign and was just grateful we were able to use free wood :)), Sunday I made the frosting (justified by the fact that I was doing this as a service to someone in the ward along with the fact that it was the last chance I would have when Jim would be home to coral the girls so I could work in peace), on Monday we finished the boxes, on Tuesday we went to the store for fabric, and then we spent the next couple nights covering the boxes (not as easy as you'd think... or at least as I thought), Thursday I started making the wedding cake and cupcakes and made another trip to the fabric store for lots of ribbon, more baking on Friday along with putting the final touches (i.e. ribbon) on the boxes, and Saturday was the grand assembly, and yes... more baking as well. The last batch of cupcakes (150 of them!) came out of the oven about a half hour before I had to leave (I frosted them all on location so that I wouldn't have to transport frosted cupcakes (a disaster waiting to happen!)).

The wedding cake is 3 layers of white almond sour cream cake (delicious!), with buttercream frosting between each layer (double delish!!), covered with a white chocolate ganache (oh heavens! TRIPLE deliciouso!!!) and then that was covered with white fondant icing... topped off with a fondant bow. I really like the way it all turned out. The cupcakes looked fabulous (if I do say so myself), the boxes added a wonderful splash of color, and the cake looked ... well, almost perfect :) (I had a few issues with trying to get the fondant to lay perfectly flat on the sides of a square cake. Oh well.), but most importantly, it tasted great and the bride and groom loved it. That makes it all worth it. :) Congrats to them both on a new life together.

ANYWAY, I'm sure that's WAY more detail than about 99.9% of you would care to know about, but for that .1% who thinks they would like to try it sometime too, those details were for you. :) And a happy life to you all! (Now go eat some cake!) :)