I can hear the bells!

I did it! I finished my very first wedding cake! Seeing my cake on display in the elegant ballroom was a bit surreal.

Contrary to what many people believe, making a wedding cake is not simply mixing together some flour, eggs and sugar; popping the mix into the oven; frosting it and stacking it. It is more than that, much much more...

First, there were two trial runs. I mean I wasn't going to let the actual wedding cake be my first go at it (I may be a bit crazy but I'm not a glutton for punishment). Take a look at my first two tries:

Test Cake 1

Test Cake 2

Test cake one has some sugar flowers on top (pretty happy with how they turned out for a first try), buttercream frosting on both tiers and hand piped royal icing on the bottom tier. As you can see test cake one had some funky color issues (yellow was NOT the goal), it was a bit tilted and the tier separation was not done well AT ALL. Needless to say, I was not very happy with this. Test cake two was done to try my hand at working with fondant. The cake is covered in a fondant layer that I painted with gold shimmer to give a champagne color and then the flowers and leaves are ivory fondant with royal icing connecting them to give a lace look. This was going to take the place of the hand-piped royal icing that you see on test cake one. I thought this came out okay, but it needed some work.

After these two tests and doing some online reading and youtube watching, I felt like I was ready. I sat down, created an Excel spreadsheet detailing all of the steps that were going to go into making the official wedding cake, I created a shopping list and I began the process.

The wedding was on Saturday, September 22 at 6:30pm in Middletown, NJ. As I previously stated, I just moved to a small studio in Staten Island, NY, so I thought my best bet was going to be making this cake at my parents house in Sayreville, NJ. This meant more space and a shorter distance to the venue (don't forget, I also had to drive this cake to the reception).

The weekend of the 15th I was in NJ for a Christening, so I decided to do my food shopping then and just leave all of the supplied at my mom and dad's house. On Wednesday, September 19th I took the train back to NJ right after work. As soon as I got back to my parent's house I cleared off the Kitchen table, cleaned up a bit, set out my tools and got to work. This day was dedicated to making the cannoli cream filling and the sugar flowers. Take a look at my work area:

Definitely wouldn't have fit in my little studio!

In the picture you can see my rolled out gum paste for the flowers, and all of the ingredients for the cannoli cream filling. By the end of the night I had 10 flower bases prepared and ready for the next day as well as three large bowls of cannoli cream. And this is what you get after 10 pounds of ricotta cheese, 7.5 cups of confectioner's sugar, 5 teaspoons of vanilla, 2.5 teaspoons of cinnamon, and about 5 bags of mini chocolate chips:

Yummy creamy goodness!

It was time to call it a night. The next day I went to work and took NJ transit back to Sayreville for another night of fun. This night, Thursday, September 20th, I planned on baking the cakes. Well, after 6 cups of butter, 24 eggs, 20 cups of flour, 20 teaspoons of baking powder, 4 teaspoons of salt, 14 cups of sugar, 12 teaspoons of vanilla and 10 cups of milk, I had 8 layers of cake that I leveled off, wrapped up and stored in the basement fridge (I note the basement part because everyone I showed this next picture to asked why we had no food in the fridge...it's our second one and we cleared quite a bit out to make room for the cakes):

This took quite a while to complete. The bottom tier took a long time to bake because it contained more batter than the rest. Needless to say, at 2am I finally got to bed...saying that I slept would be a stretch though. The anxiety of the process began to set in. I was up at 5am the next morning after tossing and turning all night and went for a nice 5 mile run to clear my head. I used a vacation day on Friday, September 21st, so I didn't have to worry about work.

Friday was meant for frosting, assembling and decorating. Sounds simple, right? Let's just say after my run and shower, I started the process at 9am and did not move from the kitchen until about 3pm when I had to make a quick run to the store for more fondant and supplies. I got back at about 4pm, went right back to work, and didn't move again until about 9pm when my mom forced me to eat something, but then went back to work until about midnight. First, I finished the sugar flowers then I moved on to decorating the actual cakes and here is the process:

1. Take the bottom of one tier and pipe a buttercream barrier
2. Let that harden then spread the cannoli cream to fill the layer
3. Place the top layer of the tier over the cream and make sure it sits evenly
4. Refrigerate and move to the next tier (repeat until all 4 tiers are filled)
5. Take out the base tier and cover with buttercream
6. Roll out the fondant and once thin enough, place over the tier
7. Smooth the fondant on top and around the edges
8. Remove any excess fondant 
9. Refrigerate and repeat on all tiers
10. Roll out a small amount of fondant and cut out small flowers
11. Take out base tier and wrap with champagne colored ribbon
12. Put a white pin through one fondant flower and secure the ribbon on the cake with that pin
13. Repeat on third tier (from bottom)
14. Roll out fondant and cut out leaf and flower shapes for lace
15. Combine gold glitter dust and vodka
16. Take out second tier from bottom and cover a portion with the glitter/vodka combo and then place leaves and flowers on that area
17. Continue until entire tier is covered
18. Refrigerate and repeat on top tier
19. Take out second tier from bottom and pipe royal icing between all flower and leaf pieces
20. Repeat on top tier
21. Measure tiers and cut dowels down then place them in each cake (the dowels give the cake support)

Here is the process in photo form for the base tier:

Top picture is the cake with filling, second picture is the buttercream covered tier and the bottom picture is the tier covered in fondant with the ribbon around it.

I decided I didn't want to travel with the cake completely put together, but I wanted to have it in two sections, so I proceeded to cover the base tier and the third tier (from the bottom) with royal icing and placed the next tier on top of them. Then I refrigerated them and tried to forget about them for the night!

I had SOOO much cannoli cream filling left and a lot of excess cake from when I leveled out the layers, so I decided to make cannoli cream cake balls for one of my best friend's birthdays that I was going to on Saturday night...

I also had excess cake batter on Thursday night, so I made cupcakes. For the cupcakes I removed the center and filled them with some of the cannoli cream filling...

Then I made some whipped cream frosting to top them off and a few mini-cupcakes that I made too...

You may ask why I continued baking so late at night after spending the day doing the wedding cake. The answer is that I was so full of anxiety and I there was NO way I was going to sleep, so I continued to bake. 

I finally went to bed at around 1:30/2:00am. Another sleepless night. This time I didn't get out of bed on Saturday, September 22nd until about 8am and decided to de-stress with another run...this run was 5.36 miles.  When I got back, it was time to get ready to take the cakes to the venue.

Luckily, my mom has a SUV so we put a seat down and tried to make as level of a surface as possible. Once I transferred the cakes into boxes and brought them to the car, I decided I was going to ride sitting next to them. Here's a picture of the trip taken by my father:

We got to the venue, got a cart from the front desk and wheeled the cake into the ballroom. Here I threw on an apron and put the top two tiers on the bottom two. I then changed the ribbon to a lighter champagne color (this decision came after a mini-meltdown that I had the night before when I thought the cake was absolutely hideous because the gold dust and the ribbon color were so off). 

The bride had a monogram "B" to place atop the cake. This was taking the place of the sugar flowers. I was thinking of putting the flowers around the base of each tier, but then I thought that would take away from the lace design. 

When I stepped back to look at the cake, it looked like it was missing something. I decided to take some extra ribbon and make a bow and pierce the center with a fondant flower and white pin. Now, I was satisfied. And after all of the stress and anxiety, I had such a feeling of accomplishment. Here is the finished product. Let me know what you think...

After a few pictures and a little conversation with the assistant event manager, I had the urge to run out of there before anything went wrong! I got to the car and just sat there with a smile on my face. I then went to Monmouth Mall to treat myself to an outfit and then went home, got ready then took the train into the city to go out for my friend's birthday. All-in-all it was a great experience and I would gladly do it again! Anyone getting married and need a wedding cake???? :)

This post would not be complete without a special thank you to everyone who supported me during this process, especially Josephine for sharing her knowledge with me and a MAJOR MAJOR thank you to my mom and dad who not only helped transfer the cake with me, but also had to put up with my frustration and meltdowns. I definitely couldn't have done it without their help. Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!