THE wedding cake: finale

Is it ok to eat stale food? Like chips or croutons that weren't sealed properly?
I mean really, who is it REALLY hurting?
No one, right?
Right.





=) Look at that happy couple!Congratulations to Derek & my BFFF Dianne 03.19.11

I hope you guys enjoyed my journey of my first wedding cake as much I enjoyed making it. Sooooo.... if you missed a few posts, here ya go:

The beginning
The middle
The break


... and now I bring you the finale.

There was lots of rain, lots of craziness, lotsa people and oh did I mention that crazy rain?!

The crazy rain that wanted to pour when the cakes were being transported?

The crazy rain that wanted to storm when the cakes were being brought from my car to the venue?

The crazy rain that wanted to try my patience as I put the cake back into my car from the venue because of the crazy site controller lady?

The crazy rain that THANKFULLY made my car into a mini refrigerator over night because the crazy site controller lady at the venue wouldn't let me leave it there due to "vermon, rats, ants and outside animals" that may want the wedding cake. CRAZY LADY. I think she made everyone crazy and frustrated.

NONETHELESS.... the entire process went wonderful. The wedding was wonderful. Tears were shed, hugs were exchanged and the bride to be helped me with taking pictures for you all. So thank her for documenting all the steps.

Thank her for saying prayers to calm my insane nerves that didn't want to stay still to stack the cake.

Thank her for showing you my dress with the rain boots due to the wacky weather.

Thank her for sharing her special day with you all.

I'm still a bit emotional from the event... it's not obvious, right?

For the cake recipes... Dianne loves--such a light word to describe her relationship with chocolate but it's gonna do- chocolate. So I made my:

SUPER MOISTEST CHOKET CAKE with chocolate buttercream and vanilla buttercream for the outside. I made 3 tiers: 2-10", 4-8", 2-4" & a half sheet cake.

The half sheet cake died, so I had to salvage it as best I could. Therefore turned into a quarter sheet cake.

Please don't ask me how much I made of each because then I'll have to show you my excel spreadsheets and trust me you'll have nightmares... scary, scary nightmares of numbers.

I'm very in love with this cake. Mainly because it matched her so perfectly. She hates symmetry hence the different sizes.

I'm very very very in love with it. Let's hope you all fall in love as well :)










Without further ado........... why people visit blogs.... THE PICTURES. Let me know what you think.









MUAHZ,
noey

THE wedding cake: intermission

Holy shnikies, will you look at Zoe? She's damn clean and shiny.


Had to give her a nice rub down before she starts work again later. Not that she's not always clean. She's just never as shiny. I thought I'd pay tribute to her since she's like my little Oompa Loompa behind all my creations. Well except that she's robin's egg blue.

Lotsa cakes... lotsa.... lotsa... cakes....


There will be almost 12 batches of frosting and 12 batches of chocolate ganache, which I pronounce gooooooonAshhhhhh. Just so you knew the correct way to pronounce it.

I think I'm procrastinating a bit because to tell you guys the gosh awful truth--i'm scared.

I had a dream, more like nightmare, that I was late to the wedding, without the cake, without my dress and all I had on were my Reebok easy-tones and my hula outfit. What the hekk kinda outfit would that be? How would that look if the maid of honor showed up like THAT!? Bad, all kinds of BAD.

So I'm here. Sharing my growing apprehension I have when I'm about to finish a huge event. Usually I break down, go all crazy female dogg like and start cursing every move I make.

Like "why did I ******* wait to do this ******* last minute?" "why didn't I ******* do it this way... or ******* that way" then yelling at my poor puppies in the process. They always look at me like "mommy, we didn't do anything to you. We just want to eat your cake, just in case it happens to fall on the ground."

So I'm writing to calm the nerves, calm my stress level and to calm my sanity to a normal, workable level. Don't judge me--you'll just enable the monster that's wanting to go nuts over making a beautiful wedding cake.

I guess what's really got me is that it's my bestfriend's cake. So of course it has to be PERFECT. Anything less would just make me want to die. But ok--- I'll just stop and smell the fondant flower...



does it smell good to you?

Happy St. Patty's Day.
Don't forget your green because I pinch--
I pinch, hard.

THE wedding cake: the maddness...

Do you hit snooze when your alarm goes off?

I'm very guilty of that. Every morning I wake up hitting the snooze button AT LEAST 4 times. Twice on my phone and twice on my actual alarm clock. That's a lot of hitting. I'm suprised they haven't hit me back yet...

I seem to want to wake up at the exact same time every morning, 5:27am, except when I'm feelling a little behind at work, well then it's 5:15am.

This morning was different, well sorta. Instead of dragging myself out of bed I got up instantly and thought "it's my Friday!" And I still woke up at 5:27, nonetheless.

The bestfriend is getting married this weekend.

Did I mention that yet? So in the midst of all the craziness that's going on let me show you what I've been up to....

I should have taken a picture of my hair. My crazy, out of this world, hair. It tends to get pretty funky on me when I'm in the zone with baking.




Do you see what evil my oven has done to this perfectly baked cake?
NOT COOL OVEN. NOT COOL.



I made flowers too. Check out the fancy flower formers, aluminum foil. I'm too cheap to buy the real kind at the store, but seemed to work better than I expected. But let me tell you these flowers are finicky, delicate, dainty little things. I take one look at them and a petal cracks. I did NOT sign up for THAT. Must amend gumpaste/fondant ratio.




I had to include the picture of my black fondant bucket. Every time I look at it a voice in my head cackles, "mUaHHahHahahHHHH AH."

Such an evil laugh for a fondant bucket. You're made of sugar, how evil can you be?

And that's what going on around my house...
tomorrow....

FROSTING the cakes...

wompppp wommmp wommmmmmmmmmmp.

THE wedding cake: And so it begins...

Have you ever had road rage so bad that you screamed loudly in your car hoping that the other person would hear you?

Well that was me today and the person did hear me, mainly because my window was rolled all the way down. I had to drive all kinds of crazy ways just to get all my errands done. Friday makes everyone crazy. CA-RAZY I tell you! I think I'm going a little crazy.

Also is it rude for me to ask, "can you please move?" after I've politely excused myself so I can pass your cart that's taking up the entire baking isle, at Costco might I add?

We're all on a mission here Lady, to buy baking ingredients. There's plenty of stock to go around. There are rules to shopping! Well there's gotta be rules posted about shopping etiquette somewhere. Maybe I should give Costco my copy so they can post it in the baking isle.

OKAY. Breaths in, and breaths out.

Much better.

Day 1 of wedding cake posts has commenced. There are pans of different sizes covering my dining room table... oh and that's Steven Tyler in the background, American Idol--one of my many guilty pleasures.

I'm making my bestfriend's wedding cake. I have all my ingredients and the baking starts...

tomorrow....

Stay tuned ;)

Cupcakes and Crutches

Happy Holidays! Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday as much as I did! As you know one of my friends had her wedding the day after Christmas and she asked me to make her cupcakes/cake. 230 cupcakes and 1 baby cake. Everything was a hit! But boy was it a journey to the finish line. Without further adieu:



I think the stand came out beautifully! Thanks Dad for the help :) The flavors the bride chose:

cupcakes:

white cake filled with mascarpone kahlua whipped cream frosted with kahlua cream cheese
mocha frosted with frangelico (hazeulnut) buttercream
red velvet cake frosted with vanilla cream cheese frosting

cake:

6" red velvet cake frosted with vanilla bean buttercream

The bf also made a little video on the day of the wedding. It's cute. There's music so turn up your speakers! Check it out:



So as I was saying, it was a huge journey to this finish line. Let me explain. The bf, my cousin and I went snowboarding the day before Christmas Eve. It was the most BEAUTIFUL DAY.



it was sunny, the snow was powdery, my runs were perfect. I'm not a beginner and not really a professional so ya. I know how to carve small and big. I just don't know how I ended up like this:



and how the binding that ripped out of my board ended up like this:



SO, the diagnosis is that my left knee is sprained. I have an appointment with a specialist on Wednesday but YES I did bake, frost, setup and goto the wedding with the bummmed knee. Insane. I know. Tell that to my poor knee. I seriously wouldn't have made it without the help of my mom's ginormous, cupcake making oven, my brother who diligently helped me with everything during the baking process, my dad for the stand/driving me around town while it rained cats and dogs bc someone *ahem*the bf*ahem* forgot all the butter at our house, and my loving bf for pretty much being my legs/purse holder(for him this is a huge thing. he totally detests holding purses)/driver/cook/my everything during this whole fiasco! OH OH, and big thank you to Lucky's grocery store for being the only store open on Christmas Day that actually had UNSALTED BUTTER. I wouldn't have made it through all this crazy baking madness. Thank you. I love u all.

With all that said I think if I had a dollar for every time I wanted to cry during the cupcake madness I would be filthy rich. But when everything was assembled and I saw the bride & groom's face, it was all worth it. I felt very touched to be included in their special day and wish them the best!!

If I had a choice to do it all over again, I think I wouldn't. haha Just kidding. I would if it weren't the day after a major holiday. With every experience I learn a lot about my techniques, recipes, what works and what doesn't. I've taken away a lot from this experience and wouldn't change any of it. Well like I said earlier maybe just not after a major holiday ;)

x O X o,
Noey