The Day After

There are going to be a lot of pictures in this blog, so if you still have dial-up, I apologize in advance! This is what I had for breakfast this morning... chocolate covered strawberries and cashews! From left-over chocolate syrup from last night's wedding cake...

So about 2 months ago I found out a work colleague was going to get married in August. I decided that I would make the cake as my wedding gift to the couple. Slowly, as the weeks went by, I formulated a plan in my mind.

The bride and groom didn't want any white icing and they both love chocolate, so that was easy to decide. And, the fillings? I knew I didn't have enough experience to be cutting layers in half and all that, so I just decided to do two layers with a somewhat thick cream in the middle. The top teir, an 8-inch round was filled with banana filling. This cake came out the best. Nice straight edges and everything. I love the smaller cakes! Small is cute. It seems to me that after an 8 to 10 inch round, things start getting complicated. The filling for the top tier--banana cream--was supposed to have four cups of confectioner's sugar and only one banana, but I ditched that idea and just went strictly by taste. I vastly reduced the amount of sugar and added more bananas. Today, I'll be re-writing all the recipes I used and hope to tweak them and make them better for the future.

One thing I didn't count on with the bananas is that they turned brown after mashing. I will be resolving this issue in the future... or maybe just use extracts instead of the real thing. I just love real fruit so much and think it makes a difference!

The middle tier also had fresh fruit in it as filling--strawberry. It came out pretty well, although in transit, the top side of the cake got bumped and slightly marred the outer icing. In the end, I didn't freak out, which was good. There are only so many things you can control and if you're not getting paid for you work, you have to be easy on yourself. (Well, and even if I were getting paid... the point is for me not to take things so seriously.) The strawberry filling had hardly any sugar, and it was incredibly light. I had wanted it that way, because the chocolate cake was already pretty rich.

The bottom layer, a 12-inch round was the most trouble and the most difficult. The bottom layer of the two-layer cake cracked in half. YIKES! I was cursing up a storm at 12 midnight! But, I kinda mushed it together and some crumbs on the edges--you can really see it here in this picture. Also, the top two tiers are higher in height and you can tell that the bottom one just doesn't have enough batter to it. That will also be resolved in the future.

The chocolate syrup idea came just a few weeks before the wedding.I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do for the outside icing and I wasn't even sure if I should bother. I also knew that I didn't want a traditional icing. The chocolate cake itself was going to be decadent, so I wanted to do something chic, easy and classy. After the chocolate melts, you drizzle it over the cake and it runs down the side.
It probably would have set up just a little, tiny bit better if it weren't 85 degrees on Long Island yesterday. Although, I have to say that despite the weather I think the cakes held up very well. I was thinking that the chocolate sauce was supposed to cover the bottom layer, but the original cake recipe with the chocolate sauce only had one layer, so in the end things didn't work out quite like I expected. Despite this, I really liked the drizzled effect and it worked.

Lastly, the groom's cake. It was a little bit more difficult than I anticipated, but I'm really glad I did it. It was funny because everyone I talked to about the groom's cake had no idea that that this is a small tradition nowadays. I had several conversations about it and people fell into two camps. It was either the wedding industry is trying to get more money out of couples or that the bride had to have white cake and all that, therefore the groom got to have a fun cake that he wanted!

Actually, I didn't think I would get the cake pan b/c I kinda waited too long to get it (through ebay). Surprisingly, the package was on my doorstep Friday evening!!! For the goom's cake I decided to make a liquor cake-kahlua. These mold cakes seem to be less about the taste of the icing (for sure), than the artistry and fun of decorating the cake. But, the cake itself, I decided had to be tasty! It's funny, because on ebay some discontinued cake pans are expensive and this definitely includes all Star Wars and Charlie Brown pans! They are very popular with collectors.

I started baking at 6:00 pm Friday evening and had to stop and take a rest at 2 am. I got up at 6 yesterday morning and finished everything by 1:00 pm. This was exactly 10 minutes before I needed to be ready!! Everything worked out to perfection and I am really proud of my first effort. The final look:
I learned a lot--the actual chocolate cake I baked doesn't really do well in pans larger than 10 inches and I can't do pretty scalloped edges very well when I'm in a rush. I need more practice with tips and icing fo' shizzle. Unfortunately, even though I was at the wedding for several hours, I couldn't stay long enough to taste the final product! I figured if it were really, really horrible I would've gotten a phone call last night, but luckily that didn't happen! I've realized that while I love doing cakes, I really don't want to do ones for more than 100 people, max. It just kinda takes the fun out of everything for me.

The best part about yesterday was after it was all over, I started dreaming of my next cake! I've actually already agreed to make a cake next week for my friend Jeanine, for her birthday. And so this wraps up my first adventure as a wedding cake baker! A parting story: one of the funniest moments yesterday (for me, anyway) was waiting under the hot tent in a backyard for the bride to come down out of the house and my friend Nancy busting her deoderant out of her purse and lathering up right in front of God and everybody!!! When we started teasing her, she replied that we would thank her later! Sometimes casual affairs brings the best out in everyone...