And finally, the completed cake, on its stand at the reception site, with topper in place.
Photo by Griffin Ward
6
At this pointing, adding each flower was getting to be really exciting. Smoothing Swiss meringue buttercream is stressful, because, although I find it naturally much more beautiful than typical American butter-and-confectioner’s sugar frosting, it shows even the tiniest hairline swipes of my offset spatula or pastry scraper. It can be unnerving, debating just how perfect the icing job itself could be, and when I should stop and just relax about it. Adding the ribbon and the flowers adds so much to seeing the cake as a whole beautiful work, and makes me really excited and proud of my work.
Photo by Griffin Ward
Applying the fondant+gumpaste flowers.
(Don’t worry, I did wash my hair before attending the wedding.)
Photo by Griffin Ward
Ashlee and Greg’s Wedding Cake: Food Waste Pt. 2; Flavors
So, let’s break this wedding cake down.
Top tier, 6” round, 2 cakes:
Chocolate buttermilk cake scented with bourbon syrup and filled with dark chocolate bourbon ganache
Middle tier, 9” round, 3 cakes:
Vanilla buttermilk cake filled with pastry cream and sliced fresh strawberries.
Bottom tier, 12” round, 2 cakes:
Chocolate buttermilk cake scented with bourbon syrup, filled with dark chocolate pastry cream.
Frosting: satiny Swiss meringue buttercream
Reduction of food waste notes:
-My chocolate cake recipe made exactly the right amount of batter for one 6” layer and one 12” inch layer. Making and baking one batch at a time worked very well for me—especially because my oven is actually fairly tiny (it is not as wide as most modern ovens; might it be from the 70s?) Also, since I am a poor college student, I only have the one 12” round pan (even though I have 3 6” pans). Making one batch at a time worked perfectly, because I did not have to leave cake batter out just sitting (cake batter doesn’t like that very much) while two giant cakes baked for forever. Plus, they would’be baked weirdly in my oven if I had 2 12” cakes on racks right above and below each other. Not enough even air flow at all.
-My vanilla recipe claimed it would make 3 tall 9” cakes, but I calculated the batter amounts needed for my pans, and I decided I would make two batches. Indeed, one batch of batter yielded two nicely-filled 9” pans. After those baked and cooled, I mixed up the next batch. For whatever reason, one of my egg yolks had congealed a bit, and as I mixed, I realized small little gobs of egg yolk not incorporating into the batter. So, I strained the entire thing, losing some of the batter along the way, but not having to start from the top and tossing it all. After straining it, I had enough batter for one tall cake, and one short cake. The tall cake I used in the wedding cake, the short I will be summarily eating today with my friends, using the leftover pastry cream and strawberries.
-Yolks from Swiss meringue eggs transformed into pastry cream.
-Leftover dark chocolate bourbon ganache was combined with the pastry cream to fill the bottom tier. (Oh, it was delicious!)
-I used absolutely all of the buttercream. My calculations were correct!
-Though I do have some colored fondant and gumpaste left (unfortunately—perhaps I can find a creative use for them), I just have one small flower that I did not use on the wedding cake. Maybe I will stick it to the leftover cake today!
-I mixed the few tablespoons of leftover buttercream with the bit of melted white chocolate I use to attach the flowers to the cake. I brought this along with me to the reception site as repair glue just in case anything needed reaffixing.
Alright. Alright. I think I may post some pictures now.
Ashlee and Greg’s Wedding Cake: Food Waste Pt. 1
Ashlee is my dear cousin, and she trusted me to pick all the delicious flavors for her wedding cake. I stuck with the basic building blocks of my chocolate and vanilla buttermilk cakes. Both are just unbelievably good; why fix something that ain’t broke?
But I dressed it up with tasty syrups and fillings, and I think we ended up with something spectacular. It is also important for me not to create any food waste—the unnecessary strain it puts on the environment, the space it takes up in my fridge or in my belly that could be avoided, the unreturned dent in my pocketbook that is unceremoniously thrown away. It’s just good business, and good living, to make the most of what you already have, especially value-added goods that are beautiful and/or delicious.
So, my family ate the cake scraps. But besides that! I used the few leftover egg whites from the vanilla cake in my Swiss meringue buttercream. I turned the 16 egg yolks left over from the buttercream into creme anglaise => pastry cream. Today, I will fold in whipped leftover heavy cream in the pastry cream to make diplomat cream. With diplomat cream, leftover strawberries, and the vanilla cake made from extra batter (and maybe some of that bourbon syrup I made), I will be able to make a pretty stacked strawberry shortcake for my friends at college, who I will be visiting this afternoon. And I am pret-ty sure there will be no food waste there.
Speedbump
This cake gets sugar gerbera daisies on it, and I don’t know what is going wrong. I’ve got about a 50/50 mix of gumpaste and marshmallow fondant, it is so tempermental, soft, sticky, likely to rip. I am really not happy about this, as I cannot be certain of what, exactly, is causing it to behave this way. Did I add too much water to the fondant? Should I add more powdered sugar or cornstarch? Is it the heat and humidity? Is it just these inane plastic Wilton cutters?
It takes so much time to get everything prepped for fondant modeling. And, at my old job, I was specifically assigned all the detailed fondant work because I was so good at it. Agh. What’s going on?
I am going to go drink wine and eat hummus on the porch.
