Three Weddings And A... Birthday (Cake!) {Wedding No. 2}

After that brief interlude by IBS-bleh, we're back to IBS-bake and therefore cake! I've been busy with birthday cakes lately - hopefully photos to come in a post of their own, but first I must report on the promised wedding cakes...

Wedding No.2: C + I = Buttercream Seascape

This wedding cake was for my (very trusting!) friend C and her fiancé who were married at Easter weekend. Their stunning inspiration photo was this one below. Unfortunately I don't have the credit details at hand - it seems to originate on OneWed but they don't list the source... I've asked the site moderators for the credit info and will update if I get a response. 

Creator unknown - found on OneWed

Goes to show how important it can be to watermark your work! I've used PicMonkey to mark the photos that follow, on the recommendation from the wise and wonderful Rose of Rose Bakes. She provides some super-simple instructions that helped me a lot here. Also, she makes gorgeous and clever cakes that you should definitely check out!

I must add that the bride's talented friend M created the stunning sugar sunflowers and foliage, travelled hours with them by car and attached them just before the reception - legendary work!!! Despite neither her nor I knowing what the other was going to do, I think that both cake and decorations looked beautiful together.

This cake had to serve approx. 120 guests so a single-tier like the one above wasn't going to cut it. In fact, it took a 12 inch carrot cake, a 10 inch passionfruit buttermilk cake and an 8 inch rich chocolate mud cake, as well a sheet cake also in the mud cake flavour to provide enough dessert for the guests. Not as delicate as the inspo cake, but with the sunset-over-the-ocean theme of the wedding, I tried to create an ombré effect of waves with foamy tops. In the first picture below you can compare it to the real waves and decide for yourself how I did!

Super shiny Swiss meringue buttercream!

From another angle, the icing pattern looks more frothy and its colour looks better blended (something that I realised I need more practice at!). 

View from the top

Now I'm just playing with my new camera for lighting fun!

If I'd had more time I would have liked to pipe around the cake boards between layers but it was a bit of a rush once we got into the venue, especially to get the beautiful decorations on, so I hope it didn't detract from the overall effect. Here's the fully decorated cake:

Yes, I played around with the contrast in this pic and I don't regret it at all!!

I love the lighting in this picture - and the detail in those sunflowers!

Here are the cakey details for anyone interested:

• I used the Chelsea Sugar carrot cake recipe, but as is this is prone to under-cooking in my very average oven, I've since switched to an Annabel Langbein recipe. For the filling, I used my favourite recipe for super-stable cream cheese icing from Rose Bakes with a little lemon rind added.
• The passionfruit buttermilk cake is a Women's Weekly recipe that I have recently come across - very dense but with a nice fresh flavour from the passionfruit. It was filled with a store-bought passionfruit curd (us working gals have to take shortcuts somewhere!) but unfortunately the layers were prone to sliding as a result, since the curd reduced friction between them. Next time I'd recommend a passionfruit buttercream instead.
• For the chocolate cakes I used another Chelsea recipe - it still produces a spongy chocolate cake texture rather than a thick brownie-like one. Which is totally fine if you want rich chocolate flavour which still looks like cake! Simple white chocolate ganache filled these chocolate layers.
• The Swiss meringue buttercream was made the cheat's way that has changed my life (which one day I will add to my SMBC post...) in copious quantities - 4.9 times the recipe at that link to be precise! After crumb-coating the cakes, I coloured the rest of the icing four separate shades of blue, which took more Wilton Sky Blue gel colour than you would imagine given the pastel shade. And I used two shades on each layer, obviously the lighter on the top half and the darker on the bottom. I was washing blue colouring off everything in sight for days!
• Note: 12 inch cakes are heavy and need to be firmly attached to their base board - this one wasn't and went for a little slide into the side of its carry box in the car on the way. Fortunately buttercream is very forgiving and fixable!!

The bride and groom seemed to have a great time - I was glad to be able to contribute to their happiness in this way on their special day :-)

Three Weddings And A... Birthday (Cake!) {Wedding No. 1}

It's been a bit quiet on the blog-front for the past month or so - which means that it's been busy in the kitchen! I'm finally able to share with you what I got up to slightly secretively in December and give an update of what I've been baking recently - namely a bunch of lovely but challenging wedding cakes for friends plus my bestie E's special birthday cake. There's been a lot of cake (understatement of the century!), so I'm spreading them over four posts altogether.

As much as I like to share with the virtual world, I'm looking forward to reading (and re-reading!) these finished posts myself to remind myself of what I've learnt during the past six months in baking and caking :-) I've also been taking fledgling steps in food photography, which you'll see in some of the posts, although where the images are not mine (mainly this post) I have given credit to the photographer(s).

Wedding No.1: S + J = Fondant Frills

Seeing as I was enjoying getting into cake decorating for the first time in 2014, I figured I would need a challenge to flex my new skills on by the end the year. S and I had flatted together before I got married, and then I got wind that her own engagement was near (having a unique vantage point because of J's request to hold the fort at the church bookstall while he took her out to a 'surprise' weekend retreat!).  I asked (as soon as it was proper) who would be making their cake, and was met with "we weren't even thinking of having a cake!" 

Well, that was all I needed to see my mission in life as their personal wedding cake-r. In my enthusiasm, I didn't ask how many people they were inviting, which meant a wee bit anxiety, a lot of thinking and a fair bit of consulting other more experienced cakers. The loans of my parents in-law's freezer and a colleague's massive perspex cupcake stand - to store and then display 370 cupcakes - convinced me that this epic first wedding caking could indeed succeed. 

Cupcakes a-plenty (photo by NOPHOTO)

Beautiful photos by Dru and Talia of NOPHOTO show the outcome: a day that drizzled until the last moment (the tent covering threatened with tiny drips to unleash a torrent of captured rain onto the cake table) cleared up for the ceremony then opened up into sunshine for bridal photographs. The bride and groom made a handsome couple in ivory and tweed respectively, flanked by bridal party members wearing the sunset colours of the icing flowers and leaves on the cake.

Photo by NOPHOTO

The cake itself was my first proper attempt at ruffles using gumpaste and I found this tutorial (by the wonderful Rose Atwater of Rose Bakes) to be invaluable. It took a wee while for each frill to dry but was not the most difficult design, seeing as the rustic look benefits from not looking absolutely perfect!

Photo by NOPHOTO

The gumpaste roses and leaves were made using Wilton and Americolor gel pastes and dusted with colour lustre dusts. I was really pleased with the yellow ones in particular - the orange dust I used gave them a nice depth. In case you're wondering...they were attached to toothpicks and stuck into the cake, while the leaves were attached using edible glue.

Photo by NOPHOTO

Cake flavours were Annabel Langein's banana cake recipe with dark choc ganache and preserved ginger (S's fave!), both covered in white choc ganache under a fondant base. 

The cupcakes were vanilla (MY fave recipe) and chocolate (a la Sweetapolita) with regular buttercream as I've posted about before except substituting half of the butter with Kremelta to make it brighter and whiter. Each had a little rolled rose and leaf in the same colours as the cake's ones. And there were certainly a lot of them...

Photo my own

So when I say it was an 'introduction' to wedding caking... it was more like a  baptism by fire!!! But good fun and good learning ;-) Thanks to the bride and groom for the opportunity, and to them and NOPHOTO (check them out!!!) for letting me use these stunning photos.

Photo by NOPHOTO