Cake Talk

More inspiration from Martha Stewart

Here's the inspiration.

According to Martha Stewart Weddings, these are romantic ruffles.

What makes a wedding gown special? Extraordinary embellishments, of course. Here, desserts get adorned with fabulous flounces, beautiful beading, and more. Playing dress-up just got delicious.

A David Fielden gown served as the inspiration for this cake. "To match the dress's airy feel, we formed dampened wafer paper into edible ruffles and pressed them into the buttercream," says contributing editor Wendy Kromer, owner of Wendy Kromer Confections in Sandusky, Ohio. Come reception time, they serve a ruffled rosette with each slice.

We were asked to re-create this cake as for a bridesmaids luncheon.

The bride liked the airy feel of the cake, but wanted it smaller, with a pale pink base. She also wanted it as a charm cake.

The charm cake dates back to the Victorian era. It is sometimes referred to as ribbon pulling, and often takes place at the bridesmaids’ luncheon (though traditionally it was done at the wedding reception, and the charms were in the bride's cake).

Basically a number of charms (equal to the number of bridesmaids or significant women in the bride's life) are placed in a cake with ribbons attached to them. The ribbon is visible and every lady takes a ribbon and pulls out the charm. Each charm has special meaning–i.e. an airplane means travel/adventure, a four-leaf clover means good luck, a wedding ring means you’ll be the next to be engaged.

So here's the cake we created.

Sure hope she likes it.

 

Two Weddings and a Birthday

It was a busy day for cake deliveries at the bakery today as we had two weddings and a birthday.

Luckily, the rain held off and we were able to scoot around town without breaking out the umbrellas.

The theme for our first wedding was "Rustic Chic" and if you ever wondered what that meant, you are not alone. When the bride first told us her wedding design was going to be rustic chic, she was met with a bakery full of semi-blank stares, followed by "so tell us more about what you mean."

For the rustic, the bride chose a tree stump groom's cake. Composed of chocolate cake filled with dark chocolate ganache, covered in chocolate buttercream and chocolate curls for bark.

And keeping with the love story that defines each wedding, their initials are *carved* inside a heart on the cross-section of the stump.

The "chic" part was described as elegant with a twist of sparkle.

Pulling that off was a bit more complicated than it sounds. The cake part was easy -- one of the bride's tiers was lemon, the other vanilla and chocolate. The hue of the ivory buttercream matched the tablecloths at the venue -- that is the cloths under the burlap overlays.

The hot pink ruffles along the side of the cake -- very chic and girly -- was a bit more complicated, requiring yards and yards of fondant ruffles.

The bling factor was there as well, on the wooden cake topper as well as around the base of each tier.

By comparison, our second wedding cake was understated elegance.

A simple three tier cake with piped lace, buttons and a pretty bow in soft pink.

And the birthday cake? It was for a black-and-white, black-tie-optional event.

Sporting a double-oh-seven theme for a 70th birthday, I'm sure the cocktails will be shaken, not stirred.

And there you have it, another Saturday at the bakery.

Martha Stewart Inspiration

This is the photo the bride sent us... It is from MarthaStewartWeddings.com and I'll assume a professional photographer took this picture. Along with some highly paid artistic designers to set up the table, find the pretty china, the matching tablecloth, and all that...And this is what we made. An iPhone took this photo. And there were no professional *artistic designers* involved. Just Becca (who cut out the cake parts), Erin (who iced some of them), Sarah (who iced more of them), and Pat (who made the roses). And here is a photo of the cake on a plate at the Cypress Inn. Again, iPhone, and standard restaurant-issue salad plate. Not bad, huh?

Before and After

Here is the *before* photo.

Sunday, about 12 noon.

These cakes were iced the night before and I just took them out of the refrigerator.

What you don't see are about 1000 fondant balls in tubs of luster dust. Pearl, silver, antique white and golden.

Plus the mess of tweezers, brushes of various sizes and my hands completely covered in luster dust. And that was just the bride's cake.

The groom's side had strawberries, coating chocolate and ganache to help the soon-to-be chocolate covered strawberries stick to the cake for the short trip over to the Maxwell-Peters Home just down the street.

Gotta polish the silver first...

And the *after* photos.

This is after almost three hours of positioning the fondant pearl balls on the cake. Not all the little buggers wanted to stick so I had to sweep a few off the floor. Once positioned, however, none were lost during the short trip to the venue.

And the groom's cake...

Yummy strawberries dipped in chocolate. And that's strawberry cake under the coating of ganache.

Yep, just another Sunday at the office...

Pain d'Epi

Pain d'Epi

Epi Bread.

Wheat Stalk Bread.

Whatever you call it, it's a classic (French) artisan bread you can make from baguette dough, or just about any other bread dough. You simply roll a baguette shape, cut almost through at an angle with scissors, and separate the cut parts. There is a great blog post about forming and cutting a pain d'epi on Bread in Five.

Pain is the French word for bread (yeah, I know you already know that). Épi translates directly as "ear" but is short fo épi de blé, means "sheaf of wheat".

Way back in culinary school, I made this sheaf of wheat from salt dough as a decoration for a wedding buffet. Why? Oh, very symbolic.

A sheaf of wheat represents the prosperity of a bountiful harvest. To early agricultural people, a good wheat harvest assured plenty of the bread that would keep the community alive throughout the winter. Wheat sheaves became symbols of the successful harvest, associated with all that is truly nourishing and life-affirming. 

It is also a symbol of death, resurrection and fertility.  ‘I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’ (John 12:24) It is used af funerals to symbolize the fruitful and productive life of a person of faith.

And it was the advent of the Wedding Cake.

In ancient Greece and Rome, wheat was a symbol of fertility and prosperity. Early Roman wedding guests tossed grains of wheat at the bride and groom for good luck and fertility.

As customs evolved, guests would bring small wheat cakes to the ceremony and crumble the cakes over the bride's head, symbolizing the same gifts of fortune and fertility. They would then eat the fallen crumbs to share in the young couple's good fortune.

Later, wheat cakes were stacked in a tall mound between the bride and groom, and if they were able to kiss over the stack, they would be blessed with many children and much prosperity. Today’s traditional French wedding cake, the croquembouche -- a tall pyramid of profiteroles held together with spun sugar – evolved from this custom.

Getting back to the epi bread, Wise Geek describes it as "easy and stylish." Yep, that's about it. It is like several rolls bound together along a central stalk. It looks cool, and it is easy to eat -- you just break a piece off.

And if you happen to like crust (which is MY favorite part of the bread), you'll be in heaven!

We made some today with rustic sourdough, which was a little dry. We might have to do it again tomorrow with a softer dough (one with a higher percentage of water).

Wine at Mary's -- Part II

Here it is... The German Chocolate wine bottle and cheeses set up on the groom's table. Gary at Jester's Flowers made the tablecloths and other decorations.

The biscuits were made in-house using a variation of the cabin biscuits from the Titanic Tribute. The grapes are from Sam's Club.

And here is a close-up of the back of the bottle.

We couldn't resist adding this final detail.

The best part? When asked how to cut the cake, and which pieces to cut first, we grinned and said... "just cut the cheese."

The bride's cake, by comparison, was simple and elegant.

Three tiers of strawberry cake. Each tier has four layers, alternating vanilla buttercream and sliced fresh strawberries.

The outside of the cake is done in a simple linen textured finish and garnished with more fresh strawberries from Snow's Bend Farm.

It's going to taste at least as good as it looks.

 

Wine at Mary's -- Part I

We've been looking forward to this cake for a very long time.

A 3-D wine bottle and a plate of cheeses.

The groom likes German Chocolate cake.

So we started today, cause we knew these cakes would take some time. And we made the cheeses first, putting the gravity-defying bottle off as long as possible.

He picked the cheese and we were sent photos of the ones he wanted. Swiss. Cheddar wrapped in red wax. Shredded mozzarella. We'll cut the cheese off the cake boards at the reception venue.

Then the wine bottle. First we had to go borrow a wine bottle from Opus (the restaurant across the alley).

Then we started with four layers of rice krispy treats as the base, and to have something to skewer the cake into.

To that were added three layers of german chocolate cake, each on it's own board.

And finally an extra layer of cake (without the filling), a strong wooden dowel, and a snake of rice krispy treats for the neck.

The entire "cake-like object" was base coated in buttercream and put in the freezer for an hour or so to harden while Sarah mixed up some wine-bottle-green fondant (whiite chocolate fondant with leaf green and pine green gel color, plus a little dark chocolate fondant to darken it).

It only took two takes to cover the bottle with fondant (sideways, with a seam down the back that had to be smoothed).

The cork wrap was made with burgundy and chocolate fondant, and the entire "glass" part of the cake was painted with edible laquer with a tad of antique green luster dust added.

There you go.

Tomorrow we'll take step-by-step photos of the assembly and final products. We even made some crackers for the table.

The bride's cake will be equally lovely, three tiers of strawberry cake with fresh local strawberries between the layers. It will be covered in textured vanilla buttercream and garnished with more strawberries. Then we will pipe some pretty green vines around the berries.

You won't want to miss the final product!

 

Regarding Refrigeration

Somewhere out there is a bride with an Aunt Joelene. She thinks her aunt has her wedding cake under control.

But she doesn't know what I know.

Hi Mary, I'm Joelene, I have a few questions, if I make a wedding cake with buttercream frosting how many days will it stay fresh in the fridge. And the same if its a fondant cake how long will it stay fresh in fridge.

And a second email...

Hi mary, the situation is I'm makin my neices wedding cake and groom. She gets married on a sat. I also am a nail artist and I'm doing the bridal parties nails on thurs. so I was hoping it would be ok to make cakes tue and wed and refrigerate. Do you think it will not be good do do that. 

Also is there a website to figure out all the cake sizing, measurements, how much frosting I'll need for the sizes of cakes I'm making ect. 

I'm not a professional but it's passion of mine to make cakes so I'm always guessing. And I'm trying to figure out all needs for the cake because I need to pack n bring everything caus I'll be driving 8 hours to my neices. Does that make sense?

Ok Joelene, let's talk about refrigeration...

Wedding Cake Trends in Tuscaloosa

I just finished an interview with Tuscaloosa Magazine about wedding cake design trends.

Then I ran across this photo from one of our weddings over the weekend and realized it was the PERFECT example of almost every trend we just discussed.

This year's top five wedding cake trends...

1. Simple design. No piped swirls or dots or lace covering the cake. Just a smoothly-iced cake. Go back and look at the cake from Bella and Edward's wedding in the movie Breaking Dawn. Absolutely plain, but with lots of elegant flowers.
2. Fondant details. The buttons and bow are made from fondant. Surrounded by lace, you might just miss these, but they really pop on the simple background.
3. Bling. A beautiful gem-covered brooch in the middle of the fondant bow adds another touch of elegance.

The Bridal Show -- Part 2

New faces.

That's what makes a bridal show fun.

Being part of the wedding business in Tuscaloosa, we get to know a lot of the service providers. The event planners, the floral designers, the photographers, the caterers. And they were all there yesterday.

And then there were the lesser known vendors. Ones we don't see very often. With goods and services you didn't know you needed or wanted until you saw them. Let me introduce just a few...

Decorous Dishes -- rents vintage tableware. They are in Huntsville, but don't let that stop you. An absolutely unique collection of charmingly mismatched dishes.

Capitol Park Antiques -- Another source for vintage and vintage-looking items.

This is not a rental company, you'll have to buy what you like but the prices are very reasonable, and they have a very nice selection of cake stands, cupcake stands, and other serving pieces. 

ABZ Rent All -- not new, but under NEW MANAGEMENT. With new stuff and a new attitude. Check them out on McFarland Boulevard, just our side of the bridge. Arbors. gazebos, furniture, and cake stands. In addition to the usual collection of dishes and serving pieces.