The wedding cake saga part I: The beginnings...

Two of my good friends (good friends as in I'm the maid of honour) are going to be getting married in March next year and I have been given the job of making the wedding cake. Hopefully it'll turn out amazing and spectacular. As you can imagine, there is heaps of stuff to do to plan for said wedding cake ie. flavour, cake sizes and design. I also decided that I'd make the cake topper. So that is where I started. Mr T had this great idea of doing the cake topper with the bride and groom sitting on the couch as when we visit they are usually sitting on the couch with their puppies so I decided this would be a good picture for the top of the cake.

Gum paste model of the bride and groom

I made the cake topper out of Satin Ice Gum Paste. It took me ages but I have finally got there! I first made the couch using polystyrene as the base so it would not be too heavy and sink into the cake. Then I made Mr Grinch (The Groom) which was fairly easy as he just needed to wear a suit and tie. The bride (Dr L) followed. First I just modelled a dress and sat it on the couch but it looked pretty stupid and the time it took me to put the detailing on the dress was enough to have the gum paste set somewhat and it got what I call "elephant skin" so I did it again modelling a body and then draping the dress over and putting the detailing on after which worked quite well (not my idea, it was Mr T's so I'd better acknowledge him). Then I made the puppies, they are so cute! Just like the real thing, they were pretty easy to make. I used my scalpel to cut the gum paste to make it look like fur.  I am pretty happy with it except for Dr L's head which I put on while the body was still wet and it sunk down and now her head looks a bit fat but I think it will be OK. What do you think? 

The Challenge.....

Dr L decided on a three tiered mudcake with a chocolate raspberry mud cake as the base, a caramel mud cake as the middle and a chocolate marshmallow cake as the top. She also chose French buttercream to ice the cake and wanted a pattern like the one above. We did some research and decided that using 10, 12 and 14 x 4 inch round cakes should give us enough cake for the 140 people to attend the wedding.  I booked in for morning tea at work on Thursday so that I could practice one of the cakes but having only one of the sized cake pans I could only make the top chocolate marshmallow cake and only in half the height as my tin is only 2.7 inches high. So, what happened was that the marshmallows all dissolved whilst the cake was cooking so there's really no point in doing that so it will now be a plain chocolate cake. I used a recipe that I got here (swapping the raspberries for marshmallows) and it turned out amazing so that will definitely be the recipe that I use for both the plain choc and the choc raspberry layers. I wasn't entirely happy with the cake so took no pictures of it but below is a pic of the leftovers after we cut it up... 

Marshmallow cake trial 

Not having the correct cake pans, I ordered in the right ones and picked them up yesterday. While I was at the shop, I decided four tiers looked way awesome and Dr. L agreed so we changed the cake to four tiers 8, 10, 12 and 14 x 4 inch cakes. Here's what the pans look like, the cake will be over a foot tall. We also now need to decide on a new flavour of cake... 

The cake tins- they are ginormous!!!

The buttercream frosting recipe came from brave tart- my favourite food blogger. If you have time, have a look at her site, there is heaps of stuff about macarons and other delicious things on there. The French buttercream uses egg yolks, sugar, salt and butter. The only problem I had with it was that it was quite yellow as you'll see in the above photo, the photos on the Brave tart website show a lovely white buttercream. This has happened before with buttercream recipes from bravetart and it was frustrating but I read an article the other day that explained it all. it's the difference in the butter, specifically on what the cows were fed. In Australia, cows are usually pasture fed which gives the butter a high carotene content which is responsible for the yellowness of the butter. In Europe (and I presume America too due to the lack of yellow in their butter), cows are usually fed mainly on hay and grains which gives their butter a lower carotene content and hence a less yellow colour. The breed of cow can also contribute to the colour of the butter. Yesterday I went to Costco for the first time and I found 4 pounds of butter for $9 so I bought it. This butter was imported from America so I thought I'd compare it to the Australian butter I already had at home. The colours were obviously different (see below) and the flavours were also different with the American butter having an almost cream cheese type flavour and aroma it was also not as creamy and delicious as the Australian butter. The difference in flavours could be due to the American butter being cultured butter which is supposed to give a different flavour and tang to it.

American butter (left) vs Australian butter (right)

So, this week I learnt a lot and made a few decisions on the cake. Next time I'll hopefully have another experimentation with the cake to show you all. Hopefully I'll get the first two layers made so I can get your opinion. 

What flavour of cake do you think I should make for the top layer?