Two weddings...one tiny and one big!

Yesterday I delivered two wedding cakes. One was for a very small intimate wedding. I designed an 8 inch round cake for a couple from Austin, TX that were coming to the Springs to get married. They wanted a cake just for them and their kids. So anyway, the flavor was German chocolate with two layers of coconut pecan filling and one layer of fudge filling, all covered in a white chocolate ganache. This is the first time that I have made a white chocolate ganache. I really like the way it turned out...set up well, but didn't get too hard, so it was easy to cut, and tasted great! Just added a little ribbon and fresh flowers. I delivered the cake to the Pineview Grille at the Colorado Country Club.

The other cake I designed was delivered to the Falcon Officer's Club at the AF Academy. It was a very large cake...8, 12, and 16 inch square tiers...all done in black and white with a beautiful fresh floral cake top  in hot pink roses. I was very happy with the finished product, and so was my customer. The cake was done in 3 flavors...fudge marble with bavarian cream, yellow with strawberry mousse, and chocolate with raspberry and fudge. Again, the black portions were all done with Hershey's special dark chocolate fondant. The people at the Falcon Club were so wonderful to work with. When I got there, they let us use one of their carts, and helped to roll the cake in. The cake table was loaded with plates and a white table linen (two of my pet peeves...see older post), but they were so kind as to get another small table to put the plates on, and also put a black tablecloth overlay on top of the white linen. I also set this cake up on my new 22 inch square silver cake plateau...it made the cake look even prettier. 

Using whipped cream icing on cakes

I had a request for whipped cream icing on the last wedding cake I designed. The best whipped cream I have found to use on wedding cakes is a stabilized whipped cream made with Rich's whip topping base. You add 2 parts of the base to 1 part of heavy whipping cream and whip with the wire whisk attachment of your mixer on medium speed until soft peaks form. For this particular cake, I also added vanilla and some ivory color. This is a great tasting whipped cream, goes on smoothly, and holds its shape well. You can also add other liquids to this base for different flavors. I buy it by the quart size, and it comes frozen, but I believe you can get it in larger sizes also. The flavors for this cake were spice with cream cheese filling, chocolate with coconut pecan filling, and banana split (layers of whipped cream with bananas, pineapple, and strawberries, drizzled with chocolate syrup and sprinkled with nuts). The flowers were very simple, yet elegant, as was the design of the cake. I displayed the cake on a 22 inch round silver plateau, which I believe adds greatly to the presentation, making it a beautiful centerpiece. The wedding venue was the officer's club at Petersen Air Force Base.

Delivering cakes in the rain...

Yesterday we catered a wedding reception for a friend of ours. It was supposed to be an outdoors reception, but, as we know, the weather here in Colorado Springs can be very unpredictable. So, at the last moment, it was decided to bring the reception inside the house. Diane has a very lovely large home, so it wasn't the end of the world, even though she had planned some beautiful decorations for outside. So anyway, we were late getting everything set up since it was a last minute decision. Everything turned out fine, except delivering cakes in the rain is not fun, and because it was raining when Bruce was bringing the cake in, the beautiful finish on the fondant was marred slightly by the rain drops. The cake was still very nice and, of course, tasted wonderful. We used a beautiful orchid spray on the top tier, and it was placed on a mirror and my newly purchased silver cake plateau, which was perfect for this type of cake design. The bride and groom chose some wonderful flavor combinations. . . chocolate mint with chocolate mint mousse, chocolate with peanut butter mousse, and fudge marble with cream cheese. The picture actually makes the cake look smaller than it was. . . the bottom tier was a 14 inch square and the cake plateau was 22 inches in diameter.