My First Wedding Cake

Recently, a friend from work contacted me about making a cake. When she first asked, she mentioned that it was a cake for her "celebration." When I agreed to make the cake, I thought it might be a birthday celebration. Then, during one of our emails, she informed me that it was the cake for her celebration of her recent marriage. OMG. A wedding cake.

Fortunately for me, it was a small celebration with only about 30 people. Isabel is also relatively low-maintenance, and left the cake design entirely up to me. Her only requirement was that it be a strawberry cake with buttercream frosting. She also mentioned that her colors were red, silver, & white.

Normally, I'm not a huge fan of strawberry cake, so I decided to try a new recipe. I found a recipe online that got lots of good reviews and tweaked it just a bit. Luckily, I leveled the cakes, so I had bits to sample. I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out great! The pureed strawberries gave the cake a great flavor while it wasn't too overly sweet. The strawberries also made the cake nice and red which worked perfectly with Isabel's colors. I was thrilled. 

I decided to make the cake two layers, one 12 inches and the other 8. Then, after a quick crumb coat, I covered the cake in white roses. My hero over at iambaker.net has a recipe for a "crusting buttercream." I used her suggestion of half shortening and half butter to get the good flavor of buttercream that would actually hold its shape nicely.

One of the best parts of decorating the cake was my new turntable. I had a 50% off coupon, so I picked one up for only $11 at the local craft store. How is it possible that I have been decorating cakes for so long without this? (Where has this thing been all my life??) It made the cake so unbelievably easy to decorate. It was done in a snap!

The only downside of the whole project was that we have been having a MAJOR heatwave here in Boston this week. And my kitchen does NOT have air conditioning. Baking in this heat is not for the faint of heart!

Here's the finished product:

One red rose to go with the bride's color scheme

Here you can see the silver sugar I added to match the bride's colors.

What do you think? Feel free to comment below!

**Don't forget that if you're in the Boston area and need some cake you can:

1.) send me an email (thecakebeast@gmail.com) 

or 

2.) use the contact form on the right sidebar to tell me what you need!

By the way, did you remember to stop by and "like" my Facebook page?

And don't forget to follow me on Twitter!