Project Wedding Cakery

I talked briefly about wedding cakes here.

Since then, I've mentioned it a time or two but I didn't really go into any details.  I was consumed with invitations and The Dress.

I finally have that mostly sorted.  So you know what that means don't you friends?

CAKE TRIALS! 

(so awesome!)

All Images are Mine

This weekend while Wes was at work, the Kid and I whipped up a dozen cupcakes.  I wanted to test two cake recipes and two buttercream frosting recipes without actually making two full-sized cakes.  Here they are . . . yeah-gotta work on the frosting thing.  Also-instructions from Baking 911 were invaluable.  I am not a cupcake baker by any means and the last batch I made was seriously, seriously mutated looking.  They have excellent advice here that results in flatter tops and neater looking cupcakes.

Anyway, we have a chocolate bacon cake with chocolate buttercream (yes, bacon) and a cream cheese poundcake with vanilla buttercream.  I made both of these buttercreams with mostly butter by the way-I added some shortening to thicken it up and even out the texture but that was beceause I ran out of butter.  Yeah-I'm a effing professional over here.

It's official, everything's better with chocolate.  The Kid, who doesn't like anything and is suspicious of pretty much everything that isn't fried loved the chocolate bacon cupcake.  He smacked it down and not even crumbs were left.  Amazing.  Even Wes, who doesn't like chocolate (I KNOW!) liked that cupcake.  He also liked the cream cheese pound cake.

As I am not all about the cake in general I was satisfied to declare winners.  Our two tiers will be chocolate bacon and cream cheese poundcake.

Let's talk about frosting for a minute. . .

We really liked the chocolate buttercream recipe that we used.  It wasn't super sweet-it had a milder chocolatey flavor-but something about it really complemented the darker, deeper chocolate of the cake.  We are definitely content with that one.

The vanilla buttercream . .  was vanilla.  It was kind of boring.  It was still good, but I think we need a little something more.

I think my next trial will be all about fillings and frosting flavors.

Stay tuned for more wedding cakery.  I still have to practice decorating . . . so . . . that should be entertaining for everyone involved, lol.

Wedding Cakery

How about some cake porn?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Clearly there is a theme.  I have a weakness for ruffled cakes.  They're simple but textured.  I think they're gorgeous.

You might also remember that along with my dress project we also decided that we would have to make our own wedding cake as well.  So my realistic side is thinking that most of these beauties will just be dreams.  I mean, Youtube can only take you so far right?

But you know I have to at least give it a try.  I already started researching construction techniques.  As far as I can tell, the ruffle cakes are all made out of fondant.   Zero experience there but from what I've heard, it doesn't taste all that good.  So I am also looking for buttercream icing inspiration too.  I love that kind of spackle effect on number two.  Although spackle is maybe not an appetizing visual image.

And what about un-frosted cakes?  These are seriously gorgeous as well.  The one on my inspiration board looks like it has been dusted with powdered sugar, but how pretty!

Cake trials will need to start soon and I better get started practicing decorating sooner than later.  I made Wes a pound cake the other week that killed my hand mixer.  Like flames shooting out, killed it dead.  So . . .  could there be a new mixer in my future?  A new AWESOME, lust-worthy mixer?

We shall see.