Daisy Wedding Cake

Hi all! The wedding was this past weekend, a fourth of July wedding - we had a lovely time even with the unbelievably hot, hot weather. The cake turned out just great and yes, it survived the transport, and no, it did not melt! Who could ask for more? I couldn't have done it without D's help and JJ's good behaviour - love to you both!

The finished cake:

TA DA! You are looking at over 10 lbs of fondant, another 10 lbs of granulated sugar, and overall one hugely heavy cake! We decided to do it in two parts and finish the assembly at the reception, so that it would fit in our fridge and also be liftable by one person.

The lovely bride and groom cutting the cake:

I will be absolutely honest. It was wonderful seeing Kate and Jim pose for the cake cutting photos. But the cake cutting afterward? AIEEEEE!! I nearly had a panic attack. It was rather painful to watch. I think there's a reason that pastry chefs don't go to the weddings they bake for. I was warned that it would take a lot of willpower to relinquish control at the cutting. Generally I was quite good and stayed away, but truthfully I did wander over a few times to supervise. Anyhow, it all tasted delicious though, and the bride and groom loved the cake. What's more important than that?

Here are a few more photos of the whole process. I'm not going to offer you a schedule for making the cake like last time, because it occurred over so many weeks that I lost track of how much time I spent doing things. With JJ at home, I would just work on the daisies whenever she took a nap, or whenever D was able to watch her.

The baking was completed over two days, well-wrapped and then frozen. The icings and fillings were completed the next day, the splitting, filling and crumb-coating the fourth day, and the fondant and flowers were done the night before the wedding.

A few notes:

• Cake recipes from Confetti Cakes by Elisa Strauss
• Icing recipes from Toba Garrett for swiss meringue buttercream and chocolate buttercream
• Lemon curd recipe from How to Bake by Nick Malgieri
• Satin Ice fondant
• Cake supplies from Global Sugar Art

This was probably the cutest part of the wedding:

There were so many children at this wedding, all ages. The wedding cake provided an endless source of entertainment and whenever I looked over, there were a few kids hovering about it. They would go up to have a look, get their photo taken beside it, smell it, and eye it longingly. They would pick up the daisies on the table, turn it over in their fingers, then gingerly put them back down. They were very, very excited for dinner to be done. So cute!

Field of Daisies

Five hundred daisies lined up on my dining room table, in need of cheery yellow centres:

Some royal icing in the appropriate sunny yellow:

Happy daisies! I certainly hope there's enough for the wedding cake. I have about 50 backups in case of breakage.

Doesn't this kind of look like wallpaper?

The wedding count down begins! Tomorrow: tinting 10 lbs of fondant.

Daisy-making Machine!!

That's right, aka me. Unfortunately I don't have an actual machine that stamps them out and does all the sculpting and moulding. JJ is sleeping right now and I managed to crank out another 130 daisies today. Whew, I'm daisyed-out.

I'm up to 379. Only another 121 to go!

Wedding Cake Testing and Tasting

Can you believe I am actually blogging as promised?! That's because Daddy and JJ are playing downstairs while I upload photos and write! Must be quick here. Here are the results from Friday's wedding cake test run. This is a cake I'm making for a friend's wedding in July, and we had the tasting on Friday afternoon. I did a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and lemon curd, and chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. Both flavours turned out great, and we decided to use chocolate buttercream instead of ganache for a lighter textured cake.

Kate was deciding between two styles, both Martha Stewart designs, for her Fourth of July wedding. She loved the berry basket cake, which would look great as a whole but would be potentially disastrous when cut into (can you imagine putting a knife through all that fruit? I'm picturing berries rolling everywhere and bleeding juices). The daisy cake, on the other hand, would cut much better, and looks pretty and fresh. And more wedding-y, if you ask me. That's what we're going with. But I did mock-ups in both.

Some minor disasters didn't stop me from making my deadline, although I did have to recruit help from Daddy after my buttercream decided to curdle. Daddy made the accompanying strawberry sauce, which was delicious, fresh, and a lovely bright red.

Let's have a look at my handiwork:

There are about 55 daisies on this little 6" cake! I'll have to make hundreds and hundreds for the real thing, but at least I have 3 weeks to get the decorations done. I usually do two layers of petals for daisies, but with this many flowers on the cake, luckily it's unnecessary. (second of all, it would be the end of me to make hundreds of double daisies. I would have to cut out a THOUSAND to get the number I needed). Daisy-making will commence this week.

The actual top tier will be an inch taller and more densely covered in daisies like the photo. We might even make a 4-tier cake depending on the total number of guests, but it's possible we stick with 3-tiers and just do a few smaller cakes on the side.

Here's the basket cake, which did look beautiful. The weave is done with a leaf tip, which I thought was a nice innovation. It didn't look as stuffy and old-fashioned as a traditional basket weave, and it also didn't matter if my lines weren't piped perfectly. Unfortunately, this was a mess to cut if we didn't scoop the berries off first, which I doubt the banquet servers would be willing to do on a 130-person cake. Pretty though, eh?

I'm a little nervous about having the responsibility of making someone's wedding cake, but I'm sure it will be fine. Let's just hope it isn't the hottest day of the year that day, and that everything goes smoothly with the transportation. My fridge is going to be filled with nothing but cake that weekend, so Daddy and I are going to have to be creative about what to eat for dinners!

Blue Knit Dress

It's been a long time since I've completed any knitting, but I've finally got something to show you. Yes, it's another baby garment, because they are so much quicker to knit and you feel really accomplished for getting it done!

This is called the Happily Ever After dress in Chesley Flotten's Soft + Simple Knit for Little Ones. I used about 3 skeins of Sirdar Dreambaby in blue, and 1 skein in aqua on US5 circulars. At the start, the skirt feels like it's never going to end...just round after round of stockinette. When you finally get to the waistband, switching to seed stitch is such a relief! I like how it turned out - still too big for JJ, but she'll fit into it this fall and winter. She's got a lot of pink in her wardrobe, so it's nice to have something in a different colour.


It's probably going to be another little while before I can post some new crafts. I'm working on a baby project for my friend Lorah, so I can't post that until after she receives it. The red triangles quilt is still lying around unfinished (I think it's become Gatsby's new cat bed).

I'll also be making a wedding cake in July for a friend's wedding, and this week I'll be doing some mock-ups, which I'll write about soon.

Have a great week.

Fedora...or Bucket Hat

I've been able to start doing some sewing again now that JJ is becoming a better napper, and I'm getting rather skilled at doing things one-handed. With summer approaching, I started making little baby sunhats to keep them well-shaded. This one turned out just right, which also means that JJ will probably outgrow it within two weeks! They grow so fast it's unbelievable.

The hat is just quilting cotton with medium-weight interfacing and a muslin hat linimg underneath. I was able to finish it over two days. Cute!

Green Card!!

Big news of the day: We are officially permanent residents! We got our papers today!  Yay!  JJ is super excited too.

So it means I'm allowed to work now, even though I'll be at home with JJ for a while, it's nice to have the option.  This brings us to an end with the neverending applications and documents and appointments...suddenly there is nothing to worry about! It feels good.