My First Wedding Cake

So there I was about a year ago, the gung-ho excited home baker and amateur cake decorator happily volunteering to make my brother's wedding cake.  Perhaps I underestimated how much baking I would have to do in a very short span of time.  I could have also forgotten how hot it is to bake in 32C weather.  I blame it on being caught up on the excitement of my older brother getting hitched and the possibility of making my first wedding cake.


That aside, it was really enjoyable planning the cake.  My SIL (sister in-law) had some fabulous ideas for the theme (some of which I used for my daughter's 2nd birthday) of the wedding so that made my job very easy.  She also had some ideas for the type of cake she wanted and supplied me with lots of pictures to sketch some sample cake decorations for her.  The main colour for the wedding was Pink and she liked a cake scattered with daisy that she saw.

These are some sample of string garlands that I piped for her to choose from. It was done on an old ice cream container! : )

We settled on a 3 tier cake and I felt a 12" cake for the 1st tier would be a good size to feed about 150 people.  She wanted the daisies pink and the cake a white on white design so we tinted the cake pink so when you cut through the white fondant we'd see pink inside.  I suggested a butter cake to ensure it wouldn't sink under the fondant and I made it a strawberry cake to go with the pink colour.  We decided against any fruit between the layers because of the weather and went with a vanilla buttercream between the layers.  I didn't go crazy with the pink as I would worried it would be too much colouring but maybe I should have?  The colour was a light pink almost peachy colour due to the yellowness of the butter and egg yolk element.

The sketch for the cake with ideas for each tier.

While I was holidaying in Australia, I started the sketches and practiced a bit with royal icing as it had been months and months since I have used a piping bag and if anyone's piped with royal icing will know that you need to have strong hands to get the royal icing out smoothly.  My SIL chose a delicate and classic looking string garland for the 1st tier, a fondant ribbon with royal icing polka dots and picots on the top tier.  We kept it white on white to give the cake texture and the focal point were the gumpaste daisies.

I was going for fushia with the daisies using Wilton's gel paste Rose colour with a little bit of Burgundy but for some reason the daisies looked a little more red than fushia.  Sigh.  It became a case of if the flowers were seen under a white light, it was fushia but under yellow light it looked more red.  After they were put onto the cake they looked right at home though.

The ribbon in the 2nd tier had to be redone because it was too thin the first time around. It looked better the second time but I have to learn how to put it perfectly straight.  There were some parts of the ribbon that were wavy even though we had 2 pairs of eyes and hands placing it around the cake!   My sister was a big help with the decoration and became a pro at making the pearl borders as she was quicker and better at making them herself than with me helping.  After a few tries, she managed to get those borders nice, fat and round whereas mine had some slightly misshaped ones and they tended to break from the 'string'.  The borders do a lot to complete the cake and they are great for hiding untidy bottoms.  Hee hee.

Here's my sister the pro at making pearl borders.

To complete the home made cake was a cute figurine of the couple painstaking and lovingly created by my SIL's sister made from clay.  The level of detail was amazing!  She got the bride and groom's features spot on right down to the bride's cute cartoon eyes.

See those cute cartoony eyes?  Spot on!

Before I started on the cake though I spent 5 hours baking heart-shaped sugar cookies for the wedding favours.  This was the same day after I had gotten off a plane but my enthusiasm helped me forget my fatigue.  That was Day T-4.  On Day T-3 my SIL and I spent 8 hours covering the cookies with fondant, dusting it petal dust and stamping their names on it then packaging the cookies.  The fatigue started to set in...

Day T-2 saw me spend 9 hours baking 5 cakes.  It was sooooo hot.  It was over 30C outside and the oven was almost constantly going in the kitchen.  It was at this point that I said that I would be quite happy not baking for a few months after that!

Then on Day T-1 it was all about decorating.  I started late, sometime in mid-afternoon as I wanted to join my sis and mother for a mani pedi. : )  I am glad I did that, it seemed to re-energise me.  Even then I spent another 9 hours decorating into the wee hours.  My sister and brother were kind enough to stay up with me.

Adding the finishing touches to the border.

The royal icing piped garlands - I love how they turned out.

The completed cake.

It was a really good experience but I think it will be the last time I put my hand up to make a wedding cake for someone.  So much pressure!  I was so worried the cake would fall over on the way to the venue too!

 

How to Cover Cookies with Fondant

This year was the first time I celebrated Halloween.  It was never a celebrated holiday in Malaysia or other parts of Asia and neither was it a popular holiday in the UK, countries which I spent some time in.  So I never really had the opportunity to celebrate it.  When I was young, I read about it in Archie comics and of course there was TV later.

Well this year my family was invited to a Halloween party and as it was potluck we were all encouraged to bring something.  I decided to make some Bat Cookies.  I used sugar cookies as a base and thought it might be easier to cover them with fondant instead of messing around with Royal Icing.  I hadn't tried flooding or decorating cookies with royal icing before so thought I'd wait for another time to experiment.

You will need:

Ingredients for Sugar Cookies. (recipe) 

Skewer/Thin dowels

Fondant

First soak your skewers in water for half an hour to ensure that it doesn't burn when you put it in the oven.  After soaking, dry it a bit so you won't have water dripping everywhere when you insert it into the cookie.  I've done it without soaking the skewer before with no problems, but if you're concerned, the soaking helps.  You aren't baking the cookie for more than 12 minutes anyway.

Follow the recipe and roll out your cookie dough to about 2/3 cm thick.  You don't want it too thin as the dough will split when you insert the skewer.  The cookies were quite small so I used skewers instead of the thin dowels that you can get at the baking market or some supermarkets.  If the dough is too soft and won't hold it's shape, put it in the fridge and chill for 10 minutes and then try again.

Using your cookie cutter, cut out the shapes.  Once you have pressed the cookie cutter down, try gently aggitating the cutter a little by moving it side to side or back and forth while pressing it firmly down onto the surface of your work table. This will help neaten the edges when you remove it from the cutter.

Next, gently insert the skewer through the center of the cookie, using your finger to feel it through to make sure it doesn't go in crooked and the skewer appearing at the back of the cookie.  I'm a bit particular about these things so if I screw up, I tend to start over with a new cutout.

Next place onto the baking tray that has been lined with a baking sheet and bake according to the instructions.  Make sure you leave at least 2cm of space between the cookies as they do expand a little bit.  Once they are done, cool on wire racks.  Now you need to prepare the fondant.

Knead your fondant to soften it and then mix the colour of your choice.  We can start assembling the cookie now.  Fondant dries quite easily and hardens when exposed to air.  It's best to use the fondant in small portions and wrap the rest in cling film and then put it in an air tight tupperware or zip lock bag.  Using a small portion, roll it out with a rolling pin for fondant (you only need the small one for this) and using the same cookie cutter, cut out the shape.  Don't aggitate the fondant this time like you did with the dough.  Peel it off slowly from the cutter or the table and shape the edges so it's neat.  Next, you can do one of two things.

You can either use a small brush and brush some water onto the fondant then placing it on top of the cookie OR you can use some edible glue like Tylo (CMC + water) and brush it lightly onto the surface of the cookie and place the fondant on top.  Both works fine although of course the Tylo gives a more secure hold and it is easier to brush the glue on the cookie than brushing the water on the fondant which is more wieldy.

Press the edges of the fondant outwards onto the cookie to get a nice neat finish.  For my bat cookies, I added some 100's and 1000's for the eyes which were really a handful to do as they were so tiny and hard to get onto the fondant.  I didn't have time to make some royal icing otherwise it would have looked cooler if I drew in the mouth and teeth and wings.  Have fun!

Add a little ribbon for a finishing touch.  More Halloweenish.