i don’t know what i was thinking, but when an old friend from my teaching days reached out to see if i would be interested in making a wedding cake for her daughter, i agreed to take on the challenge. it didn’t seem too complicated and they are super laid back, so it didn’t seem like a big deal.
but. as you may know. things just haven’t been going well for me in cake making land lately. i don’t know why. i feel jinxed. my cakes aren’t baking right. my buttercream has seemed to be a weird consistency. i don’t know if it’s the new oven, the new mixer, or me. or some combo of the three.
anyways. as the big day loomed closer, i prepped all of the necessary ingredients. of course i made all of the cake layers twice (and the first batch is still in my fridge a month later). and i definitely made entirely too much buttercream, but that’s always preferable to too little. and then, the day before the wedding, i got to work.
this is where things came apart. a skill i once prided myself on, smoothing buttercream, has become elusive. i don’t know why. i struggled. maybe humidity. maybe my icing. maybe me. it’s incredibly frustrating. thankfully, the abundance of buttercream allowed me to start over entirely, because that’s exactly what i had to do. i piped dots all over the layers, which definitely helped to hide some of the worse parts. but this was for sure not my finest hour. i was extremely disappointed in the final result. (also, let me just say, it’s been awhile since i’ve made a tiered cake and that’s no joke either).
the next morning, i delivered the cake. i was relieved when they told me it would be refrigerated until the reception (something i wasn’t entirely sure about and meant certain doom for the buttercream in this humidity). the next day, i received some official photos from the wedding and it wasn’t as bad as i had imagined. haha. the decor and the venue did a lot to spruce this thing up.
now. if i was thinking i was slightly crazy for accepting a wedding cake in the first place, let me tell you how i upped the stress level for myself. the week before, a friend from the quilt shop asked if i could make her a small 50th anniversary cake two days before the wedding cake. of course i said yes. i could definitely squeeze that in amongst end of school chaos, working a few days at the shop, and oh, making a super stressful wedding cake.
anyways. she asked for yellow rose and white daisies and here’s what i came up with.
and so that’s the story of my week of making cakes for a 0th wedding anniversary and a 50th wedding anniversary. and it’s also the week i swore off making any cakes for a very long time. (but you’ll soon learn that that’s a lie).