Man, I thought all-day-baking Wednesday was hard, but yesterday takes the cake! HA! 😀
Yeah, that really is my sense of humor, sorry.
So you saw that I got all the baking done, and now it was time to carve the cakes and cover them in delicious buttercream. I started by trimming the edges and then removing all the brown crust. If I were just making a birthday cake or something I would leave the brown bits, but wedding cakes are expected to be more pristine so I removed it.
Trimming and shaping the cakes was a task that I expected to take about 30 minutes or so. Ha! Try a few hours! It was warm in our kitchen and the buttercream was getting soft and moving the cake layers around as I cut them, so I had to keep returning the cake to the fridge to set back up again.
The second one was easier, it just decided to behave for me for some reason.
Next up, crumbcoating.
A crumbcoat is a really thin layer of frosting that seals in the crumbs, seals in the moisture, makes a smooth and even surface, and holds the layers in place. It’s essentially edible glue.
First, you generously apply buttercream to the cake.
And then you scrape it all off!
I like to use a dough scraper tool because it has a hard edge the drags smoothly across the cake surface. (This is my favorite part of the whole process, I could crumbcoat all day and be happy.)
These got sent to the fridge to chill out for a while and let the buttercream crust.
Then you do it again!
You frost right over the crumbcoat heavily and then use the same tool to scrape it off again, but this time apply less pressure so that you leave more frosting behind. I didn’t get a picture of the finished frosting though, by this point I was getting off schedule for the next step so I wasn’t really thinking about pictures too much.
Protip: Make sure to get the frosting pristinely smooth as any slight imperfections will show up through the fondant layer.
Speaking of fondant, I am (dis)pleased to introduce you to my nemesis…
Fondant and I don’t get along so well. It’s partially because I’m a little weakling that has a hard time rolling it out thin enough and partly because the stuff is just so delicate and finicky and needs a lot of care to look smooth and nice.
I got it done though, and today I’ll be finishing up the last bits of decorating. The whole thing won’t come together though until the day of the wedding (Saturday) so it’ll be in pieces til then.
I’ll make sure to show the rest of the steps and the finished product soon!
Wow, cakes are a lot of work! It’s looking good so far. Can’t wait to see it all done!
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I am so impressed by this whole process! Where did you learn how to make wedding cakes? It looks like serious business!
Honestly, this is the first wedding cake I’ve ever made. I’m an art kid though, so this kind of stuff is just natural. I couldn’t tell you how a computer works to save my life but creative stuff is no problem!
Wow, this has been an amazing process to witness! Now I know I never want to bake wedding cakes…
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And I never want to bake another one! 😀 I’m very happy to be able to do this for family though.
Seriously, I can’t say it enough: I am totally in awe of you and this cake-baking expedition. I’ve always thought it would be fun to bake a wedding cake, but in reality, I don’t think it’s something I could ever tackle and master. You’re amazing!
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They look amazing!!! Can’t wait to see the finished product!!! How the hell are you getting them to their resting place???
Very carefully! It was smooth sailing til we hit the half mile of gravel road to the wedding site, slight damage but nothing terrible.
Wow, that is serious stuff! It looks good so far! And yeah, I imagine fondant would be really horrible to work with. My biggest problem though would be finding room in the fridge for FOOD!
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So complicated! And so impressive! And so I want want want those cutoff bits!
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in fact its awesome, your explanations are marvellous, you just ned to read and see yourself doing it, i cant wait tosee all you have! but my question now is, must the cake be peeled off with the knife before crumb coating?