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!

April 15, 2011 Alayna Discussion 11 comments

Whew!

That was crazy. I spent roughly 10 hours yesterday just baking cakes!

To give you an idea of how crazy it was, I’ve compiled a list of just how much of each ingredient I used yesterday:

• 12 cups of sugar
• 24 eggs
• 12 sticks of butter
• 18 cups of flour
• 6 cups of milk
• 24 tsp. of vanilla
• 20 tsp. of baking powder

And that’s just for the cakes, don’t even ask me how much butter was used to make the buttercream! And speaking of buttercream, remember that giant vat of it I made on Tuesday? I ran out. In fact, I think that was about half the amount I actually needed!

I had work stations going on every available surface in the kitchen:

I had to hand-wash that mixing bowl 7 times, my hands are so dry now.

But, I finished em’.

Today, I need to:

1. Carve the cakes (they will have a rounded top edge)
2. Crumbcoat them
3. Frost them
4. Cover them in white fondant
5. Dye some fondant pink and purple for stripes
6. Adhere the stripes
7. Insert support dowels in the bottom layer

It’s daunting to look at that list. It’s a lot to do, but each thing shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes at most.

I have a sinking feeling that I don’t have enough fondant though, so I need to leave time to go get some if that happens.

Ok, back to it. I’ll try to take more pictures today since it’s less messy (didn’t want to drop my camera in cake batter.) Wish me luck!

April 14, 2011 Alayna Discussion 23 comments

No, not cake-bacon week….though that does sound intriguing.

My brother-in-law is getting married this Saturday, so the time has finally come for me to bake that wedding cake I’ve been talking about. We’re heading up there the evening before, so I need to have the cake finished a whole day early. So, pretty much this entire week has been and will continue to be consumed with activities related to cake-baking!

Yesterday, I spent most of my time taking care of tons of housework that I know I won’t have time for later in the week. I also needed to start prepping for the baking by getting everything in order. Here’s my list of solely cake related to-do’s for yesterday:

1. clean out fridge to make room for two large cakes and a vat of frosting
2. take all cake-baking paraphernalia out of wrappings
3. calculate how much I need of each ingredient for the whole shebang
4. clean and cover my prep table so cats don’t get fur on it
5. shop for any remaining ingredients needed
6. test fondant dyes on scraps of old fondant
7. locate and set out all baking tools

That was a lot of work.

Today’s assignment was to make a triple batch of the buttercream icing. I managed to snap a few photos of the process…

Kitchen is absolutely covered in powdered sugar!

Here it is resting in the fridge. I’ll take it out first thing in the morning before I start baking so it has time to soften up again.

So, tomorrow is the day that will require the most work. I’ll be baking cake layers starting immediately after breakfast until whenever I’m done. I’m hoping I can get them all baked, cooled, and assembled in one day. I’ve gotta hurry and get the buttercream on them so that they don’t start getting stale.

What is the most delicious dessert you’ve ever eaten?

April 12, 2011 Alayna Discussion 13 comments