Light and Fluffy

So this post is just me bragging. This is a picture of the cake I made for my husband's niece's recent wedding. My sister-in-law had called me up one week before and told me that their plans had fallen through and that the fake cake they had planned on using had been tossed out. Yes, you can get fake cakes. They're made out of styrofoam.

So anyway, they were all out of options. None of the bakeries would do it and a family friend who does this sort of thing was busy with another project. Another niece remembered that I had made my daughter's birthday cake, which had a lot of roses. My SIL called and asked if I would make a three-tiered cake for a 16-12-8 cake stand (that's the diameter of the trays). Nothing fancy, just slap some icing on it and a shell border. The wedding colours were just white and mauve. Sorry it's short notice. I said I would, because if I was my wedding, I would surely want this to go away ASAP.

More bragging: the colour of the icing is quite close to the colour of the bridesmaids' dresses, which I hadn't seen before the wedding. And? the purple buttercream on the ribbon border matches almost perfectly to the purple royal icing apple blossoms (250 of them) that make up the little bunches on the top border and the decorative effect on the bottom border. Each flower has 2 leaves, and there is a white pearl border on the top.

There were some very nice reactions and compliments at the reception. I kind of get the feeling that they really did expect me to bring a white cake with a purple shell border and that's that. Well, I won't pretend that I didn't enjoy the attention, particularly when the father of the bride thanked me in his speech. That was cool.

This is my first wedding cake ever. Next time, I will make way more icing. The base icing was too thin in places. I think it was a simple, but still fancy-looking cake. The difficulty was mostly in trying to get the top and sides smooth. I will also brag that I was smart enough not to try something too far out of my league.

I have a spiffy 2-tier cake picked out for DD's birthday. It's also simple, but fancy. It's decorated with cookies and the food colour spray stuff.

Cake decorating isn't a hobby that many people would guess I do, but it works for me. I hope to get better at it as time goes by. I got into it because I paid $35.00 for a cake and it really pissed me off. How hard could it be? Well, actually, my shell borders suck large.

Meh. I'll work on it, but I can always just do 250 apple blossoms instead of shells. But don't eat them. Royal icing is icky.