January: Agree to make wedding cake. Look for sugar skull moulds.
February: Buy sugar skull moulds. I meant to start work on it straight away but didn't. Don't worry, there's plenty of time.
March: Crap - only a month till the wedding. Panic. Realise that this is all about preparation as I must work the week before the wedding. Beg, borrow and steal tins from mother-in-law. Make lots of lists and calculations.Realise that there is very little I can do till the week before the wedding. Again panic. Drink lots of alcohol. Look at wedding wrecks on cake wrecks. Drink more alcohol.
Make Sugar Skulls: Make sugar skulls from moulds. Leave to dry for a week. Join together with royal icing. (recipe to follow over coming days).
2 Weeks before: Individually line, mix, bake, cool, wrap and freeze each tier of wedding cake (takes whole day).
Week before
Saturday: Cake shop open till 2pm. - buy a HUGE box of fondant. Call mother realising you don't want to carry 7kg of fondant home for 20 minutes. Realise you haven't gotten the cakes out of the freezer. Defrost cakes. Play Sims. Make Ganache. Leave to set. Obsessively look at Cake decorating forums. Practice Educause conference presentation.
Sunday: Make buttercream. Split cakes, fill with buttercream, cover with ganache. Clear out fridge. Leave to set in fridge.
Monday: Present first ever conference paper at Educause.
Tuesday night: Colour fondant green, wrap for later. Start decorating sugar skulls. This involves making royal icing from scratch.
Wednesday night: work late - hope to dear god that everything won't be ruined because you haven't covered the cakes with fondant icing.
Thursday night: Come home, cover cakes in fondant. This is not as easy as it sounds. Spray cakes with vodka. Drink vodka.
Friday: Have day off. Realise that you have left covering the cake board in fondant far too late. Buy wrapping paper to cover board. Make fondant decorations & attach with royal icing - this sounds easy but surprisingly took all day. Finish decorating skulls. Be amazed at the amount of royal icing required for everything. Hubby helps assemble bottom two layers of cake. Pipe ganache borders. Hubby makes travelling box. Get to bed by 1:30
Wedding Day: Get up with hubby at 5:30. He switches cars around and moves cake to back of car as you realised the night before that you can't lift the cake on your own. Feel lucky you realised this before he left home. *phew* Go back to bed as he goes to work. Pack up everything needed for the cake, get dressed. Cake safely makes it to the wedding, you put on the top tier and the bride doesn't submit your cake to cake wrecks. *phew*
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| Also - I realise that top tier isn't centred. It bothers me every time. |
You know, if you hadn't mentioned that top tier is off centre, I wouldn't have noticed it......
ReplyDeleteAwesome cake :-)
I thought I knew and appreciated just how much work was involved in making this cake Ashley but I was so so wrong. Thank you for spelling it out in detail for me with a play by play. I am forever eternally grateful for this amazing cake. It was my dream cake! Besides looking totally awesome it tasted divine! And we managed to keep the top tier and enjoy it for a few days! We of course put some in the freezer too! It was exactly what I imagined! Perfect! I know thank you is not enough but it comes from the heart. <3
ReplyDeleteNo guilt trip intended! lol - there are very few people I would do this for - but Mrs Sherbert (aka MissSophieMac) is definitely one of them :)
ReplyDeleteI learnt so many skills making the cake that I probably wouldn't have attempted without the looming deadline. Also it's going to give me many a #blogjune post. So really I should thank you for the material (and including me in your big day :D)
*mega ginormous smushy hugs*
It looks amazing Ashley. I never really want to get married but the thought of getting you to make me a cake almost tempts me :-)
ReplyDeleteOnly if you pay me in Vodka ... and money.
ReplyDeleteAMAZING - WOW! Super impressive.
ReplyDelete