There are a couple of wonderful, crazy people in my life who are entrusting to me their wedding cakes. The first wedding, in August, is one of my nieces. The second wedding, in November, is one of my friends I've known since I was a kid. I decided to have both couples over last weekend for cake tasting! It was a bit of an undertaking, making seven cakes, but I've learned quite a lot already (parchment paper makes everything easier, cakes take longer to bake than I remember, white chocolate makes frosting very hard when chilled, champagne flavoring tastes more like bubble gum than bubbly, mango cake is a terrible, terrible idea). I had asked both brides to give me flavor ideas, and they both gave me general ideas, but nothing specific, so I ran with my own ideas.
Here are the flavors I ended up with:
- vanilla cake with raspberry butter cream
- mango cake with mango curd and white chocolate-key lime frosting (cake-FAIL, frosting-good)
- pumpkin cake with bourbon cream cheese frosting
- strawberry cake with vanilla champagne butter cream
- chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache, chocolate mousse and white chocolate cream cheese frosting
- vanilla cake with raspberry filling and swiss meringue butter cream
- chocolate and vanilla cakes with chocolate ganache and vanilla butter cream
I can't think of much else to say, except that it was a huge amount of cake, and even after forcing cake off on both couples to take home, my coworkers still enjoyed the remains all week long. I haven't been informed of final decisions by the brides and grooms just yet, but I think the over all favorite was the pumpkin cake.
