Wedding Cake

This may well be the one and only time I ever make a wedding cake, 'cause it nearly killed me.  But it turned out so well, that I thought it would be worth putting up here.

The lucky recipients were my mum & step-dad, and the big day was 7 May 2011.

The bottom layer was a deliciously rich and sticky chocolate mud cake, coated in ganache and then white plastic icing.  The top layer was a dense fruit cake, which they saved for their first anniversary - coated in marmalade and then the plastic icing over the top.  The flowers were white chocolate dyed purple, and hand-shaped.

The top layer - fruit cake!

This one was easy because it was smaller!

Bottom layer - mud cake with ganache on

This was the second attempt at putting the icing on the bottom layer - the first was a disaster and my poor mother (whose cake it was) arrived to find me hacking icing off with a knife because it had cracked so badly

It took three of us to lift this huge slab of icing onto the cake

No cracks this time!

Perfect!

Handmade white chocolate flowers

These were done in several batches, so there was a lot of variation in colour which worked out really well

Detail of flowers

Testing out flower arrangements on the top layer

The big day is here!  Starting to assemble the final version

All put together

Picture perfect

Top view

Final flower arrangement up close

With the ribbons as well

More flowers :)

There were a bunch of flowers left over, so they were randomly inserted under layers of the cake, which looked rather pretty.

Apart from the ribbons etc which I obviously did not make, this was all hand-crafted by me.  It was fun and terrifying at the same time.  It all came together rather beautifully, though.  The bottom layer was absolutely demolished on the day, and the top layer held up beautifully for a year and apparently tasted amazing (though the roses didn't taste so good by then, they tell me).

There endeth my career in wedding cakes ;)