Wedding cakes
Hello dear friends! We’re back from our honeymoon which means back to blogging for me. I hope you all enjoyed the guest posts while I was away.
With everything that happened in the past few weeks, I’ve got lots to share. There were many adventures on our honeymoon. There were many fun times with our visiting family and friends. And of course, there was the wedding. So I’ll have lots of details and treats in the next few weeks for us all to nibble on while we wait for the official photos from the wonderful Liesl at Photo Pink (I’ve seen just one photo so far, and it’s stunning and I can’t wait for the rest).
I want to tell you all about everything, the food, the music, the rain, the craziness and all the fun, but it just won’t be the same without photos I think, so I’m going to string you along a little bit longer. Not to worry though, the road to the finish will be highly entertaining and delicious.
Let’s start with cake, shall we?
Perhaps you recall, I chose to make our wedding cakes. Yes cakes, plural. There were eight of them. I took over my mom’s kitchen for 2 days and made a huge mess. We spent one day baking and one frosting more or less.
When I say that I made eight cakes, I really mean I made about 24 (or 30, I lost count), since each cake was several layers. We made 10 chocolate cakes, in 3 different sizes alone.
Luckily, I had lots of help in the kitchen to get everything done. Robin, Agatha & Shiri, some of my oldest friends, came in from out of town for the wedding and spent their extra time preparing frosting and measuring ingredients for me. I would not have been able to do it without them. I put Robin to work as soon as she got off the plane. Shiri and Agatha were also kind enough to actually drive all the cakes across town to the wedding.
Many cakes were made, and even more frosting. Vanilla frosting, chocolate frosting, espresso frosting, peanut butter frosting. More than I needed it turned out.
I made a raspberry sauce for one of the cakes. It’s one of my favorites, as it’s sweet and tart, with only a few ingredients. I also made a chocolate ganache to top a few of the cakes, but something went terribly wrong along the way. This is the sort of thing that happens when you are making a ton of cakes at once, and also trying to organize the final details of a wedding. So there was no chocolate covered cake, though I wish there had been.
Here are the beginnings of a little coconut cake. With these cakes being a bit taller than usual, I reinforced them with some wooden dowels. A few were still a little wiggly though.
Despite everything being rushed, I was happy with all the cakes except for one. If only that chocolate ganache hadn’t turned to chocolate fudge, it would have been lovely. Instead this cake was a chocolate raspberry mess. I couldn’t leave it alone even with the reassurances of my friends. Alas, despite my best efforts, it remained a mess. It tasted awesome though.
So for the record, I have no regrets making the cakes. Even with all the time it took, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Nearly everyone told me that they tried a few flavors and loved all of them. Every single cake was completely eaten by the end of the night. I would say that’s a wedding cake success.
I love that you chose to make your own cakes! They look amazing.
awesome!!!
I see a couple lovely squirrel table ladies in that pic!
I can attest to the absolute deliciousness of the PB and coconut cakes. If I hadn’t been completely stuffed, I would have tried the espresso cake, which was your mom’s strong suggestion.
I can’t wait to see the pics!
The cakes BLEW MY MIND! And, my favorite happened to be the chocolate raspberry, so don’t despair 😉
I can’t wait to have a cake party so I can sample all the flavors. I wanted to try so many of the cakes. I can’t believe people were telling me they had 4 to 5 slices of cake. Huge vegan cake success.
Welcome back!! I hope everything was wonderful. Your cakes look beautiful! I’m so impressed that you did all that just before your wedding. Just wonderful! <3
Wow this is incredible–I get exhausted making one cake!
they look SOOOO GOOD. I want to see them in action!
The peanut butter cake pretty much rocked my world.
Welcome back! I am SO looking forward to hear more details. The cakes look amazing! Yay!!
These look so pretty. I love the simplicity of them…and they look so tasty
Oh you two! I’m so glad everything went so well! The cakes are beautiful.
Can’t wait to see more photos and hear all about the honeymoon! As for the amazing cakes, I tried at least a couple flavors, and they were fantastic! I loved how they were all unique – definitely a vegan cake win!!!
They look awesome alix! I especially love the far right cake!
these cakes are beautiful! i am planning to do the same for my wedding in june (well, same-ish). how many cakes total did you make, for how many people? i have been trying to abstractly figure it out but if you have any numbers, i would so appreciate it! lovely wedding, by the way.
Hi, Congrats (2 years late) on all this. I had such a hard time finding someone to do a wedding cake for my son (Jan. 2014) that we’ve decided to do a sweets buffet and a small (2-tier) cake. All the bakers who allegedly do vegan cakes here in Boston had one or more of these rules (plus they acted like they were doing me a favor): only chocolate for the cake because “vegan cakes don’t hold up,” no fondant, insisting on using Crisco for frosting (seriously?).
I’m a fairly accomplished vegan baker, but I would so appreciate any tips or even recipes. How did you manage the timing? How far in advance can you do the finishing of each cake? You needed dowels even without tiering? Thanks!