Phew!

I did it! I made my first wedding cake!

I thought I was being all smart by getting an early start baking the cakes. The cakes were all baked by Wednesday. The cakes would have been baked earlier, but I had a terrible issue with cake overflowing, cake burning, me standing in front of the oven scraping up flaming cake from the bottom of the oven, and then just a big cake fail. In a word, it was a mess. But luckily I had all of that butter on hand, so new cakes were made, no overflowing, no burning, no hot mess.

I ended up with eight cakes. The cake was four tiers with alternating tiers of chocolate cake with raspberry filling and almond icing and vanilla cake with raspberry filling and lemon icing. There was a lot of icing in my kitchen this week.

Sadly, I have nearly no pictures of the cake making process. Mostly because I was too focused on smoothing that buttercream to whip out the camera and take pictures as I went along.

Also, possibly one of the more complicated factors in cake decorating is finding room in my refrigerator to put four cake tiers of various diameters. Luckily, I am a spacial relationship wizard so it all worked out.

The actual decoration part of the cake wasn’t too bad. My piping skills aren’t out of this world, but this I could handle. I find it rather soothing. I spent the majority of the time smoothing out the buttercream. Buttercream and I have a complicated relationship. I think smoothing buttercream is really really hard. I do not like doing it. Ok, maybe it’s not that complicated.  More practice is needed so I don’t have a minor conniption every time I try to make a buttercream cake. I dream of the day I am proficient in buttercream smoothing.

(Hey, look at the flowers Andrew got me in the background. Aren’t they lovely?)

I was supposed to meet the florist at the venue for the cake topper, so all that stood between me and a big sigh of relief was getting the cake delivered.

It was a good thing Andrew was around because this thing was a beast. I would say it weighed nearly 25 lbs and given my lack of sleep (nothing like some good old-fashioned procrastination) and the two flights of stairs that stood between our kitchen and the car, I was not fully confident in my ability to not fall down the stairs. (Plus, I may or may not have dropped a cake on the ground before during delivery. Sad cake.)

One 10 minute card ride later (Andrew drove, I sat in the back making passive aggressive gasping sounds and worried looks), a few jogs in the rain, and the cake was safely on its table. After another 35 minutes of running around looking for the florist, the cake was topped. A quick trip to see the bride (thanks Katie for giving me a shot! You looked amazing!) and a friend, and I was back in the car a little bit more…damp than before (because it was raining, not because I was sweating. Although, I was a little nervous), but totally relieved.

Then, it was time for a nap.

Make a wedding cake. Check that one off the list.