Otherwise known as "That time Charlie got me drunk and asked me to make her wedding cake".
After the last time, when Merryn and I agreed to make Clair's wedding cake and ended up having to make a metric ton of custard by hand, I swore I would never do this again.
Sure Clair's cake looked pretty when it was done, but we nearly killed ourselves and each other in the process.
But look how beautiful Charlie and Simon are. And did I mention that they're two of my very favourite people? And that it was totally the best wedding I'd been to yet this year?
I don't think I would have agreed to do this for any one else. And I'm really not joking when I say - I will never do this again.
Charlie and I plotted to produce a massive rainbow wedding cake. The general idea was that it would look like a traditional wedding cake from the outside, but when they cut into it the cake would be a rainbow inside.
Of course, when I started thinking about it, I realised that this would actually involve me baking twelve separate cakes. So I did. I baked each evening that I was home for about two months. And froze them obviously. The freezer was actually pretty much off limits to everyone during that time. I used a 4, 8, 8, 8 mix for all of the bottom layers and a 2, 4, 4, 4 mix for all of the top layers. I used a splash more milk than usual in batter to make it spread out smoothly seeing as they were such thin layers and I also used gel colourants. These are a bit more expensive, but they do produce really bright amazing colours.
That basically means that Charlie's wedding cake had 36 eggs, 72 oz of butter, 72 oz of sugar, 72 oz of plain flour, 12 tspns of baking powder and a pint of milk in it before I had even started icing. To say this thing was huge is an understatement and a half. The idea of icing something that big was really starting to wake me up in the middle of the night. So I did what every sensible woman in their thirties does when faced with a problem of this nature.
I called my mother and asked her to help me.
She very generously came to stay. We agreed up front that
no matter what went wrong in execution of this plan, we were only going
to say positive things about the cake. An agreement I was very grateful
for later on.
And everything was going smoothly to start with. The layers of cake were stacked up with a thin layer of lemon curd between each one to help stick them together. The cakes were placed on a thin board each which was cut to size.
You can see where I trimmed down the edges of the cake to make them as straight as possible. This
kind of worked.
The cakes were coated with a thin layer of butter icing, to
help the royal icing move once we had the rolled out sheet of icing on
the cakes. This should also help cover up any imperfections in the
cake.
You can see in the background of this picture what five kilos of icing looks like. Incase you ever needed to know such a thing.
One butter iced, both of the cakes were popped in the fridge so they could harden up a bit before we started icing them properly.
Once the butter icing had hardened, we iced the cakes with some good old fashioned team work. My mother turning the icing for me as I rolled it out.
On the larger cake we had to employ what I intend to patten as "The pizza base icing technique", which involved me rolling the sheet of icing over my arm in the style of an Italian chef, before flinging it at the cake.
Then, to be truthful, we got a bit complacent. The cakes were popped in the fridge to harden so the icing could be properly smoothed and we went shoe shopping. And that's were things went a little bit wrong.
What I didn't know, what all my reading about this on the internet hadn't disclosed to me, was this
FONDANT ICING SHOULD NOT BE PUT IN THE FRIDGE. *ahem* If you put fondant icing in the fridge it will do what is called "Sweating". Sounds revolting doesn't it? It means the icing will take on a wet, shiny, sticky hue.
So I took the cakes out of the fridge and left them over night to dry. Which didn't work. Then I took a hairdryer to the cakes, which didn't work (
look the internet told me to do it, and one day when I have forgotten how stressful this was I might tell Charlie the story of how I was stood barefoot and hungover at six in the morning hairdrying her cakes with a mildly manic look on my face) so then I took the last advice I could find on the internet which was to sieve icing sugar onto the cake and pat it down. And fortunately this worked just fine and the icing dried out.
Unsurprisingly I was far too scared to try and smooth the icing. Or actually touch it, or breathe in the same room as it. So instead I just decorated them as they stood.
The bottom cake had six plastic dowels pushed through the icing to support the weight of the top cake. Sponge cake does not have the tensile strength required to hold up a cake that size and without the dowling the bottom cake would have collapsed.
Both cakes had ribbons iced onto them, using left over butter icing and then my lovely and talented mother crafted a large bow for the top of the cake, while I fashioned two interlocking glow in the dark hearts to nestle in the bow out of some every day items which most people have lying around the house. Most people who like raving in heart shaped glasses with glow sticks. I don't so actually do that sort of thing anymore, so I'd bought these off the internet specially.
The cake was transported in two pieces (which is a whole other stressful story) and assembled on site, with the caterers clipping the glow sticks in right before the evening do started. At this point I think I was lucky that my boyfriend and best friend were still talking to me.
When it was done, it really looked rather good. If you ignore the slightly rustic icing.
So to make one of these babies of your very own you will require the following
- 36 eggs
- 72 oz butter unsalted
- 72 oz caster sugar
- 77 oz plain flour
- 12 tsp baking power
- 6 gel colourants
- 1 pint milk
- 5 kilos of fondant icing
- 3 jars of lemon curd
- 1 kilo of icing sugar (to dust when rolling and for when things go wrong)
- The world's most understanding mother.
- The knowledge that fondant icing does not go anywhere near the fridge. Really.
