With friends like these...

...we're gonna need a cleaning service!

Well, we've survived wedding cake decorating-trials and taste-testing with Sharon and Andy. They left a short while ago with boxes of leftover cakes and cup cakes in various stages of decoration (or lack thereof). Round one of dishes in running in the dishwasher as I type this. Now I think we're all in need of insulin shots!

Sharon said our wedding gift to them is for me to bake and decorate the cakes/cupcakes for their upcoming wedding. She decided she wanted a small cake for them to cut, and then cupcakes (which seems to be real trendy right now) for all the guests. Sounds like there will be about 60 guests, and we want to make sure there's enough for at least some people to have a second cupcake if they want.

Sharon wants half the cupcakes to be red velvet, and half yellow cake. All will be frosted white, and then they'll have decorations on top to match the cake color.

The cake Sharon and Andy will slice is going to be a white cake, white frosting, a red ribbon around it, and then we just decided to play with it from there.

Andy's request was that the cake have a layer of pudding. My interpretation was "maybe that should be custard?", but I know they don't want any froo froo fruity flavors or anything like that.

They also kept saying I could just go with cake mixes for the cakes. To me that felt like cheating, and I didn't want to "un-special" their special day by not putting a bit more effort into the cakes, not to mention serving up "just boxed cake mixes." Seeing how it's really "their day" I also didn't want to rule out just giving them what they wanted.

Hm. What to do.

Last nite I made two separate batches of cakes - one was a white cake mix from The Cake Bible Peter got me last year, and the other was a doctored up French Vanilla boxed cake mix (mixed with a cup of sour cream, an instant cheesecake flavored box of pudding, 1/2 each of water and veg oil, plus four large eggs - just like the chocolate cake I made recently). Each recipe was made as two 9-inch rounds. The from-scratch cake was filled with a Bavarian cream-like recipe from The Cake Bible, made with eggs, milk, vanilla and sugar, and the boxed mix was layered with a box of instant French vanilla pudding.



I didn't tell Sharon and Andy which cake/filling was homemade and which was boxed...just that these components existed and I wanted to see what they preferred. Admittedly, the homemade custard turned out a bit thin and a bit eggy tasting, and didn't have that beautiful golden color one would want from a custard. (Although the flecks of vanilla bean seeds in it WERE pretty!)

Pictured here is the "fake cake" with "fake custard".


Oh, and I also made a boxed mix of red velvet cupcakes - just to make sure we like them (I've never liked red velvet I made from scratch), and also to text decorations.

Annnnnd then I had a tub of classic vanilla frosting, plus I made a batch of buttercream frosting from scratch, to which we all agreed vanilla needed to be added. Even after that, we felt the buttercream just tasted like whipped butter - maybe not sweet enough, definitely too buttery tasting. Like maybe someone had spread Country Crock all over the cake?

So once they arrived we played with decorating cakes and cupcakes, and then had a lunch of paninis I grilled up, along with the jalapeno popper-like dip Sharon made (with pretzels and veggies - good stuff!). So here's what we've found from playing with cake decorating...

The idea of using edible flowers that Mary suggested yesterday went over REALLY well. I think I can get a flat of geraniums in bloom pretty cheap just a short ways down the road - I just need to learn how to sugar-coat them. Sounds like it's not hard at all, and I really don't need all that many.

The ribbon Sharon bought looks really good on the cake...


Not sure if it's going to go around the base of the cake, or midway up. Here you'll see I was playing with cloves (instead of small lilac flowers) and lavender flowers on top of the cake. Sharon had seen a picture with small flowers dotting the top of the cake, but I'm not sure of what small RED flowers would be blooming now....so we bypassed that idea. (Wow - cloves sure smelled strong - probably not all that tasty in the cake either!)


Andy and Sharon preferred the white tub of storebought frosting over the light yellow buttercream. I honestly preferred the yellow frosting with the red flowers and ribbon, but it's not my wedding.... Here you'll see we were playing with the possibly-not-edible salvia flowers I picked from the backyard - I don't have any geraniums in bloom right now. Bright red IS beautiful on the cake, no matter what color frosting! Plus it goes great with the ribbon!


You'll also note we settled on a swirl pattern around the top - which Sharon liked in a picture in The Cake Bible.



Sharon and Andy both ended out preferring the boxed cake mix (minus the addition of the pudding - which will lighten it up in texture and color), with the boxed pudding mix, and tub-o-frosting over all the from-scratch stuff. Eh - definitely not the fanciest way to go for a wedding, but it's what they really prefer, and I agree the pudding tasted better than the homemade custard, and the from-scratch cake was a bit dry and flavorless (although, to be honest, I think it more resembled most traditional wedding cakes that I've had - that's just not saying much for traditional wedding cakes!).

We were only able to determine this by all four of us each getting a slice from each cake, and half a cupcake. Oh, and Andy and I each had a slice of boxed cake with buttercream and a slice of the same cake with tub frosting - just to be safe.


Tucker here pretty much shows how we were all feeling after all that cake. Ugh... Too much!


Now I'll just have to make sure my frosting techniques are much nicer for the final product. We weren't too concerned today for the test cakes, but it's gotta look good for Sharon and Andy's wedding!

Oh, and PS, you'll notice there's no photos here showing how much a mess the kitchen was by the time we were done. I have a feeling Sharon's going to be showing the messier side of this project! ;-)


UPDATE! Sharon FINALLY got around to posting about today...

LOL She's got great pics of the trashed kitchen, Brett giving her a funny face, and talks about how mean Brett and Andy were, blowing me up over and over again in Halo 3 (what'd I ever do to deserve that?!) Yes, that's right, I, the newbie, was getting beat up by someone with MANY hours in Halo 3, and then Brett AKA the Pink Power Ranger in his hot pink armor, who was also playing the whole time I was working on cake decorating with Sharon.

Oh, and for what it's worth, Sharon appeared to NAP the whole time the guys were playing video games. Women!

PS: Secretly, all the cakes and cupcakes were loaded with super fattening ingredients where ever possible, the paninis all had bonus cheese in them, ANNNND I wanted to make sure Sharon ate plenty of the buttercream frosting - just to try and refatten her up since she's slimming down so much!!