I’ll tell you a little more about this cake later…but for now, here’s a photo of a wedding cake (and cupcakes) for 150 people that I completed today.

Tweet This Post 

Rather than writing about food as I should be, I’m going to talk about getting engaged!

Before I bore you to death with the details, know that I’m mostly writing this entry for posterity. I don’t actually think everyone reading my blog really  cares about me getting married. You’re all here for the food!

On Good Friday, I got out of work early and we headed across the state to spend Easter weekend with the boyfriend’s fiance’s family. We’d looked at the weather days earlier and since it was going to be warm and beautiful, Joel suggested that we take a little afternoon detour into Shenandoah National Park/Skyline Drive. Nothing about this suggestion was at all suspicious as it was something we might have done anyway. Little did I know what was up his sleeve…

We approached several scenic overlooks but didn’t actually stop at any of them for whatever reason. This seemed a little odd to me but I figured we were looking for a good spot to take a few pictures of the view. Again, nothing suspicious. We finally pulled over at the Sawmill Ridge Overlook. We got the camera bag out of the trunk and I pulled out the camera to take a few pictures. Joel wandered off and took the camera bag with him despite my offer to hold onto it or put it back in the trunk.

He wandered back, we took a few pictures and sat down on the stone ledge to admire the view. After talking for a few minutes, Joel all of a sudden said, “I’ve got something to ask you.” He reached into the camera bag and pulled out a little black box. I, being the weepy wuss that I am, immediately started tearing up and then he pulled a note out of his pocket. Written by his grandmother many years ago (just before Joel’s mother passed away), the note read that Joel’s mom wanted her engagement ring saved for him to use if he chose to do so. My ring has 3 diamonds, one of the smaller ones is from his mother’s engagement ring. At this point, I said, “Yes!” and then realized that he hadn’t actually said, “Will you marry me?” yet. At which point he asked and I said, “Yes!” for real.

This is where I admit that I’ve never really cared about weddings or engagements very much. When other people got engaged and eventually married, I was happy for them but never super, hyper excited about it. I was kind of apathetic about having an actual wedding myself and always kind of thought I’d just run off somewhere and get hitched. The ring and the actual proposal changed my mind. I want a real wedding and I’m ecstatic about being engaged. We’re also both really amazed at how excited other people seem to be about our engagement. The outpouring of happiness from everyone we know makes the whole thing a little more awesome. Being told that the news of our engagement made someone else’s day is pretty cool. So, after all these years of not quite understanding why weddings are such a big deal, I finally get it.

There aren’t many details to share about the actual wedding yet. We haven’t finalized a date, a venue or even the wedding party. About all we do know is that I won’t be making my own wedding cake!

P.S. I promise to try my best not to turn this into a wedding blog.

Tweet This Post 

First up are some of my favorites of the thousands of photos I took in 2009. It was really hard to narrow these down to just a handful of favorites and I hope to take just as many (or more) pictures in 2010!

Then there’s me through the year. Putting this together wasn’t so easy as both the boyfriend and I have discovered that we don’t take a whole lot of pictures of ourselves. We’re going to try harder next year…and the mosaic I create on 12/31/2010 will be easier to create!

I hope that everyone has had a great year and best wishes for 2010!

Tweet This Post 

Since my last post droned on and on without even mentioning what flavors the cake layers were, I figured I should write (boast) a little more about this wedding cake.

Some stats about this one:

• Meant to serve about 170 people. I don’t know how many people ate the cake but I think there were some leftovers.
• I made 5 cakes. Each with 3 or 4 layers. All told, I baked 19 layers of cake in 6″, 8″, 10″, 12″ and 14″ pans.
• The smallest cake was not part of the assembled cake you see here. It was boxed and set aside as the couple’s 1st anniversary cake. In all honesty, the thought of a 5 layer cake scared me.
• Three kinds of cake were made: lemon cake with lemon buttercream frosting and raspberry jam filling, almond cake with almond buttercream frosting and strawberry jam filling and chocolate cake with mocha buttercream frosting.
• It took me 4 evenings and part of 2 weekend days to prepare and assemble the cake. Baking the actual cake was the easiest part.
• A sampling of the ingredients used: 12 pounds of powdered sugar, 2.5 pounds of butter, 2 pounds of margarine, several cups of cocoa powder, 12 pounds of granulated sugar, 12 pounds of flour, more than a gallon of whole milk, nearly 1 large bottle of lemon extract, 1 roll of gauze and 1 roll of waterproof tape (for my cut finger), 4+ dozen large eggs, 10 pounds of fondant and nearly a roll of parchment paper.
• It took 2 online orders from Joann.com, 1 other online supply order, 2 trips to Michael’s, 1 trip to Hancock Fabrics and 3 trips to the grocery store to obtain all of the needed supplies and ingredients. I’ll plan better next time.
• The pieces you have to slice off the cake to make it level make a nice dessert when layered trifle-like in a dish with extra frosting.
• As mentioned in the last post, there was a lot of stress and a few tears involved. And some restless sleep. If I’d had some anti-anxiety medication or sleeping pills, I probably would have used them.
• I’ve been asked how the cake was assembled. It’s stacked on half inch tall cake drums made of cardboard and there are wooden dowels in the cakes to support the weight of the stacked layers.
• I was also asked how we transported the cake to the reception site. Very carefully. In boxes on the floors and seats of my Camry. With the air conditioner blasting out the coolest air it could muster. If I were to start doing this all the time, I think a station wagon or a mini van would be a good vehicle to own.

In the end, it was worth all of the literal blood, sweat and tears. I even think it was worth it enough that I’m willing to do it again (and again and again). I think I’m even willing to sacrifice some of my precious free time to do it. With time, I think I could bake a little faster and work more efficiently. The anxiety over doing a good job might even lessen after a while. So…if you know anyone in the vicinity of Williamsburg, Virginia that needs a wedding cake, I might just be available!

Tweet This Post 

Disclaimer: Before I write this post, let me reiterate the name of this site. It’s called The Boastful Baker. Please keep the word “boastful” in mind as you read this particular post. If you don’t want to listen to me brag, stop reading now.

As you might be able to tell from these photos, I made another wedding cake. My second one. The cake for my sister’s wedding in July was for about 75 people. This one was for about 170 people! 170 people! That’s almost 100 more people than the first cake! That’s a lot more cake.

Shortly after I agreed to bake my sister’s wedding cake, I was asked to bake this one. The now married couple worked with me at my old job. The bride read about my plans to bake my sister’s cake on Facebook and decided to offer me the opportunity to make her cake. She knew a little bit about my baking skills and aspirations and figured that it was a good way to get a slightly cheaper cake. She also thought it would be nice to give me, the fledgling cake baker, a chance to show off.

I hesitantly agreed. It may have taken a little arm twisting on the boyfriend’s part to get me to agree to it. It was one thing to agree to make my sister’s wedding cake. She’s my sister. If I screwed her cake up, she’s still my sister and life would go on. Making someone else’s wedding cake was a little more daunting.

Planning this cake was a breeze. The bride (and groom) were very flexible about the cake. We met just once to go over ideas and costs and agreed upon most things immediately. Everything else was easily taken care of with a handful of emails. I am sure that most wedding cake planning experiences are not this fantastic. I got lucky.

On to the cake…

I know this cake looks good. Getting it to look this good was not easy. It took many nights and a couple of days of work. It was stressful knowing that if something didn’t turn out right, I could ruin someone’s wedding. There may have been some yelling. Some cursing. Some name calling. Even some tears.

Baking the actual cakes was fairly simple. I baked over the course of 2 1/2 evenings and everything turned out well. I was a little scared about the largest cake layers not baking evenly…but they turned out just fine in the end.

Making the first few batches of frosting was also pretty easy.

Then the going got tough on the fourth night. I got cocky and thought I had plenty of time to finish the cake. The wedding was still almost 2 days away. All 5 of the cakes were baked. Two of them were already layered and crumb coated with icing. A lot of the frosting was made. So I took a nap. I’d been working hard and I deserved it.

I woke up about 2 hours later and got back to work. Very shortly after that, I sliced my thumb wide open. I may have been slicing the caps off of one of the cake layers in an irresponsible manner with my very sharp serrated bread knife. I’ll take full responsibility for my stupidity and the fact that my stupidity cost me a lot of valuable cake preparation time. I spent the rest of the night fretting about my finger and whether or not it would ever stop bleeding and whether or not I needed to go to the emergency room for stitches and whether or not I would be able to finish the cake in time!

In the end, my thumb ended up okay. It stopped bleeding, I got no stitches and the show went on. Slowly. With barely a day until the wedding, you would think I would be trying to get everything done as quickly as possible. No, I took it slow and lazy. I finished layering and crumb coating the other cakes. And then I took another long nap. And then I went shopping. It was now fairly late at night and the wedding was the following afternoon.

That’s when we realized that there was still a mess of work to be done. Five cake layers needed to be covered in fondant. But first the fondant needed to be colored. I also needed to cover 5 cake boards with satin and ribbon. The first fondant layer got screwed up. Screwed up enough that it was removed and thrown away. Which also meant I needed more frosting. Tensions were high and we were tired. We went to sleep knowing that we had to get up early the next day (the day of the wedding) and that there was a LOT of work left.

We did wake up early. And we raced the clock all day. More frosting was made, lots of fondant was rolled and carefully put on the cakes, cakes were chilled, a million little royal icing beads were dotted on the cake, last minute just-in-case flowers for decoration were procured, more little dots were applied, cake boxes were assembled, pearl colored dust was brushed on the dots, more anxiety set in, supplies for finishing the cakes on site were packed, hasty showers were taken and finally…the cakes were loaded into the car. With literally no time to spare. So little time to spare that I left both the iron and the hot glue gun plugged in.

We got to the reception site with all the cakes intact and started the sprint to the finish. If we wanted to catch the wedding ceremony, we only had about 45 minutes to assemble the cake. We missed the ceremony but at least the cake looked great and I could finally breath. Then I started repeating “I made that?” over and over again to both myself and the boyfriend. Even now, I can’t believe I made it. When the cake was in progress and I was stressed out, I thought there was no way in the world that it could possibly come together. But it did and it was phenomenal.

I then got to take compliments about the cake for the rest of the night. Amazingly, I don’t like being complimented in person. Lots of people came up to me to say “Wow!” and to tell me how good a particular flavor was. The best compliment of all was when the bride saw us for the first time that night and turned to give us a huge, approving grin and a thumbs up.

Another post will follow soon with cake details as I think some of you might be interested in knowing what actually went into baking this thing. You might even want to know what kind of cakes I baked.

Tweet This Post 

I made this. Really. I kind of can’t believe I did it. Planning the cake and buying the supplies and test baking kept me busy for weeks and weeks. Many test cakes were baked and frosted (and many samples were taken to both my office and the boyfriend’s office). Some test cakes were covered in fondant. Two of them were even stacked on top of each other just to make sure that we knew what we were doing for the real thing. Despite all of the samples and tests, I have to admit that I doubted I was going to be able to pull this off…right up until the morning of the wedding.

This cake was made for my younger sister’s wedding. She asked me to bake the cake shortly after she got engaged. I’m not going to lie…the thought of it kind of scared the dickens out of me when she asked. But I happily agreed to do it and hoped that I wouldn’t fail her on her big day.

I’m now proud to say I didn’t fail her. We (the boyfriend was a huge help in the entire endeavor) did it! A three tier wedding cake was successfully baked, decorated and transported an hour’s drive from my house.

Details about the cake: Each layer is a different flavor. The top was carrot cake with caramel buttercream frosting, the middle was red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and the bottom was amaretto cake with amaretto buttercream frosting and a layer of strawberry jam. The bride and groom chose the carrot and red velvet layers and I chose the amaretto. All 3 layers were covered in a thin layer of vanilla buttercream and all of the layers were covered in Wilton fondant. Contrary to what you think you know about fondant, Wilton fondant is actually edible. I’ll even go so far as to say that it’s kind of tasty.

The ribbons around the cake were picked out by the bride. The flowers were a last minute decision that really worked. My mom grew all of the flowers used for the wedding and did all of the arrangements herself. The night before the wedding I asked her for a handful of flowers “just in case” I needed them for the cake. My other sister, Tasha, lent some moral support while were assembling the cake and arranged the flowers for me.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I might write a longer post later with more cake making details.

And just in case you’re interested in seeing something other than the cake (the bride perhaps?), here’s a slideshow of the handful of photos of the wedding I’ve shared on Flickr thus far. There will be more…many, many more. Probably a zillion more to be exact.

Tweet This Post