This cake was my first experiment doing a five layer stacked cake and I definitely learned some things. This was also my first time using real flowers on a cake, which was a learning experience and made me nervous when I took a blank white cake to the reception center and just hoped they'd have enough flowers for the cake. Here are some of the things I learned from this one:
#1- don't make a lemon layer larger than 8 inches, the cake is too moist to hold it's shape.
#2- don't use Wilton's cake separator pegs, they aren't strong enough and they are ridiculously hard to put together when you're holding a 20 pound cake in one hand-- stick with good old fashioned wooden dowels.
#3- don't set up the cake when the ENTIRE wedding family and party is going to be there for a big photo shoot (not my fault, the mother of the bride told me no one would be there until 5:30 for the reception starting at 6:30, but they all showed up at 3:45).
#4- allow PLENTY of extra time to set up-- I am SO glad I had 2 and a half hours because this one took every minute.
#5- take a towel to dry hands and mini cake vases.
#6- Note to self: Red Velvet cake cannot be dyed purple, no matter how much blue you put in (the bride REALLY wanted a purple red velvet cake to cut into, I told her I would try.)
So, without further ado, here is the cake for Jessi:
Top layer: Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting
2nd: Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (single layer, torte-ed)
3rd: Lemon cake with lemon filling
4th: Devil's food cake with no filling (single layer)
5th: Chocolate cake with raspberry filling
Frosted with a crumb coating and outer coating of pure white Buttercream icing. This was the smoothest frosting I have ever accomplished and would have been perfect if I hadn't had to transport the cake on a 100 degree day for 30 minutes in the car....
Even with all the craziness during the set up, I think this cake still turned out pretty gorgeous!
I got a new "hair" frosting tip to do the mane and I love how it turned out. For this cake I baked a 9 inch round and a 9 x 13 inch cake (cut into triangles) plus cupcakes.
Happy Birthday Cade!
I also painted this Monkey bean bag toss game and made banana bean bags. This was a hit at the party, and we had it in our house for weeks afterward because the kids loved playing!
She was very apprehensive about the whole cake thing, and cried when we put her finger in it! What a little princess!
Legs and eye stalks were Twizzlers, the pincers were half of a Swedish Fish sliced open.
Oysters:
The "pearls" were yogurt covered raisins, and I just used store bought sugar cookies for the shells. If I were to do this again I would make them smaller-- maybe using Nilla wafers instead.
Ray LOVED her ladybug cake, and loved blowing out the candles so much we let her do it 5 times in a row!
Happy Birthday Baby Bug!
The numbers were held up with a chocolate covered mini-popsicle stick. Here's the back view.
And from the side.... I liked the look of the square layer on top of the circle.
The second one I made for a teenager-- kind of a cross between a giant cupcake and an ice cream sundae. Looks delicious to me :)
He loved it!
Happy Birthday Mr. C!
Top layer: Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting
Even with all the craziness during the set up, I think this cake still turned out pretty gorgeous!
Brennan was ecstatic about the end result-- and it was yummy to boot!
A close up of the flowers on the third layer-- this one was frosted with a creamy look (spatula marks visible).
I never put the flowers on the cake until the actual set up, for fear of breaking them during transport. It's good and bad however, because I am always nervous about "did I make enough?' and "Will the look in my head actually turn out?" So far, so good!
