Cinco de Mayo Wedding!!

In approximately one week, my brother will be celebrating his one year wedding anniversary with the love of his life!  They got married in the beautiful garden of their house on May 5, 2012.  I was honored to be able to make both the groom's cake and the wedding cake.

Do you know what I mean by the groom's cake?  I always thought it was something that everyone did until I moved out of the South.  Probably, the most famous groom's cake of all-time was featured on Steel Magnolias (if you're not familiar with the original film featuring Sally Fields, Dolly Parton, Julia Roberts, Shirley Maclaine, Daryl Hannah, Tom Skerritt, and Dylan McDermott you need to watch it, like now!!).  The groom's cake in the movie was a red velvet cake made in the shape of an armadillo with gray icing, they called it the "Bleeding Armadillo Cake."

Steel Magnolias Bleeding Armadillo Cake Courtesy of http://groomsguideforwedding.com/armadillo-grooms-cake/

M'Lynn (Sally Field):  "I don't even know how you begin to make gray icing!"

So anyway, the tradition of the groom's cake started in the South during Victorian times and was originally a dense fruit cake.  Today, it is typically a chocolate cake meant to be kind of opposite of the "white wedding cake."  While it was served at the ceremony in Steel Magnolias, I think most people serve it at the rehearsal dinner (which is when we served my brother's cake).  Since they got married on Cinco de Mayo, I thought that was the perfect theme for the groom's cake!

The cake was a Kahlua Chocolate Cake.  The sombrero was constructed from a 14-inch round and a wonder mold pan (the one used to make stand-up doll cake and/or breast cakes).  I cut into the middle of the round cake to make more of a bowl shape and then cut into the edges to give it the upturned edge look.  I made the maracas from mini-wonder mold pans, stuck a wooden dowel through them and covered them in fondant.  You can probably tell I don't really do a lot with fondant, most of the people that I've done cakes for don't want me to use fondant anyway.

 Nathaniel and Kellie decided to eat the maracas since I had put their initials on them.  While the fondant was torn away to really eat the cake, the Kahlua cake recipe turned out exceptional.  It was very moist with a great flavor (my mom took leftovers to work to great reviews).

Now the wedding cake itself was two flavors.  The bottom and top tiers were amaretto cake with amaretto buttercream filling and the middle layer was vanilla bean cake with dulce de leche buttercream filling.

This was the final result (the bottom flowers were the bouquets of the bridesmaids).  It was inspired by a photo Kellie and I found on The Knot (http://wedding.theknot.com/wedding-planning/wedding-cakes.aspx).

You can buy silver dragees that have a high shine and come in different sizes.  Since Kellie was more interested in a distressed, sort-of vintage feel, I ended up buying sugar pearls made by Wilton in the original white pearl color.  I then used Wilton's spray food coloring in silver to color the pearls.  I put the pearls in a box so that I could roll them around while spraying to get a more even color distribution.  Putting the pearls on the cake was a two person job.  One person to hold the tier and another to throw the pearls onto the cake so they would stick without looking like they'd been mashed into the side.  Garnished with fresh peonies, the cake held up to the heat of a NC summer day!

The story begins...

My adventures in cake decorating began in 2006 while I was finishing my undergrad degree.  I initially took the classes just for fun and to try something new, but decorating cake has since become one of my passions in life.  This blog will be a way for me to showcase the cakes I've made and tell the stories behind the cakes.