Thursday, April 28, 2011

Wedding Cake and why I haven't posted lately...

 When one of my best friends got engaged I let her know that I would help out in any way she needed. Little did I know that she would ask me to make the cake, something I have never done before. At first I was nervous, since cake is one those things that can fail spectacularly.  After months of worry and not as much practice as I would have liked, this was the final product. 

 I am pretty proud of how it turned out. 

The first and bottom layer were red velvet. Since it isn't a cake flavor I necessarily like, but one that has a huge following, I found a recipe on allrecipes.com that had tons of great reviews, Red Velvet Cake . It turned out pretty good (remember I don't really like this flavor, to me if it is going to have chocolate in it then it should taste like chocolate) and was dense enough to hold up.

For the middle layer I did a white cake with a raspberry buttercream filling. I tried an America's Test Kitchen recipe for white cake and while it tasted amazing, it was way to light and delicate to hold up in a wedding cake. I settled on using the Wilton Butter Cake recipe since I knew that theirs would be tested for wedding cakes. It turned out to be a nice pound cake that complimented nicely with the raspberry butter cream. To make raspberry butter cream, simply add a few tablespoons of good quality raspberry jam to two cups of plain buttercream frosting. Depending on the water content of the jam, you may need to add more powdered sugar to firm up the frosting enough to not ooze out of the center of the cake.
Finally, I hate the taste of premade fondant. Plus it is also expensive. I heard that you could make your own and so I experimented with it. You would not believe how easy, cheap, and better tasting homemade marshmallow fondant it.

Marshmallow Fondant
2 lb powdered sugar
1/3 cup shortening
2 tablespoons water
16 oz white mini marshmallows

Pour the marshmallows and water into a large glass bowl. Melt in the microwave, stirring every thirty seconds. It should take about 90 seconds to two minutes.  Pour 3/4 of the powdered sugar on top of the marshmallow mixture and pour onto a surface generously greased with the shortening. Grease your hands and then knead in the powdered sugar (add more, but I never used the whole two pounds). You want a nice firm texture, but not too firm that it is cracking. This will take a few minutes to accomplish. You can use immediately or refrigerate for about a month.  It is best to let it cool at least overnight. After being  refrigerated  it will take quite a bit of kneading to bring it back to a pliable consistency.  Roll it out  on a greased surface until it is about 1/4 inch thick. Make sure that the it doesn't stick to the table by rotaing and flipping the fondant often while rolling it.  For easy transfer to the cake you can roll the fondant, adding powdered sugar on all sides, back on the rolling pin and then simply roll it over the frosted cake. Trim excess and let it set up. 

Overall it was a really fun experience and I would love to do it again. Thanks for letting me learn how to do this Laurie! I could be more excited for you and Devin!





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