And We Served the Cake

Today was the long awaited wedding day for our friends. I spent a good part of yesterday cutting, filling and crumb-coating the cakes. (It is just amazing how long it takes to go through those seemingly straightforward steps.) Later that night, my friend Aisha came and gave the cakes their final coat of buttercream. We took the cakes to our mosque early this morning. It took Aisha several hours to build up the tiers and to decorate with the flowers. Zeynep and I assisted her as she worked and learned quite a few tricks in the process. Unfortunately, none of my pictures came out good as it was quite dark inside. But a professional photographer also took some pictures of the cake (in its entirety), and I will post them as soon as I can.

The cake had 5 tiers (12", 10", 8", 6" and 4") and there was an extra 10" backup cake which ended up not being served. We raised the 8" cake with pillars and filled the area underneath it with cream-colored hydrangeas and tiny peach roses. It was a white butter cake with lemon curd and classic buttercream in between the layers and white chocolate cream cheese frosting outside. We served it with a lightly sweetened raspberry sauce on the side. (All the recipes are from RLB's Cake Bible. I do not know where we amateurs would be without this wonderful source!) The cake tasted quite good although I wish it had more time before it was served for the buttercream to soften. Six hours outside is usually ample time in the summers, but on a cold day like this, it apparently needed some more.

After all is said and done, I am very happy that I made this cake and that it was served without any major disasters. Every single time I bake a big cake, I tell myself that this will be the last time I do it. Of course, after a "healing period" of a couple of months, I start to think differently, and am ready to do it all over again. Today there was talk of a May wedding in the air, and although it is too early for me to commit to anything now, I feel that I may be up to the task come the month of May.