A Wonderful Whimsical Wedding

When I started this blog I intended for it to be a place where I can blog recipes of things I've created but for this post there isn't one but rather just to showcase something I've been working on recently.

Yesterday was the wedding of my boss at work, J and the now Mrs W. I'd been asked a while back to make the wedding cake. I felt extremely honoured but as much as I like a challenge, the thought of creating someone's wedding cake admittedly scared me somewhat as it's quite a responsibility! It's not one of those occasions where sorry, it doesn't look nice but tastes great would suffice. If it was my wedding and I got a really rubbish cake I can honestly tell you now there would most definitely be cake induced anger. What can I say? I'm a passionate cake lover ;) It needed to tick both boxes. It worried me even more so when I was shown what sort of cake they had in mind (It always amazes me the confidence people have in me):

Source: Pinterest

Now, to those who know me will know I'm not much of a cake decorator. Sugar work/ fondant/ intricate bits just isn't my forte. I can basically cover a cake with buttercream and adorn the top with an explosion of sprinkles and melted chocolate and if I'm lucky the cake will look semi straight and not overly wonky. And that is pretty much what I usually do for all cakes. 

Luckily, Mr and Mrs W were both really relaxed about the whole thing and let me go about making it at my own pace, and pretty much have my own input in the overall cake design and all I produced was a very basic sketch in the back of my notepad along with a few images collected off the internet. Isn't Pinterest amazing? 

So I proposed this crazy (for me) design to fit in line with their whimsical/ woodland wedding theme:

Bottom tier: Vanilla sponge, strawberry & vanilla swiss meringue buttercream and strawberry jam. Covered in fondant sugar 'tree trunk'

Middle tier: Vanilla sponge, eggless lime curd, vanilla swiss meringue buttercream. Crumbled coloured shortcrust pastry 'moss', fondant blades of grass & mushrooms, modelling chocolate covered florist wire 'branches.'

Top tier: Chocolate butter sponge, chocolate swiss meringue buttercream covered in textured brown fondant, gold luster dust and topped with sugar flowers.

The past week has been a blur (possibly due to slight sleep deprivation) but overall the past 3 weeks have pretty much comprised of mad Googling seshes. From things such as how to make a sugar peony to how to construct and stack cakes and most importantly how to transport them! I understand the theory to most things, I just don't know exactly how to do it… I even resorted to asking advice from fellow Instagrammers. 

2 kilos of flour, 4 kilos of sugar, nearly 3.5 kilos of butter and over 30 eggs and 30 egg whites later, miraculously, a wedding cake was produced and even more surprisingly, stayed intact during the whole day and night. My worst fear was that the sugar peonies would break and without any backup all I'd do is cry in embarrassment. Either that or go on the rob and steal real ones from the bouquets. But thankfully, nothing like that happened. 

There's some areas that I think could have been improved on but the cake overall turned out a lot better than I planned and hopefully it tastes good too. As I keep telling people- it was a beautiful wedding, the food and music were amazing and we really enjoyed ourselves… despite my feet being crippled from wearing ridiculous heels!

To the happy couple, Mr and Mrs W.