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Ah, great, thanks! Looks like draping the fondant over the entire thing in one sheet will do it.

There are a lot of pho shops down on Stockton, close to the giant Asian grocery. I'm not sure where to get good dim sum, though. That's something I miss about SF. Corti Brothers is great (especially their meat!), except for their produce, which is a little lacking. There's a new Whole Foods, but I wouldn't go there for produce, either. It's all overpriced and undersized. The co-op on Alhambra, or subscribing to a CSA, is probably your best bet. And Gretch, for Italian, we usually go to Cafe Milazzo, because it's a pretty good neighborhood resturaunt. I haven't been there for dinner, though. Only breakfast and lunch. Lunch is a very good deal, at least. Edit: Also, be sure to try NV Vegetarian Resturaunt in Woodland. It's really quite amazing how good their fake meat dishes are. And I never thought I'd say such a thing.

I did not know that. I thought that metal would be less sticky, which is why I bought a metal peel. Well, that and the weight is far less. Also, my local resturaunt supply store carries a wide variety of peels, so I'd suggest checking one of those out before ordering online. At least, you can save the shipping costs that way.

I use a peel and slide the pizza, loaded on parchment, in on the stone (oven preheated for an hour at 500F). I use the Pain a L'ancienne dough from Reinhard's BBA, and it's just too slack a dough for me to use only cornmeal or semiolina on the peel. So, the parchment works well for me. I'd never heard of removing it halfway through, though. Interesting. My concern would be that any benefit gained by removing the parchment would be diminished by the heat loss from opening the oven. My impression is that you would want the entire oven, not just the pizza stone, to be as hot as possible so that pizzas can finish in 8-10 mins. Sooner, if your oven gets hotter. Anyway, that's how I get around the sticky dough issue.

All of these ideas are very interesting. And we may well end up doing cupcakes or petit-fours. Either way, I'm sure, would be very nice. I'm going to try doing some mini cakes, perhaps for valentine's day, just to see what is involved and if the process can be sufficiently streamlined for the wedding. If it's too big of a hassle, we'll go with another idea. Since the wedding is in July, and outdoors, I think that fondant would hold up better than buttercream. When covering these cakes in fondant, do you use one piece of fondant, drape it over the entire cake, and mold it, or do each layer individually, and then stack the layers? For flavor, I like the idea of a lemon cake with a lemon curd filling. I live in Northern Cal and have Meyer lemons coming out of my ears. However, considering the eggs in the lemon curd, that would mean refrigerating the cakes. Is there anything similar to lemon curd that I could use as a filling, but would not need to be refrigerated if left in the cakes at room temp for at least a full day? I think that the egg in lemon curd functions mainly as a thickener. Lemon marmalade is thick enough, but not creamy. Maybe a lemon buttercream crumb coat under the fondant and between the layers will be good enough. For decoration, I think I'll stick to a simple bead at the bottom and right where the layers meet, and a slice of candied lemon for the top. Given that the cakes are so small, I don't think that the decoration needs to be particularly ornate. Eh?

Thanks, everyone, for the replies. I'll try to address them in order: miaomee: Yes, thanks. I could tell it was a single serving, but it was difficult to tell if it was a particularly small single serving or not. I think I'll just have to see one in person to tell. And thanks for noticing that you don't actually bake in those tins. That's exactly what I was wondering. Those tins are out of the question, then. Wendy: thanks for the welcome. No, my fiancee and I are not professionals, but neither are we trying to replicate a professional wedding experience. If we wanted formally plated dinners, passed appetizers, or any other type of skilled service, we would have the reception catered. This is going to be a backyard 4th of July barbeque, where the beef brisket, ribs, and turkey are smoked during the previous day. The side dishes, some brought by family and friends, and some prepared by us during the previous days, will be things that are ideally served at room temperature. I have not decided if things will be served family-style or available to pick up at a buffet table, but either way, there will be no plating of food. We'll be hiring a clean-up crew so that no one (including us) has to do the washing up. The atmosphere will really be much more like a holiday barbeque or family reunion than an intimate wedding. I know that we could hire caterers to do this, and to make the cake as well, but this is what we want to do. We've had practice receptions with different numbers of people, and while this will be the largest number yet, we still want to do it. It doesn't sound enjoyable to most people, but that's not really relevant. As it's our wedding, we want the food to be *from* us. We get what could very well go wrong, and we are doing what we can to make sure that problems are solved early on. And, there are a lot of other things that are simply not going to be part of this wedding. There will be no florist, no photographer, and no horrid bridal gown. Hopefully, no dancing. Just a big dinner with family and friends. For the cakes themselves, whether they are cakes or cupcakes, they will be on a tree or tier, so they will not be directly plated and served. We may well end up doing cupcakes instead of cakes, depending on how difficult they are to make and decorate. I would likely want to start 2 days beforehand, which does present issues of how to keep them moist. Prehaps spritzing or painting them with a flavored sugar syrup would help with that. Anyway, I do appreciate the advice.

My fiancee and I, in a likely misguided sense of culinary zeal, decided that we, with the help of willing family and friends, would do most of the cooking for our own wedding. This was more his idea than mine, but I'm going with it. There will be 50 people, and both the ceremony and reception will be held in our backyard. We're figuring out what kinds of things can be done safely ahead of time in quantities, how much we can store, how things will be heated and served, etc. So, the cake scenario. We're both a little concerned about securely constructing, decorating, and then somehow moving, a single big cake. I had the bright idea of making cupcakes, but upon finding some example pics, thought that maybe miniature 2-layer cakes would be a little nicer. More work decorating, but clearly prettier. I have located a source for mini 2-tier cake pans, but I'm unclear on how they work. It's a single mold rather than two small pans, so assuming that the open end is the large end, how do you keep these upright in the oven? Or, is there a different way of making these? The same site has 3-pc 3 tier cake pans which, being 3 pieces, would appear to bake separately. But, that set is twice the cost of the 2-tier mold, and besides, the third tier adds an undesirable level of complexity to the decorating. But, is the 2-tier cake an adequate dessert portion size? It's awfully hard to tell from the close-up pics. My guess is that with all the great professional and home bakers on this site, someone here has done this before. Any suggestions, or words of experience?