making my mom's wedding cake

[amccomb]

So...my mom has asked me to make her wedding cake. She wants a traditional white cake layer, a red velvet layer, and a marble layer, all with a really nice buttercream frosting. Is anyone willing to share recipes? Also, she would like mums made of icing around each layer (the woman loves icing). Any tips, books, websites that can help me make icing mums? Any pictures of cakes with mums? The wedding is in the fall, and she would like rich fall colors - dark burgandies, reds, rust, orange, and golds. How can I make the icing colors really dark and rich without looking...fake and cartoonish? I really need a good how-to website or book for this stuff! This will be the first wedding cake that I have actually stacked. The wedding cake I made before was on a tiered stand.

Oh! And her husband-to-be would like me to make upside down cakes for his groom cake. I have a stand that will work well to hold three different sized cakes (16, 12, and 8 inch) and I figured I would make a pineapple, peach, and cherry, but I thought I might see if anyone had any other ideas! I would love to do rhubarb, and I've made a tasty rhubarb upside down cake before, but it wasn't very pretty. I've also made a pear and gingerbread upside down cake that was really nice, but the groom doesn't like gingerbread.

Thanks in advance!

[Campfire Girl]

I'm sorry I can't help you with your mom's wedding cake. I do wish you luck! I know you'll find the help you need on this website. As for me, I'm interested in your pear gingerbread upside-down cake. I LOVE gingerbread and can never seem to get enough. Would you be willing to share the recipe?

Thank you!

[amccomb]

Sure! Actually, I just got it from epicurious.com and altered it a little. Here is a link to Upside-Down Pear Gingerbread Cake. There are tons of other gingerbread recipes on that site, as well as other gingerbread upside down cake recipes.

I added some finely chopped crystalized ginger, some fresh ginger, and subbed some rum for the water. I may have added some other spices, too, or maybe added some spice to the pear topping...I can't remember, I'm sorry!

[Matsu]

There are different ways to make mums. One way is with a chrysanthemum tip shaped like a 'u'. They come in a few sizes. Wilton tip '81' will work. Do you have a cake decorating store near you? If so, you can pick up the tip and look through the Wilton Yearbook catalogs. They have some basic directions for making flowers and are relatively inexpensive.

Edited July 28, 2004 by Matsu (log)

[PastryLady]

I think you lucked out on the mums. Took a wedding cake class and thought they were one of the easiest flowers. If you pick up a cake decorating book they should have it in there. You will need a nail (looks like a long screw with a flat disk on top) and that tip matsu mentioned. A leaf tip is good too. I like to make my own out of a parchment bag though. What people don't tell you when using a nail is have a bunch of little parchment squares a tiny bit bigger than the nail surface (top flat one). You dab on a tiny bit of buttercream, plop on the parchment and then make your flower. Then you can transport it to the fridge to set up fully before moving it to your cake. This is especially great if using real buttercream. For the mum you basically do the inside out in a total of about a 1" diameter circle with that tip with touching the tip to the nail squeeze, stop and pull up. I am sure you could master it in less than an hour, just practicing. Fall colors are fun too with striping your bag. You just have to stripe the bag in the middle to get the tip a different color.

Edited July 28, 2004 by PastryLady (log)

[chefette]

amccomb, you might want to do a little looking around first re the recipes. Check the Recipe Gullet as well as the pastry threads since there has recently been much discussion on locating the best chocolate and white cake recipes which you may find useful. Also, there are several discussions on buttercreams: Italian, Swiss up to you. After you look at those you might want to get back and discuss what you think would best meet your needs.

In terms of cake planning and construction - that has also been very well covered several times. I would suggest a search on wedding cake. Several people have discussed their methods for frosting, covering, stacking, securing, and transporting cakes. Again - look for these and get back with questions and I think it will be more productive.

I am sure that it is well within your power to accomplish this task. It sounds as though you have at least worked with larger cakes before. And you are here doing your homework to make sure you don't make silly mistakes.

For the bright intense colors you will probably like a coloring paste instead of the normal home food coloring. You can get pastes in most cake/candy decorating stores. They may even be available at craft stores like Michaels that carry cake decorating supplies. Otherwise there are many on-line sources such as Beryls.

My normal go to Buttercream is an Italian Meringue Buttercream

16 oz sugar with 1/3 cup water cooked to hard ball

slowly pour the hot sugar syrup in a thin stream ensuring you do not hit the beaters (in a stand mixer)

into 6 large eggs whites at soft peak (whipping entire time on high speed)

continue whipping until bowl is cooled (just slightly warm to the touch)

Beat in 20 oz unstalted butter (softened)

add 1 T vanilla extract

[amccomb]

Thanks for the advice!

I have used the gels and pastes to color frosting before, but I never get the deep, rich color that I know my mom is wanting. I made a really nice 16 inch spiderman cake for my nephew (I drew spiderman freehand on top, and I was really surprized at how perfectly it turned out!) and when I was trying to color 2 cups of icing (powdered sugar, eggwhite powder, water, and shortening) red, it took two tubs of gel to get it even close to red. It was red, but slightly on the pink side of red. Is this normal? I had the same problem with the black frosting and ended up adding a tub of black food coloring to chocolate icing to get it to look black rather than plum.

[Gwhit]

It can be quite difficult to get the really deep colours without mixing some colours together. By adding a little black it makes the colours deeper. You have to experiment a little and sometimes you end up with mud but I have managed a deep red by adding a touch of black. You can get really nice deep greens by doing the same thing. Art supply stores, or probably the internet have colour wheels which you can use to help you know what colours to mix.

As I am just a home cook, I may be off track but that has always worked for me.

I am doing a friends wedding cake at the end of the month so can relate.

Good luck.

[bkeith]

A couple of tips for deep colors:

. Use Americolor colors. After using pretty much every brand out there, I'm convinced theirs are the best on the market, bar none. I get red and black faster with their colors faster than I've ever been able to with any other brand.

. If you have a fair amount of a deep color to make, make a batch of icing using diluted gel paste (1:1 with water) or airbrush color in place of the water in your recipe. That way you get a deep color without diluting your icing to the point of that it's not usable.

. Make deep colors a day or two in advance. As it sits, the icing darkens. So make up a batch that's a couple shades lighter than you're aiming for, then let it sit.

Hope that helps.

[chefpeon]

Hey Keith....

thanks for the tip about Americolor. Never heard of that brand before, but found it easily

on the 'net!

Too bad they don't make powders too......

Annie

[bkeith]

Hey Keith....

thanks for the tip about Americolor. Never heard of that brand before, but found it easily

on the 'net!

Too bad they don't make powders too......

Annie

Yeah, I've asked them before about that, but so far they're not interested. Just got back from ICES Convention. Meant to talk to them while I was there, but I was so swamped that I didn't get much of a chance to run through the exhibitor floor.