Welcome Everyone!

Taste Testing

I ended up using Bo Friberg's recipes for chocolate and lemon chiffon cakes and his carrot sponge. These recipes were great in that they used separated whole eggs so there was no need to find extra whites in a carton or throw away a bunch of yolks. All the test cakes baked up well. I would add some more oil to the chiffons next time to try and make them a bit more moist. I also ended up substituting nutmeg and cardamom for some of the cinnamon in the carrot cakes. This gave them a more scandanavian flavor.

For buttercream, I added dutched cocoa for the chocolate, lemon zest and juice for the lemon and nutmeg and cardamom for the carrot spice. Of the three I think the carrot came out the best. The lemon was excellent and the chocolate was okay. I would use regular cocoa instead of Dutch processed next time, it had just a hint too much bitterness from the strong flavored Droste's cocoa. The test cake with good ole Hershey's was more palatable even if the color wasn't as deep.

Prototype Decor

These are prototype decor work I did to make sure Lisa would like the cake.

Here's a shot of the top layer. It looked a little busy so I planned to skip the card suits and just have the ivory drapes coming down. I also needed to make better, more separate folds on the turquoise swags, they need more depth.

This is the middle layer. I wanted to use poker chips and card suits but they are too busy when spaced this close. I planned to alternate poker chips and card suits under the ivory pieces so there would be more white space.

The bottom layer has ivory palm trees with turquoise tops. Only a few of the tops are done here.

Here's another shot with a better view of the dice tier separators. They're made of poured sugar over crumpled tin foil. These are 2 inches, I ended up using 1 1/2 inches on the cake because these looked a little big.

The Real Deal

As you can see here, I only did swags on the top layer. There just wasn't enough room on the middle and I wanted to get the poker chips and card suits in.

This is a good shot of the palm trees and the dice tier separators.

I was pretty happy with the way the whole cake topper came out. I made the Vegas sign from pastillage and royal icing. The pieces were made in Portland and then assembled on site.

I sculpted the bride and groom from marzipan on site. I really like the way Lisa'a bouquet came out. The folds in her dress were pretty good too, better in the back which I forgot to photograph.

These palm tree tops look better viewed from the side but here's the detail if you want it.

Lessons Learned

Overall I was pretty happy with the way it turned out but if I did it again I would do a few things differently.

• Next time I would get slightly larger (by 1") tier plates. This way they'd stick out far enough to pipe a quick little buttercream border. This would give the bottom of each tier a cleaner look, some better aesthetic definition and hide any small wrinkles in the fondant.
• The ivory dice were a bit soft and were totally oozing by the end of the night. Digital thermometers lie! Given the chance again I would have remade them.
• Though it held its shape, all the sugar was soft and sticky by the end of the night. Next time I would get some edible lacquer to spray it with.
• I wanted the bride and groom to look a bit more delicate but the marzipan was not as pliable as I would have liked. Maybe I can find a better brand next time.
• I wanted to use gum paste for the swags on the cake. It is easier to roll thin and it looks more delicate. After staying until 2am the night before pulling sugar I miscalculated and added too much water to the mix and made some goo that I promptly threw in the trash. Oh well.
• Fondant choice was tough. Mass Taschino rolled fondant only comes in a 13# (5Kg) bucket and costs $80. Wilton rolled fondant doesn't handle quite as nicely but it is half the cost (about $3.75/pound), it comes in a 5# box that contains two individually sealed 2 1/2# packages and is available at every Michael's craft store. I used about 8# total on this cake so I'd either have to charge a lot or be going through the stuff pretty regularly to justify the cost of the good stuff.
• Home made fondant is a seriously messy pain in the ass to make. Also, as gum tragacanth is neither cheap nor easily available there is none in the recipe and it shows in the handling. It is not as pliable as the commercial stuff and it's sometimes tough to get the right consistency. Consistency between batches can vary as well. On the other hand, a 2# batch which will cover an 8" cake costs less than $2 to make. Only really suitable for small projects.
• The egg whites in a carton available at the grocery store are weird. When making Italian buttercream they smell weird and don't hold a foam when the sugar is added. The only ingredient on the label is "egg whites" so it's not an additive causing the problem. I won't be using these again.

In conclusion

Everyone loved the cake, it was beautiful and delicious. I was also really happy that I could do this for Lisa and Johan. It made for one less thing they had to worry about and a much smaller bill than if they got it from a local bakery.

In hind sight this cake was a pretty ambitious endeavor. It used buttercream in four flavors, three different cake flavors, rolled fondant for covering and decor, pastillage, royal icing, poured sugar, pulled sugar and sculpted marzipan. That's a lot of different media to be working with on one cake but I guess I was feeling pretty sassy when I thought it all up.

Not including the pastillage pieces I made ahead of time, I made this cake from start to finish in two and half days. The day before was an eleven hour drive from Portland to Redwood City and the day after was a twelve hours drive back. It also fed over 120 people with a few leftovers. It would have to be a really special event if I were to attempt something of this size and scope again.

Thanks to Johan and Lisa for allowing be to completely take over their kitchen for three days and for washing my tools on the last day. I'm glad their finally together for good and really grateful they let me play such an important role in their wedding.