Posted by Ethne~
One of the crowning achievements of a Wolcott wedding is
the wedding cake. My wedding cake is, to
this day, the most beautiful cake I’ve ever seen.
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The top layer Aunt Pam is holding is about to become the
4th tier of my wedding cake; Shaun's groom's cake sat to the side |
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| Fully assembled: she added pink roses just for me. |
All of Aunt Pam’s cakes are beautiful, though. She’s made them for every niece and nephew. Imagine the work that goes into that – four
full days of baking, assembling and frosting – and one hair-raising drive from
Grandma’s house (where the cakes were made and frosted) to the reception hall
to assemble and decorate with fresh flowers.
So here’s the labor of love in progress:
(1) I wasn’t there for the baking of the cakes, which
occurred on Wednesday and Thursday. Aunt
Pam’s famous hummingbird cake was one of the layers – we all fight over it and
I read that a hummingbird cake was the cake that Prince William requested for
wedding cake when he married Kate last year.
I’d say it’s a cross between banana bread, carrot cake and pineapple
upside-down cake.
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| A view of the hummingbird cake |
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| The bottom layer - hummingbird - is HUGE: 16" |
There are also layers of chocolate (which is normally my
favorite but can’t compare to hummingbird), yellow and the bride K requested
strawberry cake too. Aunt Pam is careful
to bake enough cakes so the top cake is saved.
She personally wraps it for freezing to eat on their one-year
anniversary.
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Tiny strawberry cake - Aunt Pam and her frosting
were very popular with the girls |
(2) The next step
is frosting the cakes. Aunt Pam uses
Bettercreme frosting, which comes in milk-carton type cartons and you whip it
in in the mixer until soft peaks form.
It’s light and fluffy.
Bettercreme is perfect for any type of cake; you can color it; and it
can be mixed with softened, whipped cream cheese, which Aunt Pam does for the
hummingbird layers.
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| The cartons of Bettercreme frosting |
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| The frosting was also very popular with moi |
(3) Aunt Pam evens out the cake layers till both top and
bottom sides of the cakes are flat. She
then places a nice layer of frosting between the two cake layers and levels
things out with wedges (from the evening-out process) of the cake and extra
frosting.
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These two layers baked really evenly, but you can see that the frosting
is thick in some places in the middle to level things off; the bottom
of the cake is placed on a giant lazy susan |
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Rubber gripper sheets are put between the cardboard cake
plate and the more formal plastic plate - no slippage allowed! |
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I use this type of stuff to keep my rugs in place on the floor;
Aunt Pam is ingenius! |
She frosts a very thin layer over the double-layer cake
so crumbs don’t get into the visible frosting layer.
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The thin layer is applied underneath
and then the thicker frosting layer doesn't
get cake crumbs in it |
(4) Frosting is very time intensive. In fact, Aunt Pam started frosting the cakes
on Friday at noon and didn’t finish until midnight. I suggested she use the wavy frosting technique
like she used for my cake; that goes a little faster. She probably uses the smooth frosting
technique more, but I personally prefer how decadent the wavy frosting looks.
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| Fully frosted - wavy technique |
(5) Somehow in the midst of all of this, Aunt Pam dashes
out to buy fresh flowers because she believes that is the most beautiful way to
finish cake decorating. And she’s right,
the color is amazing. K and Z’s wedding
décor was rustic, so there were a lot of reds and turquoise colors to work
with. And rest assured: Aunt Pam washed
all of the flowers, including the violets she picked from Grandma’s back yard.
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Thrifty Nana carrying out the pail of flowers - I caught her
with a bite of food in her mouth - sorry Mom! |
(6) Nicole and I drove the cakes from Grandma’s house to
the hall. Aunt Pam followed us and as we
pulled out of the driveway you could see the stress on her face. She would’ve shot poison darts with her eyes
if we hit a bump in the road wrong!
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See the distance in the cake layers? Those are
the hollow tubes |
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| Whew! We made it safely to the reception hall |
(7) Wedding cakes are almost always in a prominent
location at the reception; preferably the cake gets its own table so Aunt Pam
can cut and serve the cake (which she insists on so each guest can pick the
type of cake they want – nothing else will do!) once the bride and groom cut
into it. Aunt Pam sticks open cake tubes
into the cake in a square pattern that matches the short legs of the stand on
which the next smaller layer is placed.
The tubes should stick out of the cake about an inch.
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| Pushing the base tubes into the cake |
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| Placing the feet of the next cake onto the tubing of the lower cake |
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| Another layer going up - with a daring pillar! |
(8) Any accidental (or purposeful if the little kids are
around) smudges into the frosting are patched with extra frosting that is
brought along and then Aunt Pam puts flowers in a pattern that she creates as
she goes. It’s edible artwork, my
Friends.
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Bride and groom are not at the top
but in the middle - as though they are
dancing under a pagoda |
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| Flowers being placed |
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| Isn't it DIVINE? |
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Except for the cake top being saved for Z & K's one-year
anniversary, this was eaten down to crumbs even too
small for a mouse |
The next day we always eat whatever scraps are leftover,
and I was shocked when I saw there were hardly any at all. There’s no better compliment to a cake
artist.
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| Cake finally assembled - now time to cut it all up |
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| Cutting the cake! |
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| Happily ever after! |
I’ll ask Aunt Pam if she’ll let me share the hummingbird
cake recipe, so keep checking back!
