Wedding Cake Blues

Adventures in Baking: the Wedding cCke

It all started innocently enough. Perhaps we could make the wedding cake as part of my daughter’s gift for the wedding? How hard could it be?

by Jan Hostyn

wedding cake

I watched helplessly as a small but unmistakable bright yellow stream burst through the exterior of our meticulously-iced cake. After a few seconds of debilitating horror, I grabbed a spatula and sprang into action. I could not, would not let this happen. Not after the countless hours we had poured into this project.

This cake was not just any cake. This cake, this cake that had just so inconsiderately sprung a leak, was a wedding cake. The very wedding cake that my daughter’s friend was counting on cutting at her wedding in less than 24 hours, to be exact.

My well-intentioned but hugely misinformed foray into the wedding cake arena was not turning out as planned. And what had started as our little project had morphed into anything but.

I don’t do wedding cakes. All of my previous encounters with cakes of that stature had been limited to consuming them. But here I was, elbow-deep in icing, in a stand-off with potentially the most uncooperative wedding cake ever.

It all started innocently enough. My oldest daughter had burst through our front door a few months earlier in utter dismay. Her newly-engaged friend had just informed her that, due to budgetary constraints, she was planning to order her wedding cake from Costco.

My daughter was appalled. She had been raised on homemade cakes and, in her world, a cake’s fundamental purpose is to taste utterly delicious. Appearance isn’t totally irrelevant (she has a soft spot for anything with sprinkles) but taste always comes first. My daughter was certain a Costco cake—a zero-tier, run-of-the-mill, factory-produced slab cake—simply would not cut it in that department.

We (mostly she) got to thinking: the cakes we make taste good (well, usually). Perhaps we could make the wedding cake as part of my daughter’s gift for the wedding?

In a matter of minutes, thanks to the magic of texting, my daughter and I had volunteered to make the wedding cake. And, in a matter of just a few more minutes, our offer had been accepted.

The bride was thrilled. She wasn’t even overly concerned with what the finished product was going to look like.

I am a baker. I am NOT a fancy baker, though. Homey. Most definitely substance over style. But how do you agree to make a wedding cake and not have it look like a wedding cake?

Oh dear.

That simple wedding cake somehow morphed into a three-tiered lemon cake filled with lemon curd. Lemon was the bride’s choice. The groom happened to be a fan of carrot cake, though, so a large, two-layer slab carrot cake also became part of the deal.

To complicate things further, my oldest daughter effectively dropped out of the process partway through. Thankfully, my other daughter stepped in.

Five cake layers, 43 eggs and countless hours later (seven hours alone for each my daughter and I the day before the wedding simply to ice and assemble – that’s not counting the time we spent baking and shopping, or the time we spent trying to learn the process in the first place) we finally had two cakes. Two fairly presentable cakes, if you ask me.

But the learning curve.

Lemon and carrot were not the least labour-intensive choices for flavours by any means. One of those flavours would have been more than enough by itself. We took on both. After zesting and juicing 20 lemons by hand (with my old-fashioned, rustic, hand-operated juicer) and grating what seemed like a gazillion carrots (again, by hand), I still shudder slightly whenever one of them enters my kitchen.

It turns out I wasn’t exactly what you’d call prepared, either.

I had no idea we needed dowels in order to stack the tiers (I didn’t even know what dowels were, actually). Until the Wednesday before the wedding, that is. Over coffee a friend casually asked if I had picked up my dowels and cardboard yet. Noooooo. Thank goodness for friends. Her innocent question saved me from having to watch my top cakes’ layers sink into the layers underneath.

At that point a massive dose of panic set in. I planted myself in front of the computer and binge watched wedding cake-related YouTube videos.

Thank goodness for videos. Not only was I given a quick lesson in the stacking and icing of wedding cakes (and how to use dowels), but other bits of information also proved valuable.

I am a huge fan of parchment paper, but I would never have thought to put it between the cardboard and the icing when layering the tiers. Evidently without the parchment, the icing sticks to the cardboard (and not to the cake) when the tiers are taken apart and the cake is cut. Nobody wants a piece of icing-less cake (at least I don’t). I had also given zero thought to the fact that the finished product, plate and all, had to fit in the fridge. Sure enough, the plate I had bought was not fridge-friendly. Off to the store I went yet again.

There was also the lemon curd leakage issue (solved by taking a deep breath and doing an extra crumb layer and some creative icing maneuvers).

The icing itself was also a bit of a problem. The bride wanted butter icing, so butter icing it was. We quickly found out that butter icing wasn’t the best choice, however. Butter icing isn’t exactly lily-white, it’s heavy, it’s harder to spread and smooth and, and, and… Four batches of butter and three of cream cheese icing later (cream cheese for the carrot cake, of course), I’m still finding dustings of icing sugar in random nooks and crannies around my house.

Decorating worried me. Before us were two decidedly naked-looking cakes. Neither had the pristine finish one would hope for in a wedding cake. And upon closer inspection, you could see a touch of unevenness where the emergency lemon curd surgery had been performed. Definitely not wedding cake-esque. I tried to squelch my rising panic. Our plan to decorate them with fresh flowers would make all the difference, wouldn’t it? That was the hope.

The morning of the wedding we stopped by the City Market to pick up our flowers—two huge buckets full (so huge that we were both huffing and puffing by the time we had lugged them back to the car). Clara at Meadow and Thicket Farm had carefully gathered the freshest and prettiest flowers she had grown that week. There were dahlias and cosmos and I don’t even know what else. All I knew was that they were beautiful. And that they were peach and white, the bride’s colours.

Thank goodness for my daughter. I don’t have a creative bone in my body. She has more than she knows what to do with. Her talent transformed our decidedly plain three-tiered wedding cake into a work of art. Two huge peach dahlias crowned the top of the cake and stole the show, but the mass of flowers cascading down the sides was almost as striking. The overall effect was stunning (and completely void of sprinkles)!

Whew. Our wedding cake looked like a real wedding cake!

It was quite the adventure. Next time (if there is a next time) I have no doubt the process will be more streamlined. Just slightly, though—I’ve learned enough to know that I don’t know nearly enough.

Between supplies and ingredients and labour, it would have been far cheaper (and much less stressful) simply to have ordered the wedding cake from one of Edmonton’s many reputable wedding cake designers.

Now I know exactly what not to do when my daughters get married.

The Final Tally

13½ cups of butter
43 eggs
20 lemons
14 cups of icing sugar
4 lbs of carrots
11 trips to the store
627 additional grey hairs
1 happy bride

Wedding Cake Makers

Looking for cakes that look great and taste even better?
We recommend:

The Art of Cake
11811 105 Avenue
780-441-1339

Cake Couture
15008 87 Avenue
780-443-4083

Sugared and Spiced
10334 82 Avenue (rear)
780-244-2253

Places with Great Cakes

Dauphine Bakery
6005 120 Avenue
587-520-3322

Duchess Bakery 
10718 124 Street
780-488-4999

Jan Hostyn will not be taking wedding cake orders anytime soon.