Lindsay's Wedding Cake

I just made my first three tiered wedding cake!!!

And trust me, it wasn't without its ups and downs...

When my sister-in-law Lindsay asked me to make her wedding cake for her, I was excited to give it a go!

The first practice one I made was a 6 and 8 inch two tiered cake. I gave them some options and they picked snickerdoodle with a cream cheese icing. Although the practice cake was mostly so I could try putting the right supports in and the different way to cut a wedding cake, it ended up being really dry! And that meant... another practice cake!

For the second practice cake, I was planning on halving the recipe and making a small 6 inch cake, but after mixing up a few ingredients' amounts wrong, I ended up having to make an eight inch. I used a simple syrup to combat the dryness and all it did was make it more dense without losing the dryness... That was weird! Not only that, but the cake layers all baked incredibly uneven! John didn't tell me until after, but this second batch made him pretty worried and skeptical about how the final cake would turn out. Bless him for not saying that until it was all over! Haha!

At this point, I didn't have time for another practice cake, so I decided to go ahead with the original recipe I was using (the same one I used for my Grandma's birthday cake but with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon added). To help with the dryness, all I did was take them out of the oven a few minutes sooner, not let them cool for longer than 15 minutes in the pan, and ice them with a crumb coat as soon as they were cool on the cooling rack. For the icing, I used a combination of one batch of American buttercream icing mixed with one batch of cream cheese icing to give it the cream cheese flavor but the stability of the buttercream. (This handy tip was given to me by a family friend and professional chef who made my wedding cake!)

And by some miracle (or divine help!) Every cake layer I made for the final wedding cake baked perfectly! All flat and moist! 

I started baking all 9 of the layers on Sunday at noon and finished putting a crumb coat on the last one a little after 10 pm. 

Since every single one of my practice cakes had at least a few small little boy bites out of them before I was done, on Monday I bought Aaron and Zack their own small chocolate cake at the store and let them have at it! It worked out perfectly and they didn't touch the wedding cake in the fridge!

After a few hours of putting on the final icing for each of the three tiers, John's dad picked up the cake and it was officially safe from the kids!

On the day of, I assembled the three tiers. Each tier was originally iced on a cardboard cake board and after placing the straws in the bottom cake tier and cutting them to the right height, I put a small round parchment paper down on top and secured it with some extra icing before placing the next tier on the parchment paper (again secured with a little more icing). I filled the small gap between the tiers with some extra icing and smoothed it out with an angled cake spatula. 

The cake plate was a 14 inch serving plate from target. It worked great but is giving a weird reflection on the bottom layer in this lighting...

Once again, the florist did the flowers so it would match the rest of the wedding flowers, and it looked beautiful! And now, my next cake goal is to learn to arrange the flowers nicely so I can do that part on my own!

In the end, it all turned out great and now I can say I've done a three tiered wedding cake! And honestly, it was probably the best wedding cake I've done so far!

Congrats to the happy couple! One day off and then we get to take a break from cake and eat some pie for Thanksgiving!