Wedding Cakes

Excuse me for being absent from my blog…again. It’s been hard to keep up! I left off telling you that wedding cakes was next up on the pastry school agenda. Two weeks of wedding cakes has passed, and so has 1 week of sugar candies and confections…and so has 1 week of ice cream. I’m so behind, I don’t even know where to start. This post will be focused on Wedding cakes, because I really don’t want to give you guys a pastry overload. So let me think back to 4 weeks ago. WOW, 4 weeks ago?! Is that even right? Time is seriously flying by, I cannot believe it’s mid-October already. I have exactly 2 months left, which I think is craziness. With such little time left, honestly, I still feel kind of lost. I’m not sure where I’ll be directed after my program is over. I loved baking breads, I loved tarts (surprisingly) and I really did love sugar candies and ice creams (which I will delve into further in another post). I guess I will just see where the wind takes me.So onto Wedding cakes…

I can honestly say this was probably my least favorite class. I think it may have been the artistic aspect that made me not as interested. I didn’t have a very fun time decorating, learning how to roll fondant, making gum paste flowers, and doing string work with royal icing. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I was terrible at it…I just didn’t have fun. I didn’t love it, and I definitely didn’t see myself doing it in the future. Maybe I’d do a cake or two on the side for someone if they really wanted me to, but I know I’m not going to be on the search for a job as a wedding cake decorator/designer. I do give wedding cake designers and decorators props for what they do, because it does take time and patience. And really importantly, they have to make the bride happy. Brides are scary, and I honestly wouldn’t want to deal with a scary bridezilla. Too much pressure. But I will definitely take the skills that I learned in the 2 weeks with me for the future. I learned how to properly frost a cake, and it made me think about all the cakes I’ve frosted so poorly, and it was like LIGHTBULB! Hello! Why didn’t I think to do this before!? I made flowers out of gumpaste which looked beautiful, and people would look at them and think WOW! How did you do that?! Guess what? It’s easy! You can do it too! With the proper tools, anyone can literally make gum paste flowers. I learned how to roll out fondant onto a tiered cake. That was interesting. Oh, and along with wedding cakes, we made a traditional French wedding cake as well — a Croquembouche. A croquembouche is literally a tower of pate a choux (cream puffs) held together by sugar. It’s delicious! This, I actually had fun making. I definitely wouldn’t mind having a croquembouche at my wedding. It’s something different, its simple and beautiful, and tasty. So here are some results of my time in Wedding Cakes class.

Two tiered buttercream cake

I did a terrible job decorating this, and If i had more time in class, I think I could have done better — but I’ll be honest with myself: my piping skills still suck.