Mission: Wedding Cake, Completed!

Here are the final cake pictures.  I am so happy with how this cake turned out and I feel a lot more confident in my cake skills now!


The 1/2 sheet cake:

Final decorations:

 The cake!

Grooms cake

My lovely assistant for the day, Angie!

I like this picture because it definitely shows the chaos of the cake cutting time... thanks friends for all the help!

Mission: Wedding Cake, Days 2-5

As of today, two days before the wedding, here's what I have done:

*All the frosting has been made (6 batches, or about 30 cups of swiss meringue lemon buttercream).  I had to make each batch individually and prayed for the life of my mixer with each batch.  The basic process for this frosting is to heat egg whites and sugar over a double boiler to 150F and then beat it up for about 15 minutes until it's cool and firm.  Then you slowly add the butter (I did half shortening to keep it more temperature stable at this sunny outdoor wedding), and continue beating until it's smooth. 

*I made a large batch of lemon curd that will be used in the filling and frosting of the cakes.

*The groom's cake is filled with strawberries and cream and covered with ganache.  It's now in the fridge waiting to be decorated with tuxedo-dipped strawberries.

Tomorrow will be the big day of final production.  I have some great friends who will be picking the raspberries and delivering them to me in the midst of the production!  While they are busy picking, I will be leveling cake layers, prepping fillings, getting the frosting softened up and ready to use, and dipping the strawberries. Hoping for the best, and for nothing to go wrong that can't be fixed!