Flour and Water

Disclaimer:  this post is going to be completely different than all my others. I realize that this blog is about my walk with Christ and is far from a food blog but I had so much fun baking and decorating Briana and Christopher’s wedding cake that I just had to share it! So if baking blogs aren’t your thing, I won't be offended if you take a pass at this post.

For those of you for whom baking/cooking blogs are you’re thing, I’m sorry. This will probably be terrible as this isn’t really my forte. To be honest, I HATE baking blogs. I’m constantly finding cool recipes on Pinterest only to have to scroll though someone life story and their son’s life story about why they were making these type of cookies to take to the park today and blah blah blah –  I just need to know your ratio of butter to flour, not why you were feeling sad today! I don’t care why you made them just how you made them! Anywho………

So last summer my good friends were sharing some of their wedding plans with me and mentioned they were going to do sheet cake. Now, I have nothing against sheet cake (and in my honest opinion the chocolate sheet cake they had at their wedding was a hundred times better than the cake I made for them, seriously ) but I said, “Oh you should have a small pretty cake to cut! I’ll make you one!” Cause I’m thinking to myself, "I’ve been making cakes since I was 8. They’re not hard. People tell me my cakes are yummy. I’ll just frost it white. Presto. I’m a wedding cake baker." Wrong. So, so wrong.

I start casually looking up wedding cakes (small wedding cakes) on Pinterest and I start to have a panic attack. "I can’t do this!" Did you know you need to put wooden dowels in wedding cakes so they don’t collapse on themselves?! I didn’t! I never even thought about the layers collapsing into the bottom layers. Uh-oh. There was a lot about wedding cakes I didn’t know.

As my confidence waned, I made a deal with Bri and Chris, I would have a test cake ready for them sometime in December and if they didn’t like it or I didn’t feel confident in my ability to complete it up to my standards then they would have plenty of time before the wedding to make other arrangements.

Buttercream Frosting

Strawberry Filling

So December grew closer and I just assumed I had everything I would need in my kitchen already. Yeah, no. “Wait, what? You don’t want a Bundt wedding cake?! But I’m good at Bundts!” Oh well. After a trip to Hobby Lobby to purchase all sorts of special wedding cake paraphernalia I didn’t even know existed I start talking specifics with Bri and Chris about what type of cake they want. Strawberry they tell me. Hmm. Definitely not my first pick (but then again I have the belief that if it’s not chocolate it’s not worth putting in your mouth -thus the chocolate sheet cake being AMAZING!) So anyways I had never made a strawberry cake so I started researching strawberry cake recipes on Pinterest and found one that seemed the least artificial and decided on a simple buttercream frosting I had used previously for other projects. I ran a few different frosting techniques by Bri and Chris that I thought I could possibly manage and they picked a few that they liked and I moved forward to see what I could create out of this flour and water.

Leaning tower of cake. 

The first test cake was a disaster. I did three tiers. Way too much cake. Also I couldn’t figure out how to cook the big 12 inch cake without burning the edges and still have the middle cooked. I saw on some tutorials that they scraped out the middle just to get to cook or placed towels around the sides to slow the cooking process. I tried both. Honestly, I’d rather do neither.  So I resolved never to bake a cake that big again. By the time I finished baked all the layers, cutting the layers (which is near impossible to do evenly I discovered), made the filling, filled the cake, stacked the cake, put the support dowels in, I was exhausted. And then I realized nothing was even. If you didn’t cut the layers perfectly, it wasn’t even. If you didn’t put the filling in perfectly, it wasn’t even. If you didn't put the dowels in perfect, it wasn't even. I figured I could even it all out when I frosted it. Wrong, once again. The whole thing was a huge (literally – it was three tiers for petes sake!) mess.  So I texted Bri and told her not to bother come look at the thing and that I would try again in a few weeks…. *sigh* I slid the cake into the refrigerator and quickly discovered that my grandpa greatly enjoys strawberry cake and over the next week it slowly disappeared which is impressive because again – it was three tiers (with three layers of cake and two layers of filling in each tier!).  Yeah, we monitor my grandpa for diabetes every so often.

Second Test Run

So a few weeks later I tried again, this time just one tier (well it was supposed to be two but the bottom one just fell apart and I gave up on it. So I served it to my brother's in-laws. They didn't seem to mind. But lets's just say I was shooting for one tier). Practice definitely makes perfect, or at least improvement, I felt comfortable enough to show Bri and Chris this one. I wasn’t totally happy with it but I didn’t hate it either. At least it tasted good. At least that’s what the non-chocolate-only people told me (but can you really trust those people).  Bri and Chris gave me some feedback and we decided to make the cake layers thicker and the filling layers thinner.  So with my new confidence and few adjustments we pressed onward!

Four months later I did one last test run. By this time I had the cake and filling down pat and just needed to work on my frosting technique. I had found some new tools at Hobby Lobby and talked with Bri and Chris about tweaking the frosting style just to see how we liked it. We all ended up loving it!  

 

Final Test Run!

However, a new panic had started to creep in. How in the world was I going to get this cake to Rockford without ruining it?! So I told Bri and Chris that I wanted to practice driving with it so I’d bring the third and final test cake to them. I’m glad I practiced because the first turn out of my street the cake went sliding right into the car door. So much for my perfect frosting job! On the last trial run we decided to add gypsophila and a pearl “H” they had recently received as a gift to finish off the look. Now all that was left was to wait for the actual wedding!

Two days before the wedding I was baking up a storm and fighting a nasty cold that was quickly turning into laryngitis and bronchitis. I really did try hard not to cough or sneeze on the cakes, guys!  By Thursday night I had the whole thing baked, assembled, and frosted. All that was left was to perfect the icing effect. Friday morning I got busy with a flurry of wedding activities but I manage to ice the cake before we left. I’m not gonna lie, I was over wedding cakes by this point! My husband, perfect as always, rode the whole way to Rockford holding the cake steady on the back seat.

Final Product!

Well, we made it to Rockford in one piece and delivered it to Chris’ parent’s hotel room but I couldn’t rest easy until it was all set up on the cake table the next day! After lots of fun pampering, rehearsing, and eating, the big day arrived! I got the cake into the reception hall, onto the cake table, and assembled with flowers and accessories with only a few hiccups! But as we are our own worst critics, I definitely wasn’t satisfied with it. I wanted it to be perfect! However, my dear friend Kristy, assured me it looked wonderful and that I was the only one who could see the imperfections (which I'm still not sure is true).  But I figured there was nothing to be done about it now - it was time! It was the wedding day! A few flowers, a pretty cake stand and a good photographer had the final pictures turning out great! I'm not sure if Bri and Chris had more fun eating it or smashing it into each other's faces but either way I'm glad they enjoyed it. And that’s when I swore never to bake a wedding cake again. THE END!

But not really.  As I’ve said time and time again this blog is about my walk with Christ. While baking a wedding cake isn’t inherently good (or inherently evil for that matter), I can say for certain that wedding I baked this cake for was inherently pleasing to God. Briana and Christopher’s desire was to a have a wedding that reflected Christ and his love for His people. His Bride.  I was so blessed to be a part of their wedding and now their marriage. I define blessing as anything that makes me see God more clearly and brings me closer to him. And this wedding certainly did that. The book of Revelation talks about the Church (anyone who has put their trust in Jesus as their savior) being God’s bride. Just as husband loves and cares for his bride so Jesus loves and care for his people. God created marriage to be a reflection of his great love for his people. Briana and Christopher did a wonderful job of pointing people to Christ all day long. From their generous, selfless, and patient spirits on a day that we are told that you can be as selfish as you want to their careful planning to ensure that God be the center of their ceremony - Christ was seen in it all. 

May we all experience God’s never-ending, lavish, scandalous love for us! May we all remember to point to Him in all we do. And may we all be truly blessed today. 

PS: Just for fun: check out the inspiration for the title of this post: