To Have and To Hold
To Do The ‘Do
A while back, I mentioned my grand plans to make my own wedding cake. Well, ladies and gents (light on the gents), I present to you my wedding cake:

Now, before you make fun, I know that this cake is far from perfect. In fact, when I arrived to set it up, I couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed about it – what kind of bride makes her own cake? And if it weren’t for my overwhelming stubbornness, I most certainly would not do it again. But now that it’s in the past, I can’t help but feel a wee bit happy with the results. Despite its imperfections – nay, GLARING issues – I think our guests really appreciated the personal touch, and it gave them something to talk about (mainly along the lines of – isn’t Mrs. BG a nutcase?!).
I think I had promised a long series of flavor taste tests – and although I conducted three in total, I only got my lazy bum around to blogging about the first. So let me skip to the winners:

This was the flavor I ended up using for the base layer of the cake – pound cake with strawberry pie filling and white chocolate ganache (my fave). Actually, that was the plan. But after going to a second supermarket the Wednesday before the wedding (because the first didn’t have pound cake mix) and finding that this one did not carry strawberry pie filling, I ended up making it raspberry. I think it turned out for the better.

This was Mr. BG’s favorite – strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting. Originally, this was just going to be the smallest layer, and I was going to make the middle an apple cider spice cake (winner of the first flavor test), but Mr. BG didn’t like the idea of getting the smallest layer – and when I got lazy, I just decided to make both the middle and top layers the same flavor.
I will blog at some point soon about the cost and logistics (I need to do some calculating), but let me just summarize by saying – do not attempt unless you already have experience and/or supplies.
With that, here are some more pictures of my baby…
The top – let’s call these “interpretations” of calla lilies, made out of gum paste:

In a different light you can REEEALLY see all the bumps:

And from this angle, you can see the slant J:

But here she is again:

And here she is in action:

Has anyone else attempted their own cake?