I'd like to say that I'm free to bake as much as I want because the renovations are all finished, but alas, that is not the case. I've merely made time to bake the important things, like Cake Pops for my best friend's bridal shower (a post on that later) or a wedding cake for a friend of a friend or, you know, emergency myuteruswantschocolate muffins.
Ms. Adventures in Baking proudly presents to you...emergency myuteruswantschocolate muffins! Just kidding. It's MY THIRD WEDDING CAKE!
My friend-and-fellow-Pavlov's Dog Victoria referred her friend to me when she needed a wedding cake, and of course I jumped at the opportunity to do it, excited to flex my (sadly underused) baking muscles. The bride-to-be (henceforth known as B2B, live long and prosper) was super-dee-duper easygoing, but she had some specific requests...
1. Use Betty Crocker's Rainbow Bit cake mix.
2. Top "messy buttercream" with Green and Black's Organic White Chocolate shavings.
...that presented me with some challenges (or, as I like to call them, learning opportunities!).
In which our Pastry Princess discusses box mixes, but this time doesn't rant.
Now, you all know that I'm pretty firm in my stance on making things from scratch, but even I've had to be flexible* on this issue for the sake of my sanity. Case in point: being asked the night before an event to make 3 dozen cupcakes = Do it the easy way or say no. AS IF I'll say no. Pfft.
So when B2B told me she wanted a box mix, I did feel out whether she'd let me bake it from scratch. At the end of the day, however, she was familiar with the BCRB mix, liked the flavour, and hey--she's the bride to be. AS IF I'll say no. Pfft!
In which our Pastry Princess says fon-don't with Buttercream.
Our B2B did not want fondant on her cake, which I was more than happy to oblige. You know, because reasons.
Natalie Slater understands why I make my own fondant. Now with 23% more ass sweat!
If despair had a flavour, it would taste like commercially-produced fondant. This is not to say that I'm going all "Duff Goldman" on it; fondant makes for really pretty, and flawlessly smooth cakes. Plus, homemade fondant can taste really yummy. It's just that--buy it or make it--fondant adds, like, a metric buttload of work. And sometimes, just sometimes, more work sucks [insert adult temper tantrum].
B2B not only didn't want fondant, but she wanted "messy buttercream". Wait, what? You mean, you're a bride who doesn't want a perfectly smooth-looking cake? You don't want fondant and you don't want me to spend an hour painstakingly applying buttercream and running my spatula over and over it again and again to make it as perfectly bump-free as possible? How attached are you to your groom and would you marry me instead?
Dear diary: I've hit the easy wedding cake JACKPOT.
In which our Pastry Princess learns how to beef-up a box mix, but using chicken instead of beef.
Haha, I totally grossed you out just now.
If you've ever made cake from a box mix
So, how do you use a box mix to make a wedding cake that will be dense enough to support the weight of tiers and buttercream? TO THE GOOGLES!
Turns out all you do is add an extra egg, reduce the amount of oil and milk, and add a package of appropriately-flavoured Jell-O pudding mix. Sounds easy-peasy, right?
In which our Pastry Princess learns baking large quantities of box mix is NOT "easy-peasy" and swears an awful lot.
Ugh. I have never thrown out so much cake in my LIFE.
8" Cake # 1: The 8" cake I baked for taste-testing turned out fantastically; 1 box of mix, 1 box of Jell-O, 4 eggs, 1/3 cup oil, 1/2 cup whole milk. Mixy-mixy and voila...thick, goopy cake batter that perfectly fills the pan to its required 2/3 fullness. It baked up within a reasonable amount of time, and after I cooled it fully I cut into it (and luckily B2B had dropped by to give me the cake topper stuff, so she got to taste and she approved). Great!
12" Cake # 1: Then I mixed up two box mixes for the 12" cake, and that only filled the pan juuuuusssssssst halfway. Hrm. Logic dictates that I mix up another box and add it to the pan so that the pan is 2/3 full. So I did that. It took forever to bake, but in the end my cake tester came out clean and the cake was a nice golden colour so I cooled it in the pan for 10 minutes then turned it out onto a rack to fully cool. Great!
8" Cake #2: Mixy-mixy, bakey-bakey, and hooray for perfect cake. Great!
12" Cake #2: This is when my life got flipped turned upside-down. I'd like to take a minute--just sit right there--I'll tell you how I became the girl who had to throw away 8 fucking boxes of cake mix and pudding due to a series of cake-tastrophes.
The second 12" cake baked golden and tested clean so I pulled it out to cool in the pan for 10 minutes. I accidentally slammed it down, and BAM! the cake fell. This is a real pisser, but it's not the end of the world; it just means these layers aren't going to be as thick. Then I racked it to cool. When I leveled it I discovered the cake was really really under-baked. It had tested clean, so what the fudge?
And there it was, staring me in the face. My heating core. Sitting on the table. Perfectly clean, because I'd forgotten to put said heating core (which helps to evenly cook the middle of cakes larger than 10"). HOT FUDGE SUNDAES, that was dumb! Into the food waste bin with you, giant pile of gooey cake.
8" Cake #3: Mixy-mixy, set the timer for 38 minutes, and while I waited for it to bake I made white chocolate curls with an episode of 30 Rock playing in the background. After it was over I peeked at the timer, which still read 0:38:00. What the heck? I realized I'd hit the MOTHER EFFING PAUSE button instead of the start button, and the cake had been baking for ???? Sonofa...
Panicking, I start calculating: I'd watched one episode 30 Rock, so that's 30 minutes...so it should be almost done, right? Give it 8 more minutes and that should be good. The cake looks golden, so I take it out and cool it. Crisis averted, yeah? I unmold what appears to be a perfectly baked 8" cake, when suddenly the whole thing collapses into a giant pile of goo all over the place. This thing was epically underbaked. ARE YOU FRIGGIN' KIDDING ME?! Then it hits me: 30 Rock is a 30 minute show when it airs on television, but it's only 22 minutes long when you download it, AND I'd already started that show before I put the cake in the oven. AND in my panic, I forgot to test it.
I fight back tears of utter failure.
12" Cake #1: Nope, this is not a typo, because by now Cake #1 (remember Cake #1? How it was such a dream to make? How it looked so beautiful and tested so perfectly clean?) has cooled enough for me to level it. I gently trim off the top crust, and pull back this skin to discover...this cake is under-baked too. ARGLE BARGLE! Luckily for me it's only a tad under-baked, so level the cake, scrape out the goo and patch it up with bits from the first 8" test cake, and no one will be any the wiser, heh heh. Until now, when they read this blog. Aw crap.
12" Cake #3: This time, after two severely under-baked horrorshows (*sob*) and one kind-of under-baked near-fiasco, I'm not going to take any chances. I mix up 3 mixes, carefully insert the heating core, make double-sure the timer is set correctly, remember that the last 12" cake baked for 55 minutes and was under-baked, so I set the timer for 1 hour and 5 minutes. I'm a genius!
Well, when the timer went off and I opened that door, I'd discovered that a devious chocolate cake had somehow broke into my house, crept into my oven without me noticing, murdered my vanilla cake and disposed of its body, then assumed its identity. At least, that was the only explanation for why there was a DARK BROWN monstrosity staring out at me. That, or the extra 10 minutes I set on the timer were enough to thoroughly over-bake this cake. It was right around this time that the migraine set in.
8" Cake #4: Mixy-mixy, bakey-bakey, and hooray for another fabulously perfect 8" cake. All I needed was two, so now they were ready to be leveled and iced. My luck had finally changed.
12" Cake #4: I'm *this* close to demanding that Bulk Barn refund my money for this 12" pan because it's clearly defective, but I realize that the 12" cake is half done, and if I could just bake 2 more layers I will be completely finished with the baking stage. So this time I mix only two boxes of mix because I don't need as much cake, and lo! Behold! The cake bakes perfectly. Rises perfectly. Fills up the whole pan perfectly. I should have been using only 2 mixes this whole time, because apparently 3 mixes had made the pan too full and the batter too heavy to bake properly. Lessons learned for next time, I guess. Arg!
So there you have it. 8 cakes made in total, most of which were thrown out (though I did manage to salvage some of parts of the underbaked cakes that were fine to use for Cake Pops later).
The rest of the process went rather swimmingly. The Italian Meringue Buttercream came out beautifully, the cake was easy to assemble, and the white chocolate shavings were messy but easy. Transporting the cake to the venue was a fresh slice of hell, but in the end it turned out lovely and the bride and groom were happy. I got compliments, I handed out business cards, and after the reception my friends Chris and Victoria (who also were in attendance) invited me back to their place for copious amounts of beer, which were very much appreciated, and needed.
I'll let the slideshow fill in the blanks:
*I'll use box mix if I HAVE to, but I refuse to use mixes that have icky trans-fats. On this I will not bend.
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