Going pro!!

I might need a nap! I finally finished my anniversary wedding cake after four days of work. Hurrah!

I started out making the raspberry filling Wednesday night. That's easy.... just some frozen raspberries, lemon juice, cornstarch, sugar and heat. I leave the seeds in, and only recently started wondering if that's weird. Is it? Do people hate seeds? I like them, it feels more real, but I can see how the crunch would be distracting in an otherwise smooth cake. Whatever, it's not like they're plum seeds...

Okay, so on day two I made the custard and the lemon curd. I've only made custard once or twice many moons ago, so I don't have a recipe I really like. I'm going to be frank and tell you I went with easy on this one. I found a lot of custard recipes with a lot of steps, and almost went for a custard buttercream which looked totally monchable, but it had like, 10 steps, so I nixed it. I found a recipe on some random site that had a lot of positive reviews, and went with that. Pretty much you just throw a bunch of stuff in a pot, cook it, and add butter and vanilla at the end. It came out just fine, nothing fantastic.. but then again, the custard was never meant to stand alone, so it was fine. I used a Martha recipe for the lemon curd, and fresh meyer lemons from my tree outside. Lemon curd makes me nervous because it looks a little like scrambled eggs if you let the zest trick your eyes. I finished the curd and grew weary; there wasn't much of it. Fortunable I was using it in the 6" tier so I just ignored myself and moved on with life.

Last night I made the cakes. Now, I'm kind of a spaz when it comes to using different sized pans with cake recipes that are tailored for your typical two 9" rounds. I was working with 8"/6", and wasn't quite sure how to handle it. Eventually I just decided to make two batches of cake and bake one 8" and one 6" together at a time. It worked out OK except I had a lot of batter, which was to be expected. I had to bake longer as well, which made me a little nervous in the service as I'm used to just watching the clock for the last few minutes.. this time around I was checking every 2 minutes after the first 20. But no burnage!

Then it was a waiting game for the cakes to cool. This is also the perfect time to make buttercream, do the dishes, tell your cat she is annoying and squirt her with vinegar water so she gets off the counter, read your new "heavenly cakes" book, finish watching the last few episodes of season 1 "United States of Tara.." the possibilities are endless. Honestly.. it's anything to get my mind off of one thing.. the next step.. torting. Torting is torture. It also makes me think of "tortuga," which is kind of beside the point. Simply put, I suck at torting. I have this special tool that's like a cheese cutter (no, not Brad), but it's for cakes. It only works sometimes, and it becomes useless when you can't measure or use a steady hand. So I thought I'd try Rose Beranbaum's (whatever her name is) technique of putting the cake on my turntable thing and hold a knife steady as I spin the cake around. This rendered worse results than the cheese cutter. Waaahh! But I was able to cut each layer into two semi-even layers so I could begin filling.. which happens to be one of my favorite steps!

Filling a cake is like wrapping a bunch of christmas presents, and it's more fun with more layers. For the 8" I filled with the custard and raspberry. I really wasn't sure how to do this initially. Do I alternate between each layer or make a sangwich..?? So I looked up custard raspberry cakes online and oddly enough came across a cake I've had before! The princess cake from Copenhagen Bakery in Burlingame. I like the princess cake, but it's not my fave because it's pretty plain. Other people love it, but I think it has to do with the lovely marzipan they put on it. Which got me worried... I have no marzipan! But I stole their idea of custard first, raspberry on top, and did that for each layer. On the 6" I just stuck with lemon curd in each layer, which was sadly spread thin because of the small amount. I really should have made more. Lesson learned! I went to bed after putting a crumb coat on each tier, and dreamed of decorations allll night long.

First thing I did this morning was make more buttercream and added a final coat to each cake. Then I sucked it up and just started the process of decorating. I have a few tools from the arsenal Brad gifted me this past christmas, which really helped me get a design together and measure it out before putting anything on the cake. I had a few mess ups, but since I was using white on white buttercream, they were easy fixes. At one point I had a hissy fit about my buttcream not smoothing, and then I caught Brad making himself late for work watching this hilarious frosting tutorial, trying to help me out. It was a nice distraction... I just like the way she says "buuuudacream." Please note, I figured out why it looks so easy in her video.. Edna LOVES trans fat. It made me feel better knowing I was using real butter and not shortening.. who cares if it's not smooze or extra extra white.

So I finished up the cake and was pretty happy with it! Totally by no means perfect, but it turned out really well and I'm super stoked about having gotten this experience under my ever expanding belt.

My "customers" planned to pick up the cake at my house... but they were about 30 minutes late. The poor children were locked in my room to avoid a calamity and spent a little more time in lockdown than any of us expected! I started this blog as I waited, so that helped calm my nerves. When they arrived I invited them in and they saw my kitchen, which was clean of course, but I was paranoid that they'd find a crumb and refuse the cake. Thankfully, that didn't happen. The husband was really nice and asked how I started baking, and then the wife asked me how much I charge. I don't know why but I find this conversation incredibly awkward! I reminded her that I've never once charged for a cake so she asked for the cost of ingredients. I said about $20, which totally was true because I used not-on-sale Challenge butter which adds up!! She write out the check and pushed it toward me on the counter, but I was purposely distracted putting the cake in the box so I didn't look at it. I thanked them and congratulated them, wished them a fun evening, and they were on their way. I came back into the kitchen and saw a check for $100 on my counter..... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm still in a bit of shock. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With that, please enjoy a couple of photos, because I don't know what else to say but... !!!!!!!!!!!!!