For Jessica

*sigh* Love and romance are in the air and my newsfeed is bursting with gorgeous bouquets, detailed gowns, and shimmering linens. Its wedding season for sure! I adore weddings. If I could get married every weekend (to my same handsome groom of these past 12 years) I would! Its just such an enchanting event and I cannot get enough of them. My love of weddings is one of the reason I decorate cakes. If I can’t get married every weekend, then at least I get to participate in the wedding by designing THE wedding cake for these lovely couples. I love hearing all the plans and details that the bride and groom have chosen and then taking the different design elements of her dress, the invitations, the venue and trying to create something uniquely them.

Jessica contacted me around the time I had completed my Gold Sequins Cake for a collaboration with Sarah’s Stands (you can read the post by Sarah here) in which I used Erin Gardner of Wild Orchid Baking Co‘s gold confetti techniques from her new Craftsy class. Jessica had loved the gold sequined tiers and asked if I could create a cake for her incorporating those sequins.


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I was thrilled at the opportunity and ultimately came up with this design for Jessica’s big day. Using a pattern like the one from her invitations, I added the cascading metallic shattered chevrons to the tiers surrounding the shorter sequin covered tier. My hope was that they would appear to be almost bursting out of the gold sequin covered tier. I then used a diagonal line to separate the top tier into two portions; one left white and one covered with the gold sequins that I knew Jessica loved.

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Jessica had sent over some photos of the flower arrangements that she had chosen which included pink and peach roses. I had been playing with making gum paste roses but had never been happy with their final look. I knew I had to pull off some seriously gorgeous flowers for this cake so I turned to my expert and friend, Kara Andretta of Kara’s Couture Cakes. Thankfully, Kara had created an amazing tutorial for making these more natural looking roses. I spent hours pouring over her Youtube tutorial (found here) and even more time harassing her via FB messages until I was content with the look of my roses. I used a variety of filler flowers including buds, carnations (learned those from the fabulous Miso Bakes in her post on The Cake Blog, and those cute little finger flowers that I learned from Jacqueline Butler of Petalsweet Cakes.


FondantFlingerJessica5I was nothing short of ecstatic to see the outcome of this cake. It came out exactly as I had pictured in my mind and the bride loved it! It was delivered to the lovely Palmettos on the Bayou in Slidell, Louisiana and looked gorgeous with the backdrop of oaks and palmettos scattered along the bayou. Oh the charm of the bayou with the moss covered trees dripping into the bayou waters….so scenic…makes me wish I could get married again….

 

Cascading Puzzle Pieces Cake

 

This was the first wedding cake that I worked on in which I had no contact with the bride. A bridesmaid took care of all the arrangements. I wish I had gotten the opportunity to meet this bride. Maybe then I’d have an awesome story to share about the meaning behind a wedding cake devoted to puzzle pieces.

 

 

 

But since I don’t, I’ll just assume that the Bride and Groom finally found each other and the fit was perfect.

 

 

The design of this cake had to be simple. The tiers were naked swiss meringue buttercream with the basic flavors of chocolate, vanilla and marble.

 

Originally, the bridesmaid had requested a simple border of joined puzzle pieces lining the bottom of each tier. However, this idea popped into my head and I sketched it out for her so I could present the idea to her. She loved it and gave the bride her opinion on changing the design to something more dramatic. Thankfully, the bride agreed since once I have an idea in my head, its really all I can think about!

 

 

We were keeping to a tight budget so I kept all the decorations simple. I purchased a mini puzzle cutter from Copper Gifts and cut out puzzle pieces from gumpaste. I cut some of them in half, some diagonally and kept some whole to add some variation to the design. The pieces that were cut in half worked perfectly for those pieces that seem to be coming out of the cake. I painted them all with silver luster dust diluted with vodka, let them dry and arranged them on the buttercream covered, stacked tiers.

I added some random silver dragees to add another element to the cake. The puzzle pieces dried a bit “flat” color-wise and the dragees had a sheen similar to the initials. I think that their addition made the cake more cohesive.

The couple had provided the initials to be used so I added these just as the bridesmaid arrived to pick up the cake. They were pretty heavy and I was worried about having them so close to the edge of this tier but thankfully, they stayed put!