My wedding cake

I have now been married a month to a wonderful man.  So wonderful, in fact, that he agreed to help me make the wedding cake.

As a shower gift, we received a Willowtree ornament that featured a man, woman, and baby.  Because it was a great representation of our family, we really wanted to include this in the cake.  It was quite heavy to sit on top of four tiers, and we wanted to make the piece more of a scene than a concept.  So we turned the cake into a gazebo with three flavors (and ended up with three tiers.)

For the bottom tier, my husband wanted to have an earthy feeling.  He (we) wanted the rocks to have the shininess of a river rock, and decided that chocolate was the best way to achieve this.  We started with white chocolate and mixed in a little black gel food coloring for the grey stones, and  a  about one part milk chocolate to 16 parts white chocolate for the brown stones.  When we began, the new chocolate colors didn’t  set very well, and we feared that it was because of the food coloring/mix of chocolates.  It could very well have been, but we cured it by working quickly, and setting the chocolate back the fridge when it started getting too soft.

The roses were very time consuming (as they always are) and were made the “Wilton Way“  with red gum paste.   I decided to go with closed roses for the roof as closed roses are just a little more romantic.  The lattice on the bottom has a variety of stages of roses.  Unfortunately, the lattice doesn’t show up well in the photos (less learned: use a different color buttercream when wanting to bring out a fondant detail.)

Finally, I covered the bottom cake plate with the remaining gum paste.

I’m really pleased with it.  It was time consuming (30 hours start to finish), but I feel that it was worth it.