Brother's Wedding Cake-- Should I make it????
I need some advice. My brother is getting married in Santa Fe, N.M. in June, and I am thinking of offering to make his wedding cake. I'm wondering if any of you have made wedding cakes before and if you can give me an idea of what I might be getting into if I volunteer to do this.
Stuff you should know:
-I'll be coming in from NYC but I will be in Santa Fe for about a week before the wedding.
-My mom lives there, and has a pretty good kitchen, with 2 ovens.
-I'll have finished culinary school at the Institute of Culinary Education, during which one of my modules was in baking, so I sort of know what I'm doing.
-My boyfriend will also be coming into town and I am a little worried that I'll be tied up with cake stuff and wont' be able to show him around.
Anyway, if anyone has any advice, anecdotes, book or equipment reccomendations, I'd appreciate it! I need to decide soon... and if I don't do the cake, I might be able to do the groom's cake or the cake for the rehearsal dinner.
Thanks in advance for your feedback!
JessicaSophia
Feb 06, 2003 11:42AM
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Go for it! But remember the differences in baking reactions caused by the differences in altitude between Santa Fe and New York. Since you will be there for a week, perhaps baking two cakes (one for experience) would be in order. On the other hand, if you have a cake baked locally, you will be able to spend your time with your family doing fun things in Santa Fe.
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of course you should, unless you will suffer from too much performance anxiety - it would be a lovely contribution to the wedding.
My mother baked my wedding cake (using the rich silver cake recipe in the Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook); actually she made it well ahead and froze the layers until needed. On the day, it was assembled and iced with buttercream and my sister and uncle (both non-professionals) decorated it. Made with love, it was the best cake I could have had - it could have been more sophisticated, but it couldnt have been more appreciated and delicious.
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I made one only once (I still have all the pans). As Jen says, it wasn't perfect, but the bride and groom were pleased.
Perhaps you could make the layers in NY, freeze them, and then air express them to NM as you are leaving. That would reduce the amount of 0n-site work.
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Having worked as an event planner, I'd advise you not to do it. People are really weird when it comes to their weddings. Somehow they get it into their heads that this one event is going to be the pinnacle of all events in their life, one perfect moment when it is imperative that everything be right, from the precise way the napkins are folded to the exact set list of music. And people who are normally sensible and sane people unexpectedly go wacky when the bows on the chairs are tied "wrong". Unless you know for sure that a) you can make the cake perfectly, exactly how the bride & groom envision it and b) if a) does not happen, the bride and groom won't mind if it's a bit lopsided or the icing runs, then don't do it. And one more note- making the cake is only half the battle. Getting it to the reception hall looking like it did when it left your kitchen is a nerve-wracking experience.
Offer instead to make a grooms cake or a rehearsal cake, and that way you'll also feel like you can show your boyfriend around town without having the cake looming over your head.
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Agreed. I cried hysterically on the morning of my wedding because there was too much greenery in my bouquets. Then I tried (fortunately I was unsuccessful) to make my Mother call the florist and berate her.
And I'm usually relatively normal.
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I, too, went bezerk and told a friend that her eyeliner was on wrong and that it would ruin the wedding. Aside from the fact that there was nothing at all wrong with her eyeliner, that was a ridiculously stupid, mean, and unnecessary comment. I hope that I have since apologized enough. But, it would have been so much worse if someone had gone to all of the trouble to personally make my wedding cake..... Basically, I would recommend against it, but if you were to do it, you better have VERY thick skin becuase weddings can turn otherwise nice people into complete FREAKS.
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Yup, go for it. Sounds like you have the necessary technical training. Pick up Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible. It has everything you'll need to know. I was asked to do a friend's wedding cake; having never taken on a project that size, I was understandably skeptical. Rose got me through it with minimal freaking out, and I went on to make a side business of making wedding cakes.
A week is plenty of time to pull it off. You can start baking the layers even 4 or 5 days ahead. If you do your baking in the evenings, you'll have your days free to hang with your fella. Or vice versa. Assuming the wedding is on Saturday: have all your layers baked before Friday, then set aside the whole day on Friday to make your fillings/frostings and construct and decorate the cake. Be sure your Mom has enough fridge space for the cake.
You WILL need a large capacity stand mixer. The smallest KitchenAid is barely up to the task; it will do in a pinch, but don't try it with anything smaller.
You can do it, girl. Unless your brother plans on inviting 300 or 400 guests -- then I'd reconsider. Actually, even in that case, you can make a cake for 150 - 200 for display purposes, then make large frosted single tiers for serving.
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Last september I made a 150 person wedding cake for my childhood best friend and drove it 3 hours to the wedding over bumpy dirt roads without problem AND I attended the rehearsal dinner the day before AND I was an usher in the wedding. It was a huge success. Everyone wept when they saw it and I'll hopefuly have a photo online soon. As for me, I've baked a lot in the past but never a wedding cake. In fact, I'd never even made an egg-based buttercream before this one, but it came out fantastic (after a week of practice!).
The most important points are:
1. make a small practice version to make sure it tastes good and you buttercream doesn't curdle.
2. Explain to your mom that for the days preceeding the wedding, the kitchen is YOURS. You have the right to expell any and all visitors at any moment.
3. Keep enough ingredients on hand that you can make another batch in an emergency. Make extra frosting just in case. When you travel to the wedding site, bring some frosting/royal icing in tupperware, along with a metal spatula and pastry bag to do any emergency stitching.
Through out the week process (three days of nonstop work and a few hours the other days) I kept Rose Levy Birnebaum's The Cake Bible on hand for inspiration and for a good formula to find recipe quantities for any size cake. (NB she estimtes small--by my standards--pieces of cake per person, especially for a delish cake like you'll make).
But first, the cake: it was 3-layer deal, chocolate butter cake, 12", 9", 6", each consisting of two 1.5" layers. Frosting was a raspberry mousseline buttercream (egg yolk buttercream mixed with creme anglaise) and over that I rolled white fondant. Decoration was fresh flowers all over (bells of ireland are especially nice, in a vertical sense) and a little royal icing piping.
Sunday: My first step was to bake all the cakes, freeze them, then level the tops and edges. I also made a few 9" practice cakes for tasting purposes.
Monday: I made an egg-yolk buttercream to see if I could do it. Left some out overnight to see what would happen to it, put some in fridge to see what would happn to that.
Tuesday: I mae three buttercreams, one chocolate egg-yolk, one chocolate egg-white, and one raspberry mousseline. Served them all on a test cake to see which people liked best.
Wednesday: Tried making rolled fondant (recipe from The Cake Bible). Took one layer 9" cake and frosted it with leftover raspberry mousseline and rolled some fondant over it. Ugly as hell. Did a taste test. People seemed to like it but said the fondant was took thick and not very tasty.
At this point, my mom (whose kitchen I was using) began to get annoyed. "Adam, we're having company tomorrow, are you ever going to be out of the kitchen?" I had to send everyone off to a neighborhood restaurant. Much screaming and yelling.
Thursday: went to Wedding Cake supply store in Camridge, MA. Bought cake base (formica?), thick pretty gold foil to cover base, wooden dowels and cardboard rounds for support. Went home. Made huge batch of raspberry mousseline buttercream.
Went to florist and bought ten times more flowers then would prove necessary. said it was for a wedding cake. got 10% discount.
Friday: Woke up early. Kicked everyone out of kitchen. Locked doors. Put on Mozart. Made huge quantity of white rolled fontant. Frosted and sandwiched the individual layers. Refrigerated just a little. rolled out fondant (as per Cake Bible). do not roll too thin even though it doens't taste so good or it will show all your imperfections! Covered each laye with fondant. Put back in fridge.
prepared formica base. Covered with foil. Coverd each side with some waxed paper to protect foil. Placed first layer on base. Inserted dowels. uttered a short prayer. Placed second layer using a Martha Steward triple back flip technique. Placed third layer. wept. Examined cake to make sure al was level. Asked family for second opinion. cursed loudly and kicked family out of kitchen. Put cake in fridge. locked frige door. Poured stiff drink. Took shower, went to rehearsal dinner.
Saturday: Woke early. make royal icing. Dad came down for breakfast. Shrieked at dad. Made his breakfast for him and served it outside the kitchen. Cut flower and designed beautfiul pattern that cleverly covered all cake imperfections. make knife slits in fondant, stuck in flowers with a bit of royal icing glue. Finished with simple scallop borders piped with pastry bag. Parents took pictures, wept. Put cake in tall box (i.e., regular box with the flaps lifted up and taped together to make a taller box.) Coverd with wax paper. put on seat next to me wedged in tight with foam and wooden planks. Turned air conditioning on high. Drove to Rhode Island. Hands went numb. Removed cake to stand. Enjoyed wedding. Flowers did not wilt. Ate cake.
Please feel free to email me if you have any more specific questions or come upon troubles during the process.
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Interesting -- I always listen to Mozart when I bake. Must be some kind of Viennese/pastry/Mozart synchronicity.
Or maybe we both just like Mozart.
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I can't wait to see the photo!
Man, this must have been a GOOD friend.
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Thanks so much for this story. It made me laugh out loud... and also impressed me. I have to say, it made me think I probably won't make the cake at my own wedding! :-)
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Adam -- I loved your post. I've never done a cake quite that big or elaborate, but I can tell you that your interpersonal "moments" were right on. You were doing this on your own, and though I'm sure you're a very nice person, the "shrieking" moments are absolutely dead-on when it comes to family interactions.
I had a young niece (18) assisting me, and she was very obedient, a good baker, and willing to slave 12 hours a day with me in the kitchen. Even with my fine assistant, I had similar problems. One time, while we were leveling the layers, my dad and brother came in and asked for a "little counterspace" so they could do some glueing for a model airplane part that had come loose. Both of us, normally models of happiness and family harmony, shot daggers with our eyes, and started threatening them with the knives we were holding. Later on, my non-baker sister wanted to come in and 'just make some toast and an egg, that won't bother you" to eat for lunch. After that I blocked the door and had my niece tell everyone that they had to eat out or at the neighbors, and if they wanted anything from the kitchen they had to ask my niece, who would come back to me with the request, which I would approve or deny.
When we mysteriously found we were running short of butter before we started our first batch of hazelnut filling, my niece was putting her coat to go to the store to get more Plugra, when my normally sane mother said outside the blocked door "Oh I lent a couple of pounds of butter to Mrs. Sandhoffer down the road, since she is making the rehearsal dinner cake". I think I actually growled at my cowering mother, and she quickly moved away from the door. My niece had to drive across town to buy the appropriate kind of butter. Delays and stress, we were working till almost midnight that night.
This doesn't include the swearing, which in my incredibly stoic and notoriously feeling-hiding Scandinavian family is considered close to using firearms in level of anger. Or the time I actually dropped a full pastry bag and stepped on it and then fell in it, (more swearing) or praline recipe which we had to do three times before it came out right. On two occasions over the 4-day process, my assistant and I actually wept tears of rage and frustration. Many more times, though we wept tears of happiness and success, so in the end it was worth it. And I have to say we did preen our feathers a bit at the reception, since the cake was fussed over endlessly by guests, family, and even the Bridezilla-type bride. As an added surprise bonus, both of us found our fancy dresses a tiny bit better-fitting, since we'd barely eaten for those four days of baking, mixing, piping, spreading, assembling, and stressing out.
Both wedding cakes I made were well-received, but I will be very cautious about EVER agreeing to doing this again.
Thanks for your funny post!
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Sorry, I gotta second Chris VR's recommendation--don't do it. I've also worked in event planning (although, mercifully, never a wedding other than my own!), and it's just an incredibly stressful time.
There will already be SO much to do that week helping your brother and sister-in-law-to-be get everything together. Plus, your mother's home will likely be a center of activity for your relatives (meaning it will be hard for you to get the time you need in kitchen).
And, I agree with Chris VR, people have UNREAL expectations about their wedding (more so than any other event they plan). I worked as catering staff at a wedding where the bride actually came in to the kitchen during the dinner and accused the staff of purposefully trying to ruin her reception.
Support your brother by making a cake for rehearsal dinner or groom's cake.
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I third this advice. Trying to wear the double hats of family member/guest and supplier at a wedding is an invitation to decline, not accept, unless this were an extraordinarily informal celebration where everyone was bringing something, as it were. Weddings are notorious for having things go wrong, and having dual roles is not a great thing as a family member who might be expected to pitch in to fix things. Be a baker or a guest, but don't try to be both for the same event!
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Remember, no good deed goes unpunished. :)
Seriously, my thinking is that it might be safer to try it if you were the sister of the bride. But as sister of the groom, you probably don't know her as well as your brother, don't know exactly what she has in mind, don't know how she will react if everything isn't the way she envisioned. I think that the people suggesting you bake for the rehearsal and a groom's cake may be giving you a good compromise. Knowing your baking ability, your family may expect you to do something with it to participate. But typically, the wedding is the bride's domain, so be sure to check in with her about her preference.
Weddings are all too often the beginning of bad relations between families. Stick to a groom's cake (or reception) unless you know your future sister-in-law well, have her complete agreement(nay, insistance) that you make the cake and approval of what you are making, how it will look and taste, how she will react if it somehow differs from her vision or has some slight flaw. It's possble that your kind gesture might be construed as interferring, etc.; tread lightly.
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I suspect you already know the answer to this question and the answer is NO! Chris VR is dead on, many outwardly normal families become totally irrational as the wedding approaches, and you have no way of knowing in advance which ones will. I watched my wife (dated/lived together nearly 3 years) morph into something out of the Exorcist right before our wedding. 23 years later, I've yet to see her act 1/100th as weird as she did that weekend. Mother of the bride can be 10 times more dangerous than that. You can do everything perfectly and they could still freak out because they are not rational beings at this point in time. It might look like a wedding cake, but it could end up being a lightning rod, and for reasons that you could never imagine. Leave it to the paid (non-family) staff and kick back and enjoy the time with your family and SO.
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On the other hand, my bosses' wife prided herself on her baking skills and volunteered to make the cake of my dreams for my wedding which happened at that time to be a white chocolate and raspberry cake out of Martha Stewart's big blue Weddings book. She said she had fun doing it and it was so delicious that we ate the layer we had frozen for our anniversary as soon as we got home from the honeymoon! A hundred times better than some bakery cake and so much more meaningful. I think the transportation part and worrying about frosting meltage were the most stressful parts for her...
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Maybe. I'm not really going to cover the skill-related aspects of making a wedding cake; that's up to you with some advice from chowhounds who have done this before. I'm just going to bring up some of the relationship-type issues. I am currently engaged and stuck in wedding planning hell, so my views reflect that. My fiance's sister is also engaged, and she's faced some even weirder politics than me.
How well do you know the bride-to-be? Would she feel comfortable telling you the truth? Would you feel offended or hurt if she refused your offer or criticized your designs? I know that I have a much harder time telling my future-in-laws the truth than my own family.
What is the bride's style? Does she tend toward simple or elaborate? Is she planning this wedding down to the last flower petal or just sort of going with the flow? Would she feel limited by your skills?
How busy is your Mom's house going to be the week before the wedding? Is she going to be hosting other family members? Are there going to be kids arounds? Even if your mom says the kitchen is 100% yours, enforcing that is another matter.
Would having your help create even more stress for the bride? Think about this one carefully. I have supported many a girlfriend through wedding planning in the last couple of years (we're in our mid-20s) and some of the most frustrating stories are due to family and friends helping out. With a wedding vendor that you just hire, both parties sign a contract and you pay them to do their job. Expectations are (more-or-less) spelled out and if they don't follow through they don't get paid. Other the other hand, with a family member they are doing you a "favor" so you can't disagree or complain. You also can't hold them to any kind of deliverables. This is absolutely the most frustrating part of wedding planning: people not doing what they said they would do in a timely manner. If they are a vendor, you just point to your contract or find a new one . If they are family you get scolded for being ungrateful and unappreciative of other people's busy schedules. That is the reason I am pretty much looking for any excuse to not accept "help" from my relatives and just hiring all my wedding vendors.
So in summary, I would only advise this if you have a very open relationship with the bride and she is a very, very laid back person WITH RESPECT TO WEDDING PLANNING. Otherwise, stay far away.
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Hum...what chance does his wife have of turning into Bridezilla? If you think there is a chance, flee.
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The scary thing is how often Bridezilla Syndrome (and its companion ailment, often worse, Momzilla Syndrome) suddenly erupts in the mildest and meekest of people....
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And there have been instances of the stress of planning a wedding has led to calling off the wedding.
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It's not only brides and mothers of brides that lose their sanity when weddings come up.
When my (now) ex-brother in law decided to get married, my (now) ex-husband, as 'our' wedding present, without consulting me, generously offered to have me cater the wedding (for 60) at my own expense. (He was not intending to contribute $ toward the project.)
It wasn't a consideration that I had just gone back to work (50 hour weeks) with a new baby, and had never catered anything in my life. Nor that we had earned virtually no income the previous 5 months aside from my disability checks.
Everyone was really mad at me, and tried to confront me repeatedly on this for being so unreasonable as to "withdraw" his offer.
(You know how this story ends.)
Note I say "ex-husband" here...
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Ironmom, I've seen enough of your "Note I say "ex-husband" here..." posts to start to wonder...given that you wed him during your hippie phase, were you of, um, a chemically-altered state of mind when you agreed to marry him? Or maybe he was one of those people who exhibit a completely different personality after the honeymoon is over. It does happen (did happen w/my FIL's ex-second wife - note I say "ex-second wife"...)
Sorry for the digression; your wedding cake sounds good. An aunt of mine had a giant peach cobbler for a wedding cake during her hippie phase. It was delicious.
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Love is, itself, an altered state.
But, one needn't have been either hippie or in an altered state to have married men that expect women to shoulder far more than anyone should or who volunteer them to do things for their in-laws, step-children, etc. without consultation.
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They say that men marry women expecting them to remain the same, while women marry men and expect them to change, but the opposite invariably happens during a marriage.
For me, the reverse was true. I was willing to live with him as he was, but he couldn't put up with the fact that I remained the same.
Childhood rules! Never grow up.
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I agree---Bridezilla syndrome is real, and you can't predict how it will affect the bride or your relationship with her.
I would advise you not to make the cake. It will be too difficult to be a baker and a guest at the wedding. And the Bridezilla factor is too much of wild card. At my wedding (and I considered myself a fairly relaxed bride) I had a tiny bout of it when I asked my sister (who was also a bridesmaid) to decorate the gazebo with faux ivy that morning. I ended up wishing I had just hired someone to do it, instead of imposing on her. We ended up having a great time anyway.
However, I did lose a 15-year friendship with my college roommate the day of her wedding because of her horrendous Bridezilla transformation. I was asked to be a bridesmaid. Weather prevented me from making the rehearsal dinner the night before, but I managed to move heaven and earth to arrive at the church several hours ahead of the wedding, ready to change into the bridesmaids dress (which I had sent ahead to her mother's house to keep it from getting ruined or lost in luggage). Only after pressing her mother on the issue did they admit that they took the dress, and had it altered for another girl to stand in my place, without bothering to tell me. To this day, I can't believe that a person I had known for 15 years could behave so monsterously. I still mourn the loss of that friendship :(
If there are any prospective brides reading this post, take my advice. Don't invest your self-worth and sense of social status into that single day. The whole wedding industry is a scam anyway (haven't you noticed from the prices?) The most important thing is that you will be marrying the man you love. The second most important thing (and this is a distant second)is to have good food and plenty of it. (Instead of flowers at each table, I had centerpieces of scrumptions Italian cookies from a local Italian bakery such as amaretti and sesame, beautifully displayed. Edible centerpieces--it was a huge hit!) Everything else--flowers, party favors, music, the color of the bridesmaid's shoes, are trivial and unimportant.
If people spent as much time planning how they're going to live their lives after the wedding as they do the wedding day, I think we'd have a lower divorce rate.
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Edible centerpieces! That's a great idea. I may have to use that one...
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Indeed, when the bride says, "This is/will be the happiest day of my life," unfortunately it may be true.
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You guys are awesome for giving me such candid advice. I am still torn--the people who wrote in saying they'd done it sounded like it was a great experience--but I think I am probably going to opt for the groom's cake or the rehearsal dinner cake. That way I can still get my moment in the sun, without getting attacked by my Bridezilla sister in law, or disappinting my man on his vacation.
I'll let you all know what happens!
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To add my two cents:
It can be done, I have done it. This was before I had any professional baking training or experience. It certainly sounds like you have the necessary skill to do it. And the fact that the cake will be made with love will more than make up for any imperfections. Also it will surely taste better, no Crisco and imitation vanilla flavoring "buttercream"
Aside from the personality/stress/Bridezilla issues other posters have raised here are some logistical things to consider:
1. Santa Fe in June will be hot. Icing can melt and slide off the cake. Piped decorations lose their definition. You will need air conditioning in the kitchen, transporting the cake,and holding it before it is served.
2. Transporting an assembled and decorated cake can be
nerve wracking to say the least. If the cake does have to be transported, see if you can arrange to assemble and decorate it where it will be served. Be aware that many catering halls,etc won't be happy with this idea. Also, consider time. I assume you want to attend the wedding, not be at the reception site putting the cake together.
3. As other posters have mentioned, you will need to take over the kitchen for several days. If other food for the wedding or other related events is also to be prepared there this could create problems. Also, people will want to cook and eat during this time. You don't only need the kitchen, need counter space and lots of space in the refrigerator and freezer.
4. You will need a large (I recommend at least a 10 quart) stand mixer. You will need the cake pans, and be sure to check whether they fit into the oven. Check out what is available in Santa Fe, or plan to bring it with you or order it to be sent to your mother's house. Be sure to check out your mother's kitchen, since she may not have some things you take for granted that will be there since you have them in your kitchen.
5. Read the section on wedding cakes in "The Cake Bible" by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Not just the recipes but also the technical explanations of how to bake a cake that large, and, especially, her story about the cake she made for her brother's wedding.
6. If you do decide to do it,I strongly suggest enlisting someone, friend or family member, as your assistant.
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A few notes on transporting the cake:
I live in Vermont, and I've made wedding cakes for not one but THREE different weddings that involved the raising of a timberframe for a house and then a ceremony underneath the beams, all three up half-mile VERY steep rutted "driveways" several miles out country dirt roads. I constructed the cakes on bases that were at least 3" larger than the cake on all sides and then made sure I had a box big enough to put the whole cake in (think computer monitor, giant microwave oven). As far as I know, Santa Fe is pretty well developed in comparison and you otta have relatively flat paved roads, no? Just make sure you have an air-conditioned vehicle, and that your cake is fortified to a fare-thee-well with dowels, etc. and you'll be just fine. Unless, as otherwhere discussed, your sister-in-law to be has the REMOTEST capacity to turn ugly.
Feel free to e-mail me for more dumb advice.
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A cake made by a family member with real love and real ingredients is something that I would prefer. But many years' observation convinces me that my preferences are seldom the same as most people's.
When my son's wife asked me to do the food for their wedding, I readily agreed. Her family lived about 5 hours away and they wanted to have the wedding at a local arboretum rather than a catering hall, hotel, etc.
But I confess that when the bride's mother swept in with the offer to pay for a catered wedding, I retreated in relief. I would have enjoyed the cooking, etc., but was apprehensive about the interpersonal problems that have plagued every wedding I've seen up close.
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Well, as to groom's cake. We were having the groom and his family as well as all our extended family to dinner a couple of night's before his and our daughter's wedding - Dick had never met the groom's mother - and I decided for the occasion to make a groom's cake for dessert. It was at this time of year nine years ago, with bitter temperatures, and I also had a pretty bad cold. I had to find an appropriate recipe and trekked out to get one, as well as a special pan to make it in.
The evening before the dinner I started making it and finally at about 11 it came out of the oven. I was carrying it over to a cooling rack when...I DROPPED IT!
Not only dropped it, but ruined the pan.
I don't recall what we had for dessert, except that it wasn't groom's cake.
Pat G.
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My own wedding cake, I was going through my hippie phase. I baked 4 flavors of cake, 2 square layers each, and froze them. On the morning of the wedding, I had someone come in to do little stuff. She whipped about a gallon of cream and assembled the cakes into a giant square. Everybody loved it, it was so tasty and they each had at least one favorite flavor to sample.
Doesn't fit in the Perfect Wedding paradigm, though.
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Those were the days, my friend...
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Oh, how sad! You must've been devastated. That's the sort of thing I envision on my brother's big day...
What *is* a groom's cake, anyway? Can it be any kind of cake? Does it need to be a certain shape or size? Is it supposed to have a certain type of decoration?
I was thinking of something with the bride and groom's initials intertwined (JG and CL)...
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I believe the groom's cake is sort of a Southern tradition. At a wedding there are two cakes, one is the traditional wedding cake and then there is the groom's cake, which is usually a smaller cake with fewer "traditional" restrictions.
Typically the groom's cake is not white. Most of the groom's cakes I've seen are chocolate with chocolate frosting as to not compete with the regular, typically white, wedding cake. The groom's cake can reflect the hobbies of the groom i.e. shape of a plane or basketball, etc.
If you are making a groom's cake for the evening prior to the wedding I would make it more casual & fun. In other words, don't try to make a cake to compete with the wedding cake on the wedding day (stay away from a white cake).
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No, I wasn't devastated -- I was too darned mad to be devastated. And since I wasn't planning to serve it at the wedding, but at some pre-wedding festivities, it didn't matter in any real way.
The link below gives a bit of the history of the groom's caks. The one I "made" was fairly traditional: it was a steamed cake of a spicy fruicake type, and was to have been garnished with sprigs of rosemary.
But nowadays I think it is almost any cake you please. It just shouldn't outshine the Bride's cake.
Link: http://cgi.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/...
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Although I successfully made my best friend's wedding cake, my family would not allow me to make my own. I wish some friend or family member had come forward to make the cake of my dreams - maybe the one in Baking With Julia. I was very disappointed with the professional product. The woman made a perfect white chocolate buttercream, but the cake may have been Duncan Hines, and the lemon filling was certainly from a plastic bag from the decorating store. Chowhound that I am, the memory of that filling mars the recollection of an otherwise lovely wedding...
But, as saucyknave said, my preferences seldom correspond with those of others. Many brides would prefer to be in total control of ordering the picture-perfect cake of their dreams.
P.S. - If you decide to do it, make a practice cake. Also, I've had a terrible time with egg-yolk buttecreams and find swiss merengue easier to deal with. There's a great recipe in Baking With Julia.
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GOSH did you get some advice on this!
All you need is mine, which is...
Go for it! Your brother will love you for it.
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But will his wife? :)
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I'm sorry, not to be Bridezilla here but I have to disagree with some of the well-meaning comments.
DO NOT assume that because the cake is made with love (and probably tastes pretty darn good) that will make up for any imperfections. Also do not assume that just because the bride may agree to it, or even says she likes it when she sees the trial run, that she is not crying her eyes out to her poor, defenseless fiance and friends afterwards. Or worse, cursing you.
ONLY undertake this if you know the bride super-duper well and know you can make this to her level of perfection. Even then, be cautious.
(I swear I am a normal person in real life, but wedding planning has made me absolutely crazy. And I know that I am not unusual! That's the scary part.)
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I do it every few years and each time I say never again, but now I've got one coming up in June and am sort of looking forward to it. It is a tremendous lot of work and quite stressful, but it's gratifying when everyone loves it. It's the source of one of my favorite cooking compliments -- while I was setting up in a reception hall, one of the gardeners walked through and stopped. "That's beautiful" he said. "That's so beautiful it looks fake."
There's so much good advice on this thread that I don't have much to add. Yes, make really sure the bride wants you to do it -- I'm trying to feel out that issue right now with my sister-in-law to be who I haven't met. I'm taking the Bridezilla comments on this thread to heart in that respect. Also:
NEVER be the baker and a bridesmaid at the same wedding. Voice of experience, long story.
The transportation issues which other posters have covered well are very important. Plan it very carefully.
Consider shipping your pans, separators, masonite base and other paraphernalia ahead of time.
If you haven't baked a cake as large as your biggest layer, do a trial run with that pan before you go just to work out any bugs in the recipe quantities, etc.
Good luck and enjoy, whichever you decide!
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I was in a similar situation, only my brother asked me to make his wedding cake in his tiny studio apartment kitchen. A little background: I'm a former professional baker, and event planner. I said 'NO' as nicely as I could. Of all the members of the wedding party, I was the only one asked to do this sort of thing - the bridesmaids weren't asked to make their own dresses...
I did not make the cake, and I enjoyed the wedding because:
1: I knew better than to try and make such a special cake in a kitchen that didn't even have a mixer, let alone the correct sized pans, and an bad oven. The Wedding was in Napa on a very hot day, and his inadequate kitchen was in SF.
Even with my training and talent, there are just some scenarios that you walk away from.
2: I wanted to be a positive presence for my brother (I was the 'Best Sister'), not a harried baker.
In the end, we all enjoyed the wedding, and the delicious, beautiful cake provided by the (very good) restaurant.
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Oh, make the cake! I am an amateur baker and had a blast making my own wedding cake. Do to sundry mix ups, I ended up using a tiny oven (one size up from EZ Bake), rolling the marzipan with a whiffle bat and using a thirty five year old stand mixer. It came out beautiful, tasted incredible and made me sooo happy.
I truly recommend the Dede Wilson book mentioned before. It is very inspiring and somehow has a little more soul than the Cake Bible, which I also use. (The Cake Bible makes some things too much like a major physics experiment. This is baking for goodness sake, not table top fission!)
Plan for the heat - avoid whipped cream or too much fussy buttercream. Think marzipan, fondant, etc.
Also, cook ahead as much as possible. I did a test run small version for an engagement party in California. Made marzipan, ground almonds, chopped chocolate, prepped gum paste flowers and shipped whole kit and kaboodle with tools, dowels, cake rounds, pans, etc. to New York ahead of time. Baked cakes, make ganache, rolled marzipan and assembled cakes in a single day. Afternoon before the wedding, I inserted dowels, stacked cake, decorted with berries, flowers. Left cake overnight in its very own refrigerator at the neighbors and never touched it again until it was time to cut! Caterer brought it out while we were at church.
The two most important things I learned about large layers:
Use Magic Cake strips - they are insulating fabric strip that wrap around the outside of the pan to prevent the edges from cooking through long before the middle is done.
Also use a little aluminum core to bake the very middle of 14 - 16 - 18 inch layers. It serves the same purpose of cooking the very middle in a different way. It is like a little meal popover tin. The metal conducts heat into the core of the big layer. After baking you just remove the insert, pop out the little muffin that formed and slip it right back into the hole in the cake layer.
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