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| Photo from ECHerald.com |
I knew when I had agreed to do this cake that it would be quite the undertaking given the crazy week I had planned. The cake was needed the day after my inventory date at my day job. I though, no big deal, I can swing it, especially since it's AFTER inventory I should be able to take a few days off. And then the inevitable happened, work changed my inventory date from the day before the party, to the day after the anniversary party. No manager in the history of my job (that I'm aware of) has ever dared to take the day before inventory off. I guess you could say I either like to live dangerously, or I had no other option. Maybe a little of both? Not too dangerously though, I got permission from my boss and we worked it out.
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| Kitchenaide "after" pic. | |
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I went back and forth on the design for this one. Do I use real flowers, do I use gum paste flowers? And if I do use real flowers, if I don't get them from the florist who's throwing the anniversary party, will they be offended? Do I even have time to order and pick up flowers? Knowing that I basically had zero time to do anything, besides bake, I decided to go with gum paste flowers. I dabbled a bit in making my own gum paste flowers and quickly learned that I would much rather buy them, since I just don't have the time and patience. We did, however, make all the small flowers in shop.
I love, love, LOVE that I was given creative freedom on this cake. It makes things a lot less stressful. I wanted to make sure this cake was extra special, so I was a bit more adventuresome than I probably needed to be. I made all three layers a different flavor; bottom was champagne cake with lemon buttercream, middle was chocolate cake with nutella buttercream and top was carrot cake with cream cheese buttercream. I had planned on doing a different design for the top carrot cake layer, but had to improvise, since carrot cake is SO freaking heavy! It would not hold up in the shape I wanted and kept drooping down. Some quick thinking, a little trimming and a lot of wasted fondant later, I had something else that seemed to work better with the design. Minor disaster avoided.
I was fortunate to have Shannon, my intern, helping me with this one. Between the two of us, it took 10 hours to complete and we were literally painting flowers as we were packing up the car to leave for the party. We painted the flowers with a little vodka and food coloring, since the vodka evaporates much more quickly than water does. The banner and the small flowers on the middle tier were made of fondant, the remaining flowers were gum paste and the other accessories (such as the butterflies and bird) were non-edible and non-toxic. Cake stand is from Crate & Barrel.
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| Photo from echerald.com |
A professional photographer from the East County Herald was there taking pictures and the garden cake pictures made it into the publication and on their webside, echerald.com (click pictures of events, then homeland florist). It was a great networking opportunity and I'm glad I put forth so much time and effort into the cake. We were really happy with the results and it tasted delicious as well!
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| Picture from ECHerald.com |
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