Heart Wedding Cake

The Idea:
About 2 months ago I was asked to make my friend's brother a wedding cake. I had only once before made a dessert for a wedding and that was an order for 12 cheesecakes. Cheesecakes I know. Cheesecake I can do in my sleep (and at 7 months pregnant back then I was most likely half asleep). But a wedding cake is different. This stresses me out abit because what if the bride (who I hardly know at all) has been dreaming about this cake for her whole life?  Well, initial communication revealled it must not be the top of the list, because after a relatively simple description for a white, heart shaped, berry adorned cake that is not too sweet, I was a bit relieved. As the date drew closer I had devised a plan to actually make the cake heart shaped (this included the elaborate construction of a cardboard/string/plastic wrap shell that would let the cake cool and solidify the middle custard layer). This was necessary as I could not find/afford to buy a large heart shaped baking pan.

The Recipe:
Attempted frosting #1 (failed)- Swiss Meringue Buttercream. (If I had had the instuctuions here, I might have been able to save it, because no amount of whipping was able to save it from separating and curdling. I did not try heating and whipping).
I have no time left I need a reliable frosting #2 - Italian Meringue Buttercream
Cake layers (2)- Yellow cake
Filling- A recipe from my new cookbook on cakes for a lemon custard strawberry filling.
Decorated with cranberries, red grapes, strawberries (AKA, all currently available dark/red berries!)



Lessons learned-
Never ever make a new recipe for something as tricky as a gelatin layer in a wedding cake. I was so thankful that the appearance was pretty good that they may not have notice the wine-lemmon strawberry custard layer was horrible. Note to self-practice more with gelatin. It WILL eventuially harden!!

Strawberry Daquiri Barbie Doll Cake

The Idea:

For a long time I have wanted to bake a Barbie doll cake. It seemed like quite the challenge to build something tall enough to encase Barbie's unnaturally long legs. And of course a frosting dress just sounded fun. This together with strawberries which are currently in season, the desire to stick a cheesecake in the middle of a torte and a strawberry daiquiri cake recipe I have been saving led me to end up with this final "masterpiece."

The Recipe:
Layer 1 & 4 (from the top): Strawberry Daiquiri cake
Layer 2 & 5: That perfect yellow cake
Layer 3: Lime cheesecake (family recipe- I will get around to posting about this recipe one day)
Initial frosting recipe: Sturdy Whipped Cream Frosting* (failed & ran low on time, turned to tried and true IMBC recipe)
2nd frosting recipe for between layers and base of the dress: Italian Meringue Butter cream
Frosting for decorating (pink) and for damming the frosting and strawberry layers: Magnolia's Vanilla Butter cream Frosting
Silver decorating beads, strawberries, strawberry white chocolate "chips," one Barbie :)
Alterations:
As I was going for a strawberry daiquiri effect, I replaced rum for vanilla extract for all recipes and added grated lime peel almost everywhere. The pink layer has food color added since the jello required in the recipe did not color the batter much and pink was requested by the birthday girl.

The result/lessons learned:
Except for a few snafus such as under cooking the first layer and disastrous results with trying the first recipe for frosting, I was very satisfied with the result. I ran out of time, so Barbie's top was a bit messy, but overall I was pleased. The taste was good. I don't know if I would make the pink layers again, but the yellow cake was good as usual (see cake competition blog post) and the frosting yummy. Although I vowed never to use the Magnolia's frosting recipe anymore because it has a cheap, overly sweet taste, it was fine for decorating purposes and for damming the cake, because it really hardens well in the refrigerator. Some research indicated that this cake should be frozen so it does not topple. I did not do that because all my freezer space is jam packed, but the result was just fine. And none of us died from eating potentially dangerous silver decorating beads.
I did have to shave the layers to make them skirt-like before frosting

Front view, pre-Barbie insertion:Rear view:
The chips were a bit messy looking, but my daughter picked them out, so I felt the need to put them somewhere!

*- I stepped away from the mixer for one minute only to return to find it over whipped apparently. So I kept on whipping and saved a lot of ingredients from being thrown away by ending up with a big blob of sweet butter and a milky type byproduct which I can only guess tasted like evaporated milk. Either way they will eventually go in some pancakes or cookies, etc. But quite honestly I don't think the initial recipe would have worked anyway on this cake since I needed something that could stand up to the weight of all the layers.