kitchen logic

If you want to make buttermilk ice cream, you will have a dozen leftover egg whites. So then you'll decide to make angel food cake, which is oversold as a fat-free dessert. Of course you will start thinking that cake would be delicious with buttermilk ice cream.

Also, you might not own a tube pan (nor really want a tube pan) and decide it might be fine to try a silicone bundt pan instead. Inadvisable. We may be having angel food french toast for breakfast tomorrow.

a plate to cut a cake on*

(also at EAD)

I figured out the cake stand after a little bit of thinking. There really don't seem to be commercially available 14"+ pedestal cake stands. Or there might be - feel free to link in the comments for others - but I couldn't find them. Only the silver ones with three or four little feet, which didn't really do it for me.

Cakes can go on other things that are not cake stands, right? I found this vintage 16" torte plate, in a pattern aptly named Princess Feather. At 16", it will show about an inch all the way around the 14" cake board.

Mmm, vintage pressed glass. Love. There's going to be a bit of pressed/cut glass around mixed in with the silverplate tea sets and pitchers, so it fits.

But I still wanted it to have some elevation, so I found a matching... thing, in the same pattern. Compote? Candy dish?
The underside of the lid is chipped, but that's fine with me. All I want is the base, to flip and use like a pedestal.
I didn't realize until this minute how dusty the compote is compared to the shiny torte plate. I'll shine it up, don't worry. But you get the idea. A little bit of silicone glue (like they use to seal fish tanks) and it will be ready to go.

DJ called the bakery to ask if they had a problem with this setup, and they said no. But if we end up catapulting the cake across the room while cutting it, you bet I'll share pictures.

*To the tune of A Kiss to Build a Dream On, of course.

cake, continued

(also at EAD)

There’s a French restaurant near where DJ and I live. We’ve been there several times to celebrate a birthday or a holiday, and I always order dessert. I haven’t taken a picture, always too busy scarfing down the delicious pomegranate mousse on a thin brownie crust. You'll just have to trust me - their desserts, like everything else on the menu, come beautifully presented. The pomegranate mousse arrived with a dainty crown of spun caramelized sugar, filled with fruit.

Like this, but larger and more delicate. Wouldn't it be great as a cake topper, filled with flowers?

I thought it was a neat trick, but surely any pastry shop could make one. Not so! The cakery demurred, having never done anything like it before. A series of searches online turned up… me, looking for a spun sugar crown. I did find lots of helpful tips for making spun sugar (curliques, fluff, nests). But everything I read tells me that the caramelized sugar is fragile and needs to be prepared no more than a day or so in advance. Between cookie baking and flower arranging I don’t think I’ll have time to play with hot sugar.

So I called the restaurant, hat in hand, playing the bride card. The receptionist chuckled when I said I’d happily buy a dessert to obtain the crown. I’ll have Chef Michael call you back, she said. He did - totally on board with this pushy bride - to ask about size and color.

It’s a tiny little detail to be so thrilling. But it’s just the sort of thing that makes wedding planning fun.

just one more bite

(also at EAD)

Yesterday DJ and I had our cake tasting. I meant to take pictures of the actual cake tasting, but. Um. I was apparently too busy shoving cake into my cake-hole. We were expecting tiny chunks of cake, so we asked to try five (our of probably 10) flavors. They brought five full pieces to each of us. We didn't even need to share! It was heaven, and I had a small stroke over the little tubs of fillings.

Our cake will be three layers (8", 10", 12"), frosted in tasty buttercream. Red velvet with vanilla filling for the bottom layer, and yellow with Bavarian cream for the top two. The yellow cake was shockingly tasty. I was expecting something like a boxed mix, and was very pleasantly surprised.
I had all kinds of ideas for decoration, but was feeling lazy at decision time. So I just asked for a copy of this cake. The picture above is actually a photo of an ad I ripped from Bon Appetit early last year. I liked that it was a) not fondant b) monochromatic c) just a tad precious.

Now I need to find a 14" footed cake stand. Something tells me this won't be easy.

spin spin sugar

Although I think about cake all the time (all the time, really) I haven’t given much thought at all to cake toppers until recently. I really enjoy the vintage ones with the smush-faced tuxedoed groom and fluffy-gowned bride, but no one in my family has one. And to me, it just wouldn’t be as good to buy one, new or vintage. Besides, that might be a little formal for what we're doing.
Maid of honor Katie gave me a set of salt and pepper shakers that immediately said Wedding to me. (This is not usually worth taking seriously – I’ve noticed that nearly everything says Wedding when you have Wedding on the brain.)
But then I saw Mrs. Cookie’s photos, and hey. Look at the top of her cake! They must have said Wedding to her, too.
I’m also really liking the nest of flowers, and the overconfident DIY enthusiast in me thinks I can pull it off.

But. But, but, wait. A couple of weeks ago I took DJ out to dinner for his birthday to a fancy French restaurant. It’s owned by a husband and wife team, and the wife is a pastry chef. She’s a chef of other things too, of course. But definitely of pastries. The dessert I ordered (again, no picture, sorry) was not just delicious, it was gorgeous. Pomegranate mousse atop a very thin brownie, topped with a crown of spun sugar filled with berries.

The crown was more or less along these lines, but a little bigger and with finer strands. More like a crown.
I got sidetracked in my Google Images search for spun sugar, and found this cool cage of sugar:
And just look at this cake, with the spun sugar “straw”!
So you get where this is going. Now I want a buttercream frosted cake with a few buttercream roses, topped with a spun sugar crown filled with flowers, and a side of birdie salt and pepper shakers perched on the lip of the middle layer. This has gotten alarmingly specific.

perfectly imperfect

I’ve briefly mentioned my cake obsession, but it hasn’t really been wedding-directed until now. DJ and I had a really fun tasting from our caterer last weekend – instead of choosing just a few things from their menu to try, they invited everyone who’s booked them in 2009 to a party. With a DJ (not mine, ha), open bar, and their baker of choice serving delicious, delicious slices of cake.

Which I very much enjoyed, but did not photograph. Possibly because the evidence of me eating so much cake would have been too much to handle. But it was tasty and mostly covered in buttercream frosting, which sent me off on a cake tangent.

Neither DJ nor I are big fans of fondant. I know some people like the taste - DJ's brother - but isn’t it mostly about looks? No thanks. I’d like to be able to dive right in to the middle layer with a fork. So I’ve been looking for buttercream inspiration, and there’s not a whole lot out there.

I ripped this ad from a bridal magazine months ago, in the hope that it could be replicated.
I like this one, too, from Project Wedding. Although it's kind of hard to see the cake behind the flowers.
Bridesmaid Chloe asked the other day what I thought the eventual wedding’s motif is. Chloe, I have an answer. Perfectly imperfect. I would like my cake (and my whole life) to be perfectly imperfect. Any suggestions? For the cake, I mean. The life part is probably up to me.

I like cake, I like cake

To say that I like cake would be an understatement. I love cake. I don't think life without cake would be worth living. I'm really excited about tasting wedding cake samples. For the record, I have only very briefly considered baking my own wedding cake.

I bake frequently, usually 2-3 times a week. Coffee cake on weekends, lemon-yogurt cake with lemon curd and whipped cream, ginger pear molasses cake, flourless chocolate cake, cranberry lemon olive oil "bread," apricot ribbon yellow cake...
Of all those cakes, the only evidence I can find on my hard drive is this. It's a meat cake. A cake made of meat. Meat loaf, actually. Made for my brother's birthday, when he turned 19. Filled with barbeque sauce, frosted with mashed potatoes and ketchup. After his birthday dinner we did the whole singing and cake bit, and he cut into his cake. Hey, he said. Wait - is this...? JULIA!!!! Hee.

Then I brought out the real cake, which was caramel banana with vanilla filling and caramel buttercream frosting. Much tastier - although my meatloaf recipe made a surprisingly decent layer cake, if you're into that sort of thing. My brother ate it, anyway.

With all those cakes, you'd think I'd have a cake knife, but I don't. Depending on the cake, I use a bread knife or a steak knife. I know, classy. A few days ago I bought this set, primarily to cut and serve wedding cake but also to save my steak knives for steak in the future. (Or meat cake.) They're vintage sterling silver in Oneida's Damask Rose pattern. DJ has started calling me the Silver Baron.