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So this thread over in Sightings got me thinking about wedding cakes making a break for it, and I thought I'd share a bit of cakey adventure I got to participate in.
For a bit of background, I have four younger sisters. The oldest of them is what I would call a semi-pro cake decorator. She worked in a grocery store bakery and did most of their cake decorating while there, and got to be pretty darn skilled if you ask me. She still continues to do it as a paying hobby and for friends, and she's done the cakes for my wedding and those of two of our other sisters (and possibly hers; I don't quite remember if she ordered out or did her own), and they were all awesome. For the purposes of this post, I'll be calling my cake-baking sister Ann.
Our baby sister got married in the spring of 2012. She wanted a cake with drizzled chocolate on it, and after several experiments Ann came up with a method that produced a lovely cake, just what our baby sister wanted. The final version ended up being four tiers, I think, with the top one fairly small and meant to be saved for the newlyweds.
Cue wedding day. Ann finished decorating the cake just before the reception was to start, and it sat on the cake table in one corner of the venue (the gymnasium of a church meetinghouse).
The problem? The venue's AC didn't work very well, and there were a lot of people.
The room got warm, and there was liquid chocolate between the cake layers. This was also the first time Ann had done this cake this tall (the experiments had all been two tiers, in a far less-crowded and far-better air-conditioned location). So the cake began to lean as the tiers slid against each other slightly. By the halfway point of the reception, the cake resembled one of those cool topsy turvy cakes. I even overheard a young girl tell her mother the cake was very cool and she wanted one just like that when she finally got married. The rest of us worried about the cake tipping over, since we knew it wasn't supposed to lean like that.
We decided to move up the cake-cutting before anything happened. Ann went to get the knife. She was halfway back across the room when the top tier ran for it. Our grandpa, standing nearby and in apron because he was helping out, dove for it and caught about half the top tier in his hands. The rest ended up on the floor.
We did manage to salvage the other three tiers and Grandpa made a frustrating situation funny by licking cake off of his fingers and declaring it tasty, and our baby sister thankfully laughed about it. Everyone at the reception reassured Ann that the cake was beautiful and tasted great, and we all understood that circumstances had conspired against her this time. It was, after all, the very first time this had ever happened to her, and she knew what to fix for next time.
A year later (Spring 2013) our second-youngest sister got married. Ann did the cake again (no melted chocolate this time). Once again, she assembled and decorated the cake right before the reception. I stood nearby taking photos of the process for her. She had the base tier (of four) on the table, and had put the second tier on her turntable to frost it. Somehow the tier got slightly offset on the turntable, and its weight combined with some slipperiness of the turntable itself and we had another runaway tier (this time a large one).
Luckily I was standing in its way, and instinct kicked in. I had reached out and caught the blasted thing before it got very far and before I even had a chance to think about it. We righted it, patched up the finger marks in the frosting, and marveled at the fact that I'd managed to keep from getting any frosting on my bridesmaid dress (I didn't have an apron at the time, but promptly got one as soon as we had that tier on the cake properly just in case I had to catch more cake). Ann was grateful because if the tier had gone splat, she was done. No more work on that cake; Sis would have had to deal with just one tier and two other unfrosted cakes.
Once again, the cake itself turned out awesome and tasty. And our remaining unmarried sister and Ann have both agreed that said sister needs to get married in Baltimore so she can just order a cake from Charm City Cakes instead.
For a bit of background, I have four younger sisters. The oldest of them is what I would call a semi-pro cake decorator. She worked in a grocery store bakery and did most of their cake decorating while there, and got to be pretty darn skilled if you ask me. She still continues to do it as a paying hobby and for friends, and she's done the cakes for my wedding and those of two of our other sisters (and possibly hers; I don't quite remember if she ordered out or did her own), and they were all awesome. For the purposes of this post, I'll be calling my cake-baking sister Ann.
Our baby sister got married in the spring of 2012. She wanted a cake with drizzled chocolate on it, and after several experiments Ann came up with a method that produced a lovely cake, just what our baby sister wanted. The final version ended up being four tiers, I think, with the top one fairly small and meant to be saved for the newlyweds.
Cue wedding day. Ann finished decorating the cake just before the reception was to start, and it sat on the cake table in one corner of the venue (the gymnasium of a church meetinghouse).
The problem? The venue's AC didn't work very well, and there were a lot of people.
The room got warm, and there was liquid chocolate between the cake layers. This was also the first time Ann had done this cake this tall (the experiments had all been two tiers, in a far less-crowded and far-better air-conditioned location). So the cake began to lean as the tiers slid against each other slightly. By the halfway point of the reception, the cake resembled one of those cool topsy turvy cakes. I even overheard a young girl tell her mother the cake was very cool and she wanted one just like that when she finally got married. The rest of us worried about the cake tipping over, since we knew it wasn't supposed to lean like that.
We decided to move up the cake-cutting before anything happened. Ann went to get the knife. She was halfway back across the room when the top tier ran for it. Our grandpa, standing nearby and in apron because he was helping out, dove for it and caught about half the top tier in his hands. The rest ended up on the floor.
We did manage to salvage the other three tiers and Grandpa made a frustrating situation funny by licking cake off of his fingers and declaring it tasty, and our baby sister thankfully laughed about it. Everyone at the reception reassured Ann that the cake was beautiful and tasted great, and we all understood that circumstances had conspired against her this time. It was, after all, the very first time this had ever happened to her, and she knew what to fix for next time.
A year later (Spring 2013) our second-youngest sister got married. Ann did the cake again (no melted chocolate this time). Once again, she assembled and decorated the cake right before the reception. I stood nearby taking photos of the process for her. She had the base tier (of four) on the table, and had put the second tier on her turntable to frost it. Somehow the tier got slightly offset on the turntable, and its weight combined with some slipperiness of the turntable itself and we had another runaway tier (this time a large one).
Luckily I was standing in its way, and instinct kicked in. I had reached out and caught the blasted thing before it got very far and before I even had a chance to think about it. We righted it, patched up the finger marks in the frosting, and marveled at the fact that I'd managed to keep from getting any frosting on my bridesmaid dress (I didn't have an apron at the time, but promptly got one as soon as we had that tier on the cake properly just in case I had to catch more cake). Ann was grateful because if the tier had gone splat, she was done. No more work on that cake; Sis would have had to deal with just one tier and two other unfrosted cakes.
Once again, the cake itself turned out awesome and tasty. And our remaining unmarried sister and Ann have both agreed that said sister needs to get married in Baltimore so she can just order a cake from Charm City Cakes instead.
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