Wedding Cakes

Pictured are 2 of the 5 cakes I baked this week.

The bride's colors are red and silver,

She will place red roses on the top.

This week I spent many hours in my kitchen creating a wedding cake for a customer. I have made several wedding cakes over the years, and every time that I'm in the middle of making one, I'm always asking myself, why?! I don't particularly enjoy making wedding cakes. They are a ton of work but somehow I always manage to agree to make them. It must be a little like giving birth, you forget how bad it was at the time so you agree to do it over again.

On Tuesday, I spent the day baking the five chocolate cakes--four 12inch cakes and one 8inch cake. I started around 11:30am and finished about midnight. Once my cakes are baked, I always freeze them over night. (It is much easier to assemble and frost a frozen cake versus a room temperature one.) Yesterday was assembly day. Again, I was in the kitchen from 11am until midnight. When I finally went to bed, my feet hurt so much that I couldn't get to sleep.

When I bake I never take shortcuts. I prefer use the finest ingredients. That includes butter--I'm of the schooling that you should always use butter when baking. Butter is better! Just to give you an idea of went into this cake (besides all of my time and effort) I will list a few ingredients, but be careful not to to have a heart attack while reading.

12 pounds of butter
6 1/2 dozen eggs
23 ounces of cocoa
1 pound of bittersweet chocolate
6 pounds of confectioners sugar