Two firsts.....

When my cousin got engaged last New Year's, it was quickly decided that I would make the wedding cake as a gift to the happy couple!  :)  The only problem.....I'd never made a cake that big before.....and I definitely had never made a wedding cake before!!!!

Once we figured out an approximate number of guests and the color scheme, I quickly got to work sketching out some ideas.  Here's what I came up with:

The cake tiers would be 12", 10", 8", and 6".  It would serve approximately 100-125 people depending on which chart you're using when figuring that out. It would be covered in Satin Ice fondant and the accents would be a mixture of Satin Ice Vanilla and Satin Ice Dark Chocolate.

A few months before the wedding, when I knew I'd have some extra visitors at my house to help eat some cake, I got to work making the practice cake.  There was NO WAY I was going to make this cake without having some practice under my belt.  And it's a good thing I did because this is how it turned out:

(click on the picture for a closer look to get the full picture)

Not the ugliest cake you've ever seen, but definitely not what a bride thinks of when they picture their wedding cake!  I was afraid that if I put this on a cake table at the wedding, someone would turn me into Cake Wrecks! :)

I definitely learned a lot from my practice.  I realized just how important 4" tiers are when you are making a stacked cake, how important it is to make sure you center the plates under the tiers just right, that a 12" cake board under a 12" cake looks a little off, and just how hard it can be to work with fondant in August in Maui! I also realized how important it is to use a fondant/gumpaste mixture when making bows; you can roll that mixture much thinner making the bow MUCH lighter and quicker to dry!! The thing that bugged me the most was the cardboard cake boards showing and the gaps between the layers. 

Over the next few months, I had a chance to practice some more on some different cakes.  I taught myself a few new tricks, gained some more confidence and was able to produce a beautiful cake for my cousin's wedding and I did all while also being Maid of Honor, mother of the Flower Girl and Ring Bearer, and helping to do a lot of the planning and coordinating!  This is the final result:

                                               

I'm very proud of this cake!

This cake is also in the background of my picture on the right!

So, first wedding cake....wondering what the other first is?????

I'll tell ya......

My first Groom's cake!!!!  My cousin's husband is from Texas and a big Longhorns fan (Hook 'Em Horns!!!), so we planned a surprise cake to serve at the rehearsal dinner.  I did a little research on Cake Central, borrowed some ideas, and this is what I came up with:

 

This cake was harder than it looks!  I cut out all the shapes using an Exact-o knife!  No cookie cutters on this one!  The groom really liked this cake and was totally surprised.  A bunch of his family and friends had flown in from Texas and they really like it also.

I'm trying to get some stuff together to do a post of my favorite things; there might even be some Wilton items on the list!  haha! Hopefully I can pull that together in the next couple weeks or so!

If you're interested in serving charts for cakes, here are a few to check out:

Earlene's Cake Serving Chart

Wilton Cake Serving Chart

Country Kitchen Serving Chart