Well, even after the St. George adventure there was still more cake fun to be had! Last weekend was Lindsay's second reception which was in Coalville. This cake was going to be a 3 tiered, more traditional wedding cake. And I also decided it was not going to involve cream cheese frosting, which eliminated the option of having a red velvet cake. We decided on a nice lemon cake. This lemon cake recipe is my absolute favorite to make!
I mean, lemons are so fun to zest and they smell really delightful. Also this cake batter is so thick! It is like a dough. It makes it so easy to work with.
Well, after baking the cakes I had to attach all the stamen and wires to second round of flowers I made. I probably sat at the table glueing for around 5 hours! 
Oh and I just realized I never said what these flowers involve. They are made out of gum paste. To make the different shades of flowers I just used more or less gel frosting color and kneaded it into the paste. Then for the centers, to add some dimension, I painted each one with some pink pearl dust. Saturday morning, the day of the reception, I cut the cakes, stacked them, frosted them, and covered them in fondant.
Notice the crisp edges on these cakes...that is why I love this lemon recipe. These cakes are so dense which make them strong for decorating, but yet they are still moist and delicious! Course I got this recipe out of my favorite Margaret Braun cake book!
Lindsay decided for this 3 tiered cake that she didn't want the whole thing to be cake...which was fine with me because baking all those cakes would have taken forever! So instead of using cake for the bottom 2 layers I used foam dummies! Yes, that is the technical term apparently : )
Frosting the dummies was hard because they weigh nothing, but other than that they were fun to work with because they were so easy to get nice and smooooth!
Here is the cake all stacked and ready to be decorated! I decided to transport each layer seperately to the church where Lindsay would be having her reception and decorate the cake there to avoid the possibility of the cake tumbling over. I ended up decorating the cake in one of the classrooms, hence the chalkboard in the background.
paintin some branches...
the reception area all decorated with the cake to the left on its stand.
Frosting the dummies was hard because they weigh nothing, but other than that they were fun to work with because they were so easy to get nice and smooooth!
Here is the cake all stacked and ready to be decorated! I decided to transport each layer seperately to the church where Lindsay would be having her reception and decorate the cake there to avoid the possibility of the cake tumbling over. I ended up decorating the cake in one of the classrooms, hence the chalkboard in the background.
paintin some branches...
I almost forgot...I realized just in time on the first cake that there was no such thing as brown powdered food coloring. Well, there might be but I didn't know where to get it! The only powdered food coloring I could find was at Gygi's and it only comes in basic colors. Powdered color is the best to paint with, using lemon extract. It sticks really well and you can get different shades. Anyway, I was contemplating mixing some colors to get brown when I had a genius idea!...I could use cocoa powder! Course I didn't know if it would work...but I tried it and it worked great! And for hours while I painted I smelled chocolate lemons.
Here the cake is starting to bloom with cherry blossoms...
DONE!
After I put all the flowers on, I had to paint some white pearl dust on the little flower buds so they would glitter.
the reception area all decorated with the cake to the left on its stand.
This cake, for the most part, turned out just like I pictured it in my head!...Thank goodness...
I like to always get a picture with my cakes. Well, I was attempting to do just that but the photographer took the most awkward picture...
ha ha ha
So, all in all, I enjoyed making both of these wedding cakes. I think all the worry that goes into them makes them more rewarding once they are finished. I think I am going to take a break from cake decorating for a month or so, though, until I am done with school. And besides the huge disasters, like fondant falling off the cake, there are so many little things that happen that you don't anticipate. Like how long it takes to stab little bendy wires into foam cakes, which are a lot firmer than real cakes! haha...and how to dye fondant ivory, or how to make brown food coloring, or how to attach the wires to the flowers (i cheated...the answer is a hot glue gun), or how to attach the stamen to the flowers (cheated again and used super glue), or how to put the ribbon on the cake without an extra set of hands! The list could even go on...
But they are done! : D
You know what I am excited for?
To go to culinary school and learn how to do all the little things in a professional way. I don't think hot glue guns are allowed at culinary school! : }
Ok...ready for the stats?!?!
Here are all the ingredients that went into these two cakes (actually only the most interesting ones):
7 1/2 ounces of red food color
16 eggs
3 boxes of butter
15 cups of sugar
20 cups of flour
AND
....
22 POUNDS of powdered sugar!
the finished product!
