Post-wedding Cake

I came back from the holiday weekend thinking that it was strange that I didn't have any cake orders this week. I had been doing so many recently that it seemed like I had at least one a week. On Tuesday afternoon I get an e-mail asking me if I could put together a cake for a couple in the office who got married over the weekend. This was a quiet affair, but people in the office wanted to do something special for them. I came up with this simple cake to mark the occasion. Believe it or not, I still had some of the edible silver beads from the multiple cakes I've used them on. I put them on the bells and the "Congrats!" Even with the basket weave sides and sparkly top, I still didn't think that it looked finished enough, so I added the red ribbon. At that point, I was happy with it. I put strawberry filling in this one, by request.

Normally, I have cake boxes on hand for any cake I deliver. Boxes are great because they let the cake breathe just enough to crust over and firm up, but not so much that the icing gets hard. The cake is also protected from bugs or anything small that could accidentally fall on it, like all the rain we've had. Since this cake was last minute, I didn't have time to go get a box, and I was out of stock at home. I decided to use my cake carrier instead. Not a terribly bad idea, except that this cake was really moist, as was the crumb coat that I used on it. I let the cake set up for quite a while before putting it in the carrier to protect it overnight. In the back of my mind, I was worried a little bit about the moisture being closed up inside the carrier and softening the icing. I checked the icing before I left the house and it seemed fine. It wasn't. I brought it with me in the morning and when I opened it up at my destination, the ribbon had broken in a couple of places and I could see some of the white icing had shifted ever so slightly. The white icing wouldn't really be noticed by anyone but myself since you needed to see the perfect version as a comparison. The ribbon was a major problem though. With some nimble toothpick mastery, I was able to repair the ribbon to almost its original state. At least it was a solid ribbon again, though it lost some of its luster in the areas I had to repair. It looked fine in the end and everyone enjoyed it, especially the bride.