My son's teacher last year heard that I did cakes and wondered if I could do either her wedding cake of groom's cake. I said that I'd certainly be willing to entertain the idea, depending on what she wanted. We talked a bit over the weeks and I knew that she and her husband to be were both Aggies. The country club where they were having their reception was providing the bride's cake. Naturally, I thought that a Kyle Field cake would be awesome for the groom's cake and fun to make as well. The groom wasn't going for it. I invited them to come over and try a couple of my cakes and icings to see what they would prefer. I made two different chocolate cakes. One was my go-to cake recipe (or was) and I found a new one that sounded interesting because it had LOADS of chocolate in it. After I made that second cake, I had a new go-to recipe. That stuff is decadent. So that they could try the different icings, I covered half of the cakes with butter cream, and the other half with chocolate butter cream. I then made some fondant and covered a small area with it so that they could try that as well. Since I still didn't know what the design would need to be, I wanted to cover all of my bases. They loved the same cake that I did, and liked all of the icings. The groom did his research and pieced together a cake idea to run by me. He wanted the base to be the New Orleans Saints football field, with black and gold stripes on the long sides and team uniforms on the small sides. I had him give me a list of favorite players for the jerseys, and he came up with the idea of putting current players on one end and previous players on the other. Already, this thing was going to be elaborate. To pile on, he wanted a Saints helmet on the top. We talked a bit about the details, because I wanted to work on background colors since white jerseys won't show up well on a white background if I were to use that on the sides, which I did. We figured I could use the black jerseys on the sides and they would look great. Now, I don't know if they were worried when they left my place about how the cake was going to turn out, but I was bound and determined to make it as awesome as possible. It was their wedding after all, and it needed to be perfect. We decided that making a face mask out of sugar paste just wasn't worth the effort, so I told them I would get a real face mask to put on the helmet. They offered to get it, but I told them they had too many other things to worry about and that I'd find one. We also decided that the helmet would be chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream icing, and the base would be chocolate cake with regular butter cream icing so that they could have both on the cake and people would have options. Remember that point, because that idea got completely ruined later.
I did find a face mask that wasn't too expensive and got it in plenty of time for the wedding. I looked at the mask and gawked at just how large the thing was. I started to worry a bit, because that helmet was going to be heavy once I made enough cake to get a shape that large. I came up with solutions, but more on that later.
The week of the wedding, I started baking cakes on Wednesday night. The wedding was Saturday afternoon and I had to deliver the cake by 2:00 PM. The base of the cake was essentially two 12" x 18" cakes stacked on top of one another. Each layer uses three full recipes of the cake batter. They wanted to feed a crowd of around 250 people from what I can remember, so I wanted to make it pretty substantial. I figured out that the helmet needed to use 10" rounds to get the circumference right and that it would probably take around 4 layers for the helmet to be tall enough. Each 10" round is another full recipe of cake batter. All together, it was the equivalent of almost 10 of your standard two-layer round cakes, with even more icing than normal. I continued cooking through Thursday night, and started icing cakes that night as well.
I was taking Friday off to go meet my kids' teachers at their respective schools, so I had about half the day and all night to work on the cake. I stayed up until 1:30 AM on Friday working on the cake and around 12:30 AM on Saturday. I got up early each morning and continued working. I have no idea how many total hours I worked on this, but I estimate is had to be somewhere around 30, including all of the baking. Thursday night, I stacked the helmet, carved it, iced it, and covered it with yellow marshmallow fondant. I figured I would make the fondant yellow since I was going to paint the helmet with edible gold paint. If some of the yellow showed through, it wouldn't be too obvious. Also, since the helmet was 4 layers (3 1/2, once hand carved into the right shape), I put a plastic cake board on top of the second layer, supported by drinking straws through the bottom two layers to another plastic cake board. You wouldn't think straws could hold that much weight, but once you push a half dozen straws through cake to a hard surface, and cut the straws to about a 4" length, they're pretty strong and supportive. It happened to work out that the top of the second layer was just the right height to make the "overhang" for the front of the helmet. By cutting the cake board so that it was an oblong shape, I was able to carve cake around it, and had it stick out the side over the second layer, allowing me to defy gravity and have cake hanging over thin air. That night, I also covered the football field base with a crumb coat of icing before going to bed in order to keep the cake moist.
The next day, I started working on the football field again. That took a large portion of the day. I started with the idea of just putting icing on the base, but with that much cake and weight, I was seriously worried about cracking from movement of the spongy layers. The cake was sitting on a plastic cake board exactly the size of the cakes sitting on it. I didn't really want any lip showing so that it would look good and clean. However, this plastic board is not nearly rigid enough to keep the cake from flexing and cracking. The answer was to cut a piece of plywood to put under the cake board for transport. To make sure the cake wouldn't shift, I put nails on three sides of the plywood, and on the fourth side, drilled holes so I could insert nails to keep the cake board relatively stationary. It worked out great. It provided the stability I needed for transport. Even with that, based on the thickness of the cake, I was still worried about movement and settling, so I decided to cover the cake base with fondant to provide more structural stability. That did the trick. Once the fondant cooled and had time to dry a bit, the base was structurally sound and would survive quite a bit of abuse. There is a reason that the professionals on TV use a lot of fondant. If you're going to have to transport a large cake, fondant is the way to go. That, or refrigeration if you're using other icings. I put a layer of white fondant over the cake, then covered that with the green football field surface on top. The stripes and jerseys were additional fondant applications, with butter cream piped on for the details. The gold stipes started white, and I painted them with gold glaze and dusted them with gold luster dust to make them look just like the helmet.
While I was putting the details on the base, I "painted" the helmet. Covering that much surface area with an edible gold glaze takes a while. I found a gold glaze on a baking website. I also bought gold luster powder, figuring one or the other would work. I had tested them the week before to make sure I could get a good looking gold finish from them. The flat sample I used looked great! The glaze doesn't cover completely, and you can see some of hte brush strokes, but once you put the gold dust over it, it covers some of the imperfections and makes it look much better. The interesting thing is that the "solvent" used to keep the glaze suspended in liquid appears to have either a spearming or wintergreen oil in it. The sample I did had a faint minty taste to it. Not enough to de distracting if you're eating a bunch of cake, but noticeable when I only tasted the fondant coated with it. I had a stressful period of time where I got really worried about running out of the glaze before covering the whole helmet. It worked out though, and I was able to touch up any areas that were a little too thin before running out completely. After putting on the glaze, I then dusted the whole helmet with the gold powder. This gave it a great shine, and also helped mask and blend the brush strokes from the glaze. The finish wasn't perfect, but it looked about as good as I was going to be able to make it. It had sort of a weathered look to it instead of being perfect. By the way, Crayola paint brushes are garbage and fall apart on you. I wouldn't even give thost to my kids for art projects after trying to use some for this. They were brand new and steadily came apart on my. After fighting with those for a while, I pulled out a good brush that I picked up with which I had no issues at all. By the time I went to bed Friday night/Saturday morning, all I had left to do were the logos for the sides of the helmet and the jerseys for the sides of the base. I figured that wouldn't be too much work for a Saturday morning completion.
On Saturday, I was moving pretty slow in the morning. I usually get up pretty early for work and go to bed reasonably early. The late nights were taking their toll. After a shot of caffeine and breakfast, I set to work around 9:00. I completed the logos and the jerseys, then set about putting together my damage recovery kit. It was about 1:00 at this point. You're not going to transport something this large and detailed without damaging something. I grabbed everything I could think of to be able to perform assembly (helmet on the base) and possible repairs of icing on-site at the country club where the reception was to be held. I almost forgot to put the straws in the base to hold the helmet up, but I was bringing the straws with me, so it wouldn't have been a huge issue.
We drive to the reception site with the helmet in my lap. I was worried about it possibly tipping over, so I wanted to be able to cradle it. We made it to the site without issue. I carried the helmet cake down a long hallway to where the tables were set up for the cakes. Looking around, we saw a door right next to the tables that would make it far easier to bring in the heavier base. The coordinator told us we could drive around and use those doors, so we did. I didn't relish carrying that base which probably weighed around 30 pounds for a hundred yards or more. While we were moving the car, the DJ happened to spread out some of his things on the dance floor right in front of the door we were coming in. When I walked in the side door, I couldn't see the floor at my feet and I stepped in a speaker cover on the floor, which caused me to trip. As I saw the week's work flash before my eyes, I managed to get my foot out in front of me somehow to stop the fall. Also, the DJ was close enough that he lunged and got a hand on my chest to steady me. Good thing too, because I was falling with my cake towards the bride's cake. I potentially would have taken out both of them in one shot. I set my cake down in it's place and rested for a few minutes to stop shaking from the near tragedy. My cake board worked out great. I pulled the couple of nails and slid the cake off of the plywood board easily since the plastic cake board has a really smooth surface. I wrapped a black ribbon around the bottom of the cake to provide a nice clean edge and ensure that none of the plastic board would show. I didn't really want to pipe anything around hte base of the cake, and this was a nice, clean solution to dress it up. I then stacked the helmet on top of the field and set about making minor repairs. The S on the back of the helmet partially came off and I had to straighten some of the field lines. Some of the white around the logo had to be fixed as well from where my hands touched it as I placed the helmet down. After that, I piped the white around the base of the helmet and put on the face mask. The workers in the reception hall were impressed and I talked with a few of them while I finished setting up.
I had just enough time to get home, change clothes, and get back up there for the reception with my family. I was in decompression mode at this point. I had a lot of tension ensuring that everything got there without incident and looked exactly like what the groom wanted. I wanted to be happy with it as well, which I was. I was rewarded throughout the evening by the bride and groom coming over and thanking me for doing a great job. Her mother, father, and grandmother also all came over to my table to thank me individually. The bride was spreading the word throughout the evening because I had people that I didn't even know asking me about it and paying their compliments. That, of course, is a large reason for why I do this. Besides having the artistic outlet in food form, I love getting the compliments and having others appreciate my work. Top that off with a great meal, great wine and great company, and I had wonderful time.
I watched as the bride and groom cut the cakes. When they cut mine, the bride sought me out in the crowd and gave me a thumbs up, which was another one of those warm fuzzy moments. I then watched as the staff cut the cake to hand out. Instead of asking people which they would prefer, they simply cut a piece of each and put it on every plate. Interesting way to do that. I'm glad I made the cake as big as I did, because they'd probably need it. I also watched the staff take the small top of the bride's cake and put it in a box to save, as per tradition. However, they also took the ENTIRE helmet and did the same. Of course, their little boxes that they had wouldn't possibly hold a cake segment that large. Again, that was 3 1/2 standard 2-layer cakes worth of cake in there. This part actually bothered me a bit, because I happen to love the chocolate butter cream icing and nobody would get to try it if the entire helmet were removed from the equation. That's what happened though. I'm hoping that the family would enjoy some of it later, because there was just so much that the staff was putting away that nobody would want to put that much in a freezer for a whole year. Maybe I'll find out when the bride and groom get back from their trip. I hope that someone gets to eat all of the cake that didn't get shared. It would take the bride and groom a year just to eat all of that themselves.
Contrats to Jeremy and Katy! It was an amazing and beautiful event, and I wish them all the best in their new life togehter.
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