Interesting Red Wedding Cake

This one is another interesting story. I got a text from a good friend of mine. He's one of those guys that would literally give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. He had a friend and co-worker that needed a wedding cake done and wanted a quote from me. I gladly gave him one for the size they were asking for, and the rather cryptic description he was provided. His friend opted to go with me after talking to a few other people.

I talked to the mother of the bride and got the specifics. That's where it got tricky. The description of what the bride wanted was rather unique. They wanted a tier of white cake, a tier of chocolate, and the top tier made of red velvet. Each tier was to be decorated differently. The bottom was to be wrapped with a wire edged ribbon, the middle covered with red swirls and the top covered with small broken red candy. It took me a while to ferret out those details to the point I felt comfortable with the idea that I could make a cake resembling the description.

To make the story even more interesting, I got this order only about a week before the wedding. I figured there had to be an interesting story behind it, because nobody orders a wedding cake a week before their wedding.

The two bottom tiers were covered with fondant. The red swirls are buttercream icing. The top tier was covered with buttercream icing, then I pressed in large clear ruby red sprinkles until it was completely covered.

I made the cakes and delivered them across town as well. I set up the cake by simply stacking the layers and putting a red border between each layer. They had also requested that pearls be incorporated into the cake somehow (lots of design elements on this one!), so I got some edible pearl candy and pressed it into each of the red border dots. I takes a few minutes, but it is a nice touch of elegance.

I had to wait around for the mother of the bride so I could get paid. She also brought the cake topper, which I thought was a nice touch. I'm not sure why they ordered a huge layer of chocolate cake for the bride's cake, because the grooms cake ended up being a huge chocolate cake covered with chocolate dipped strawberries made by a friend of theirs. They certainly didn't need more chocolate. It turned out that the person with the money showed up late, so I ended up staying through the ceremony to get paid. It was sort of weird because I was in shorts and a t-shirt and everyone else was all decked out. I couldn't help it though. It wasn't my fault I was still there. The wedding was at one of those event centers where everything (ceremony, reception, pictures, etc.) occurs within about a 40 foot diameter.

I found out from my friend that the person they were going to have do their cake backed out after either a falling out or after some changes to the cake, I'm not sure which. It was way late for someone to back out like that, so they scrambled to find someone who could do it on a tight budget. The cake wasn't real detailed or difficult, so it wouldn't have been a big problem for anyone who could bake.