Emma and Daniel’s Wedding
Once upon a time in October of 2019 my cousin Emma married her now husband Dan. Emma really wanted a low key wedding and I was lucky enough to be asked to do the dessert table, including the main event - the CAKE! It was the single most challenging and scary event I have baked for. She gave me one direction and that was “we have a light botanical theme”.
I made a list of everything I was going to bake - and in the beginning this was pages long. This list got smaller and smaller, as I realised how intense the actual planning process was. I had timelines and practice bakes. This was serious business. After several bakes, I narrowed it down to brownies, shortbread and lemon meringue tarts. Brownies because who doesn’t love fudgey brownies, heart shaped shortbread for the lovers and lemon meringue tarts because they are a family favourite. All these baked goods had botanicals weaved through them. The brownies were dark chocolate, toasted walnut and beetroot topped with ganache and gold dust. The shortbreads were rose, lemon and pistachio and black cocoa and wattleseed dusted with dehydrated raspberry. The lemon meringue tarts were lemon myrtle and violet curd with wattleseed pastry.
So fast-forward a little bit, and it was two weeks from the wedding and I hadn’t tested the cake yet. It was a must before the wedding so I could actually get it tasted and approved. I had an idea, but I had no idea how to actually go about making the idea come to life. After watching Youtube tutorial after Youtube tutorial on how to make a tiered wedding cake, I made the decision to do it. I had three tiers, each with an individual flavour. The base tier was lemon myrtle and elderflower, mid tier was originally rhubarb and rose and the top was strawberry gum and earl grey. This was covered in a white chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream. Each cake had an individual filling and each cake took at least half a day’s work.
After running the test flavours and textures past my panel of judges, I changed the mid tier. I decided to change the middle tier to coconut, rose and mulberry instead of rhubarb and rose. Mulberries reminded me of my grandma and I felt it was a more sentimental touch for my cousin.
The first and final test cake looked like this (see photos to the right). I did a mock up with the decorations using edible flowers, but come wedding day I was using dried native flowers modelled off the bride’s bouquet.
This practice and test run is something I cannot stress enough is very essential to the wedding catering business, test the cakes and test the timings. You need to have a clear concept and structure in place to follow. As my contract law lecturer always said “if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”
The week of the wedding, this is when all my planning and practice needed to come together. I started with making the shopping list on the Saturday before the wedding (a whole week out). I did my big shop on the Sunday and made an order with the florist on the Monday for collection on the Saturday (morning of the wedding). I started making the shortbread dough on the Tuesday and rested it in the fridge until Thursday. I made the lemon myrtle curd, the citrus and violet curd, the mulberry and rose jam, the strawberry gum pastry cream and coconut pastry cream on Wednesday night. I baked my shortbread and made my shortcrust tart pastry on Thursday night. I started my cakes on Thursday and finished baking them by Friday. I baked the brownies on Friday night and finished with the ganache, walnuts and gold dust. I baked my tart shells and cooled them then filled them with violet and lemon myrtle curd. Finally, I brushed all my sponges with sugar syrups and wrapped them for assembly in the morning. I had my two hour power nap, woke up morning of the wedding.
The day of the wedding was a warm Spring day, so naturally the cakes were difficult to stack and make stable. After walking all the cake tiers up the hill to the wedding venue (my aunty’s home), I stacked and assemble the tiers and it came together… not bad for my first one, refer to image below xoxo
