I've been trying to think of how to break down this fairly epic event (in my world anyway). It all started out with my arrival up on the Takaka Hill I guess, my plan being to spend the week there making my cousin's wedding cake.
Timing is everything with such a large cake (which I made larger by deciding to make it five tiers... just one extra tinsy tier). You want to leave everything as late as possible so its nice and fresh, but not so long that you're having kittens the night before trying to get it all done.
Before I begin though I must immediately give the highest and deepest of thanks/praise/gratitude to my family who were all there while I made this cake and all helped me in significant and different ways. Their unwaivering support was incredibly generous and appreciated. My sister lined cake tins, painted leaves and helped me through all forms of dramas, doing what ever was required. My Mum did countless loads of dishes and did what any wonderful parent does.... took a keen interest and told me she is proud of me. My Dad helped with construction, cutting me a wooden board, sizing and cutting dowel and providing advice that helped me get it all just right. Most of all, they all reminded me I was doing a good job when I wasn't sure.
MONDAY
My first full day up on the Hill and I really didn't have too many plans for the cake. In the morning I made some chocolate clay to use to make the roses, but its always is good to leave it a day before you use it, so what a good excuse to not do much. Instead I ended up down in Golden Bay eating Rosy Glow Lime Sour chocolates and visiting with friends.
TUESDAY
First actual day of starting on this cake and it was solely dedicated to making roses. I figured if I had 18-20 of then that would be great and if I could make at least a dozen today that would be a great start. Happily this is exactly how it worked out, I think I made 14 of them while watching movies.... always good to keep the brain slightly preoccupied to stop it from realising its actually not doing much.
WEDNESDAY
Today things got serious.... like baking cakes serious. It was a long day, I started early and thanks to my parents giant oven ended up mixing cake batter in a large preserving pan just to be able to do a large enough volume. I was finding myself measuring out ten cups of flour and cracking in ten eggs for some batches. All in all it was a total of ten cakes cooked in four batches, all baked by about 2pm.
THURSDAY
Today was all about icing and rolling out dark chocolate clay to create the walls on each side of the cake. The smell of warm white chocolate has become one of my least favourite and in fact stopped me from ever wanting to eat white chocolate again. After an epic early morning effort to cover all the cakes in white chocolate ganache, it was straight into the dark chocolate walls. At this point I was fairly exhausted, I hadn't slept a whole lot last night because I kept waking up thinking about the cake. I could feel myself hitting a bit of a wall and was in desperate need of a second wind. My family could sense this and slowly backed away for their own protection... they knew there wasn't a whole lot they could do for me. Later I admitted to them I was doing my best to keep my bitch at bay... successfully I think?
FRIDAY
The day before the wedding and really time to get things finished because tomorrow would be an early start and there would be no time for any last work on the cake. Once again, up early and this time to start adding golden vines to the sides of the cake and finish off the chocolate roses like I had been meaning to for a couple of days.
I knew I was making progress but it was getting to the point where all I wanted was the cake to be finished and set up so I could see it and know it was going to be good enough. It gets hard to appreciate what you're getting done when all you want to do is see it complete to stop any anxiety that it might not turn out the way you want it to.
I did however get some good breaks in today, a quick trip to town to visit my friend Vanessa and find some fabulous strawberries for the cake.... thanks Kate for the slightly unnecessary mission out to town to get them! Then later we popped up to Lee and Joshs' for some snacks and drinks in the sun.... I was the dork that brought along my own entertainment in the form of chocolate rose making, but the girls (Laila and Zoe) were there to help, especially with dealing with the chocolate clay offcuts.
SATURDAY... WEDDING DAY!!!!
I had finished (as much as I could anyway), but there was still the rather large hurdle of getting the cakes down the hill and getting it all set up in the marquee. I carefully cleaned out the car boot and packaged all the cakes away in there... emergency supplies and tools in the back seat and we were away.... slowly. I'm fairly sure it was our slowest trip down the hill in history.
This is where the most serious dramas so far were about to start.... brace yourselves. We began unpacking the cakes and moving them into the marquee, I could tell already that it is just going to be too hot in there.... but moving the cake after it is set up is not really an option. We can't open the sides of the tent for fear of too much dust blowing around.... what to do? I am however distracted by this issue when unpacking the last cake I see that a large battery pack (that I didn't notice sitting in a side alcove in the boot of the car) has fallen onto the side of one of my cakes, causing what could be considered a minor car wreck of damage to the chocolate wall and vines. Breathe!!!
I knew I just had to fix it and keep working on getting the cake set up and cool enough. Thankfully I brought my entire trusty tool kit and got to work while Kate took care of getting ready to set the cake up. I think I might have surprised both of us by not having a meltdown over the whole thing.
Cake fixed, tiers all glued together and the strawberries strategically placed... it was complete and finally, after all of it..... I am happy, it is what I had hoped. You have no idea the relief. Not only that, the cake now had its own dedicated fan which is breezing wonderfully cool air over it.
A quick costume change, a quick check on the cake.... and this is where it is so important to trust your instincts.... and I have a concern about the fan only blowing on one side of the cake. But what can I do, there is only one fan, we're on the verge of running late of the ceremony, so I just leave it as it is.... I should have listened.
As soon as I arrive at the reception (filled with wedding cheer) my aunt comes up to me saying my Mum is looking for me.... and its about the cake.... dun dun dun duuuhhhhhhhhhh!!! As I should have known, the side without the fan now has drooping chocolate walls.... tragedy, I thought. But after a 2 minute reconstruct it all seems as good as new, how did I get away with that???? So we switch the fan over and put ice buckets filled with champagne bottles all around the cake.... it finally seems like it will be cool enough and will make it! The big moral of this story is to always think about the conditions your cake will be in.... sometimes it just might not be the right kind of cake for the weather. This time around, we made it work though. So finally, after you have had to read though my monologue of cake highs and lows (unless you are one of those people that just likes to look at the pictures... I respect that), here is the finished product in all its chocolatey glory:
Fanning the cake...
