One big ass cake

To say I was a little apprehensive about making a five tier wedding cake in my very ordinary sized oven would definately be true. To say I was expecting drama, a little tearing of hair out, or even a mini disaster would also be true. The sheer volumes that I was working with meant odds were stacked against me with my track record. I was prepared for the worst. But what happened? Nothing. I had a very relaxed and calm three days at home, baking, icing, decorating and listening to too loud music of all shapes and sizes.

The quantities were quite impressive though. I was told this cake would be THE dessert.... eeekkk! I did convince them to maybe serve something else with it as well. So here is a few stats to wow your pants off:
- 10 x cakes baked (which equalled 16 x the original recipe in total)
- 7kg of fondant icing to cover the cake
- 36 eggs
- over 3kg of sugar
- 4kg yoghurt
- 36 lemons
- 4 litres of oil
- 3 dozen roses

You may guess by now, it was a lemon cake and it was covered in a white chocolate and vanilla bean butter icing (and then the fondant of course). This was the first time for me using fresh flowers and also the first time using a stencil with fondant and royal icing.... yes, like I said, I had reason to be nervous.

I was lucky enough to have my own personal photographer on hand while I was setting up and cutting the cake, so for once there are some decent pictures of the process:

Big chunks of fondant all ready for kneading... I think I know officially have OOS from doing this.

Cakes get the butter icing treatment before the fondant is put over top, not very exiciting looking but for anyone who is actually interested in what happens before it is made to look all pretty.

Stencilled and not stencilled cakes. You're thinking, whats with the plastic bags they're sitting on, weirdo? It makes it easier to move them, pick them up, slide them along the bench etc without damaging any of the icing.. ok?

The bottom layer of cake in its just-out-of-the-oven look. Good square (or round) cakes are all about perfect baking paper.... thanks Yvonne, I would have never known if it wasn't for you!

More stencilled cakes waiting to be put together.

The two base layers finally all put together. I just like the sun coming through the blinds onto them.

Three dozen red roses got delivered on the Friday, which made my house pretty at least for a short time and I couldn't help but take some pictures with them.

Construction time!!!! Getting the roses in place was like a puzzle, fix one bit, and the other bit goes wrong. But it all came together after a little back and forth.

Piping icing onto the pillars to help them stick to the layer I was about to place on top.

And now for the decontruction!!! With help from the fabulous Gina, Kylie and Stuart.... Kylie being the one behind the camera taking lovely photos.... thanks! First layer comes down.

Stuart and Gina being cheeky monkies

Finally allowed to touch something. tasting the 'glue' icing... so easy to please.

Pulling the wodden dowel out of the cake before cutting

Cutting.... cutting.... and more cutting

140 slices of cake (with turkish delight) ready for the eating. Not that I had any, for some reason I never eat the cakes I make. Don't ask me why, maybe I've just spent too much time with it already, and I figure its really there for everyone else to enjoy.

So.... there..... biggest cake yet. Happy how it went, happy its done and happy they liked it. Next cake isn't until next month, but I'm sure I'll find somethign at least mildly entertaining to write about before then.

When Kate comes to town....

I got to cook for two of my favorite people on Sunday... my sister and my husband. For some reason when Kate is here I can't help myself. I think its the level of appreciation I recieve from both of them - again, one of those self satisfying things. I think I have come to the conclusion that for me, cooking is a fairly selfish thing... even though one of my main motivators is that I like feeding people. And there it is again, its about the fact that I like feeding people.

So we had a Sunday feast, as people should on a Sunday. Go ahead and be productive or active or whatever makes you feel like you've achieved something in the morning, but Sunday afternoons should be all about doing nothing... or in our case, eating.

Anyhow, lets get to why we're all here... the pictures.

Please note: Food was consumed in small quantities and over a long period of time to avoid any abnormally large food babies.

Melon and proscuitto:



 Homemade ciabatta with oven dried tomatoes and pecorino

 Baked zucchini with homemade ranch (in a nusery ryhmes bowl!)

 Mushroom ravioli with tomato cream sauce

 Beet ravioli with olive oil and parmesan

 Beef carpaccio with rocket and parmesan

 Chilli prawn ravioli with pea and mint sauce

 Pork and fresh fennel ravioli with brown butter and sage sauce