A wedding cake for S & P

I met my friend S when we were working together at my first job out of college a few years ago. She was always helpful and fun to be around and our friendship grew slowly and steadily over the next few months. In addition to being a dear friend, she has been a mentor and adviser to me, sharing her wisdom as it applied to my life.

Shortly after she became engaged to P, she asked me if I would make her wedding cake. I was humbled, honored, shocked, joyful, you name it. But there was one obvious emotion that was absent: fear. In fact, I wasn't afraid at all until I started telling people and they asked if I was afraid. I had never made a wedding cake before, in fact I had never made a tiered cake at all, but there was something about S' confidence in my ability that made me forgo that emotion altogether. I spent the three months before the wedding dreaming up the cake and soliciting input from the bride and groom.

After a taste test we settled on a lovely dark chocolate cake recipe that I had found. Each tier would have four layers of cake and the three layers of filling would alternate bittersweet chocolate ganache and fresh raspberry. I love chocolate wedding cake so I was very pleased with this decision. Never having worked with fondant before, I covered the mini-test cake with it and S decided then and there she wanted the simple, pure look that white fondant provided. I was a bit nervous about how I would successfully cover the 14 inch tier and making it look beautiful, but I felt I had adequate time to learn. I taught myself everything I needed to know about wedding cakes by reading online articles, a couple of books from the public library and watching some YouTube videos about fondant.

A friend helped with the floral decoration and the bride's brother handcrafted the beautiful wooden cake stand. They say that it is better to give and to receive, and on their wedding day, I felt that sentiment had never been truer. Seeing the look on their faces as they saw the cake for the first time and watching everyone eat the cake at the reception made me feel that it was one of my greatest achievements of my adult life.