WEDDING CAKE

This weekend I had the pleasure of baking my sister a 3 tiered wedding cake.  I am an experienced HUGE wedding cake baker, having made my own wedding cake (which by the way is a great idea if you want to load even more pressure onto your wedding planning) last summer.  For my wedding I had visions of yummy moist carrot cake with a rich cream cheese icing.  It turned out very well so I figured what better gift to give my sister than a homemade organic wedding cake?  Since it was a spring wedding, my sister envisioned a light lemon cake, filled with raspberry jam and a lemon cream cheese icing.  She planted 400 tulips in her backyard last fall in anticipation of her wedding day, so she thought it might be nice to use some of them on the wedding cake.  I am happy to say the cake turned out well and all the guests enjoyed it immensely.  PHEW!

LEMON WEDDING CAKE (makes 2 12" pans, 2 10" pans and 2 8" pans)

You can bake all the pans at once if you have a commercial oven, otherwise you need to bake them 2 at at time.  I baked the cakes 2 days before the wedding, crumb coated them one day before and final iced and decorated them the day of the wedding.

5 cups organic unsalted butter

12 1/2 cups organic unbleached white flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 1/2 tsp baking soda

5 tsp sea salt

5 Tbsp organic lemon zest

7 1/2 cups organic sugar

10 organic eggs

15 organic egg yolks

10 Tbsp fresh organic lemon juice

5 cups organic whole milk

organic canola oil for greasing pans

unbleached parchment paper

Moistening Syrup:

2 organic lemons, thinly sliced

1 cup organic sugar

1 cup water

2 jars organic raspberry jam

LEMON CREAM CHEESE ICING

9 8-oz packages organic cream cheese, softened

3 cups organic unsalted butter, softened

4 tsp organic lemon zest

12 Tbsp fresh organic lemon juice

3 Tbsp organic vanilla extract

8 1/4 cups organic icing sugar

plastic straws and a thin wooden dowel

Method for Cake:  Preheat oven to 325*.  Grease the pans thoroughly and line with parchment paper that you traced with the bottom of the pan and cut out.  In a large bowl whisk the flour, baking powder and soda, sea salt and lemon zest.

     In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  With mixer on low, beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time.  Beat in the lemon juice and then alternately beat in flour mixture and milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix until just combined.

     Divide batter between pans, smooth tops.  Be sure to insert a baking cone for the 12" pans and use wet baking strips around the cake pans to prevent the edges from burning and the centre remaining raw.

Bake until the cakes pull away from the sides of pan around 40 minutes.  Let cool in pans 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edges of the pan and invert on wire racks to cool.  When cool, invert on cardboard cake rounds, wrap in saran wrap and then tie into plastic bags and store in a cool place overnight.

Method for Syrup: Bring the sugar and water to a boil in the saucepan.  Add lemon slices and simmer 25 minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice.

     Remove cakes from plastic wrap and with a large serrated knife, level off the tops of the cake so they are flat and all the same height.  Moisten the cakes with cooled syrup by dipping a pastry brush into the syrup and dabbing onto the cut surfaces.  Place one of the 12" cakes on a cake plate and spread with some of the jam, leaving a 1/2" border so the jam doesn't colour the icing.  Top with the other 12" cake, inverting it so the bottom of the cake is the top of this tier for a flat surface.

With a mixer using the whisk attachment, whip the cream cheese and butter on medium high speed until combined and airy, about 2 mintues.  Mix in the lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla.  Sift the sugar and with the mixer on low speed, slowly pout in the icing sugar, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.  I used a third of the icing recipe for the crumb coat and the other two thirds for the final icing.

Do a crumb coat of a thin layer of icing and then refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.  Repeat with the other two cakes.

     The next day or 2 hours later, do the final layer of icing.  If you have refrigerated extra icing, bring it to room temperature and then whip it a bit before you use it.

    When you are ready to assemble the cake place a dab of icing onto the cake plate and place the 12" cake on the plate and press an empty 10" cake pan onto the surface of the cake to guide your placement of the next tier.  Then insert a straw into the cake to measure how tall it should be, remove and cut.  Then using this straw as a guide, cut 5-6 more and insert within the circle you created so that the straws support the next level and prevent it from collapsing into the bottom cake.  Keeping the paper cardboard cake plates on the cake, place the 10" tier onto the bottom cake and repeat with the straws.  Then place the 8 inch cake on top of the 10" cake.  Take your wooden dowel and sharpen one end of it like a spear and insert it into the centre of the cake all the way down to the bottom layer.  This helps prevent the cake from shifting in transportation.  Then mark where it reaches the top of the cake, remove and cut it to size.   Re-insert into the cake and use icing to cover the entry point.  Using an icing bag, pipe any designs you would like on cake and then refrigerate before wedding.  Right before the wedding, insert the little water filled flower spikes into the cake for decorating.  Yay!

     Here is a picture of our wedding cake.  It is basically the same method only we used the carrot cake recipe that is featured in the blog post I did for my son's birthday party.

 

I kept the pieces of cake I sliced off when levelling the wedding cake.  I was glad I did because it came in handy the day after the wedding.  We invited some family and friends over for a BBQ and I served this cake for dessert.  There was some leftover icing and I picked some wild violets and dandelion from the garden which made a lovely spring decoration!