Let them eat cake

The wedding was only a little over a month away, and we still had no plans for

Being obsessed with cake, I'd thought a lot about it. The problem is that I am sort of a cake snob. I've loved to bake since I was about eight, but at that point was perfectly content to let Betty Crocker be my guide. Blame the snobbery on my mom's friend who gifted me with a copy of The Cake Bible when I was fifteen. Ever since then I have had no tolerance for buttercream made with Crisco, or oversweet processed fruit fillings. Being a "bride on a budget", however, I had certain harsh realities to face. I could not afford the sort of cake I wanted, and I didn't want the cake I could afford.

I started out saying that I planned to bake my own, but it sounded so crazy that I was afraid even to speak the words. When, exactly, would I have time to do that? I looked at my budgets of time and money, and reasoned that I could do my own flowers or bake my own cake, but not both. The flowers were the bigger financial win, so the cake question was still in limbo.

For a while we talked about having pie instead. The bonus with pie is that we could enlist Mom-- she is an all-star pie-baker, with the caveat that she Doesn't Do Crust. No problem, though, since Pillsbury crust is better than anything mere mortals can make anyway! Then we discovered that Pillsbury is made with lard, rendering it inedible to Toby and his whole family. Back to square one.

About a week ago, six weeks from W-Day, I realized that I really had to make a decision. I picked up my incredibly tattered copy of The Cake Bible and mooned over the fancy cakes. Then I re-read the author's story of her misadventures in making her brother's wedding cake, and I rediscovered the bit where she froze it.

Of course! If I could make the cake ahead and freeze it until the big day the time budgeting problem was solved! I read more carefully, and found that Ms. Beranbaum gave her blessing to freezing a completely decorated cake for up to two months. Yay! We were past that time point already! I decided to make a trial cake.

I asked Toby what he wanted. "As chocolatey as possible." Predictable. The original plan was chocolate cake, caramel buttercream, chocolate fondant, and spun caramel decorations. There was never a question of piping flowers or borders or any of that nonsense. I know my limits!

I embarked on the trial cake. The first stumbling block was the caramel buttercream-- twice I managed to curdle the milk solids, and that was the end of my patience. The cake was fine ("Not too buttery," proclaimed Toby). I used chocolate ganache for the frosting. The spun caramel was fun to make and looked great until the next morning, when it had dissolved into little caramel puddles. I was starting to rethink the caramel theme.

Meanwhile, when Toby saw the finished trial cake he asked if wedding cakes weren't usually white? I told him I was going for "as chocolatey as possible." He said I should think about what I wanted too. So I started thinking about raspberry.

I do love raspberry. And I really love raspberry and chocolate. So I formulated a new plan. Chocolate cake. Raspberry buttercream. Creme Ivoire Deluxe coating. Chocolate "plastic" decoration.

Friday night we went out and hit the local strip mall. Toby bought a bunch of lumber at the Home Depot, and I bought cake equipment. Saturday I picked up liqueur, really good chocolate, eggs, butter and the like. And I searched for cocoa butter. I needed half a cup of cocoa butter for the Creme Ivoire Deluxe, and I couldn't find it. I went to every market I could think of. Finally I looked at Whole Foods for the second time, and found 100% cocoa butter in the Beauty section.

Saturday I made the layers-- 2 12", 2 9", and 2 6". The 9" layers, which I had baked in silicone pans instead of metal (just what I had) did not rise much and were domed, though they were made with the same batter as the 6". Word to the wise-- avoid silicone pans. I made the raspberry buttercream, and iced the 12" and 6" tiers.

Sunday I went out and bought 9" metal pans.

I made the 9" layers and frosted them. Had just enough buttercream. I made the Creme Ivoire Deluxe. It's basically white chocolate and various fats melted together and cooled, but was surprisingly tricky. If you don't cool it while stirring it will "seed"-- basically become terminally lumpy. Took me four tries to get it right. It was like thick frosting in the bowl, but as soon as I slapped it on the tiers it hardened like plaster. It took me a while to figure out that I could carefully move it around and slowly smooth it out. Sort of ran out of the Creme Ivoire, so don't peek under the chocolate ribbons!

Using cut drinking straws for supports, and taking a deep breath, I stacked the tiers.

The chocolate plastic was easy and fun. Melt chocolate, add warm glucose, cool, knead, roll and cut. I added the chocolate ribbons and bows and pronounced the thing done. It was about 12:30 am this morning.

Toby helped me lift it into the freezer. We let it chill for an while to harden everything up. Meanwhile we sat staring at each other exhaustedly (he'd done a lot of fence-building!). After that we wrapped it in plastic, then in foil, and stuck it back in the freezer to rest (for less than five weeks now!).

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with it.

So I figure this thing contains about:

• 2 pounds flour
• 8-9 cups sugar
• 25 eggs
• 5 cups cocoa
• entire small tin of baking powder
• little bit of salt
• 5-6 pounds of butter
• 1-2 pounds soy shortening (to cut the butter a bit)
• Half a bottle of Chambord
• 3 pounds white chocolate
• 1 pound dark chocolate
• 3 pounds raspberries
• 1/2 cup safflower oil
• some lemon juice
• tub of glucose syrup
• that stupid half cup of cocoa butter!