Brown Modern Wedding Cake

This is a cake I did this weekend. Another bakery in Torrance CA designed it, so I can't take credit for the elegance. I am so happy that a bride was so brave to go out of the box and do something completely different for Dalton, GA! We delivered it to the Farm Clubhouse in Rocky Face, GA. Her colors were pink and brown. She even made homemade apple butter as favors for the guests. It was packaged beautifully.

Anyway, to the cake. It was a 4-tier white cake with raspberry preserves (seedless of course!), my house buttercream and chocolate fondant. The lines and roses were made from white chocolate fondant. Super tasty, but I find it's very hard to work with, especially for these flowers. It is just so floppy even after I added some tylose. I found the crystals in the floral section at Wal-Mart. I attached wire through the hole in the crystal and built the simple rose around it. Not all had crystals. I had to let them dry in a clean egg carton so they would hold some of their shape. Another trick for a cake like this is that I made about a 1/4" well in the layers that help hold the preserves, that way they next layer sits on the outside 1/2" of cake and doesn't go sliding off. I don't think I'm explaining this as easy as I see it in my mind. Can you just get inside there? Well, maybe you don't want to do that! Anyway, if you just make an icing dam and fill it with the preserves (or other slick filling) your layers will slide. Some fillings don't ever change consistency with they get cold and that makes keeping the layers lined up a challenge. Lastly, my husband is still not allowed to lift anything over 25lbs and this cake was well over. It had 12lbs worth of fondant! My mom offered to help me and she tried, but she was so scared she was going to drop it that I ended up having to grab it and run. A little scary! She and I have learned that there are things she can help with, but at 67 with bad knees, carrying cakes will not be one of them. She did keep me very good company and made friends with all the staff while she waited on me to take pictures. We had a good time!