1st Wedding Cake

by Linda
(Braselton, GA, USA)

My children started baking with me from the time they could stand on a chair against the counter. So it was no surprise when my daughter asked me to make her wedding cake. I said "yes" out of ignorance and love. When she showed me the picture of her dream cake with 9 tiers,2 sets of stairs, a water fountain, fresh flowers and intricate layers of drop string work, I knew I was in trouble! I had no idea how to support a tiered cake and I'd never piped a drop string! I used white, chocolate, spice, strawberry and fun-fetti cake mixes and made my own buttercream icing. It took many, many practice sessions before I got brave enough to actually drop the drop strings and allow gravity to do its thing! Because we lived in GA and the wedding was in PA, I had to use a small apartment kitchen to bake and assemble the cake... with an ancient oven and very different humidity factors(no A/C). Most of the cake was completed when I left for the rehearsal. When we returned from the dinner, the entire back of the largest layer had crumbled and drop strings were dropping on every layer. My daughter assured me that she didn't care how it looked - only that her mom had made it. But I cared! I took the cake to my sister's hotel room. We turned on the A/C full blast - hoping to freeze everything in place, prayed, and I began to repair. I worked through the night, slept two hours and delivered the cake to the reception site before heading to the church.If everything held together, it would be great. If not, I tried. The flowers on the cake are buttercream; we did our own fresh flowers. The groom teaches math, so 2 tiers have piped math symbols, with the bride and groom's names in Greek!