Dominican! Wedding! Cake!
- Claudia Steele
- May 28, 2012
- 4 min read
Dominican! Wedding! Cake! In exactly that order we had an incredible month in April. It started with my wonderful wedding cake decorating course, which was an incredible chance for me to do a mock up of the wedding cake I would later be making for my sweet Stephy. Now Stephy (as we call her) is one of my best friends and well family. We met two months after Maxxine was born and safe to say the rest is history. Much to my shock and delight this past year she asked me to be her Maid of honour, a job I took with great joy and at the risk of sounding redundant honour. Closer to the wedding she asked if I would make a wedding cake for her and although over flowing with glee I was also terrified. I have never decorated or made a wedding cake and up until this point my cakes in my opinion were always mediocre at best. Of course I am incredibly hard on myself but still I worried. When I did my course I was in a panic. How will I ever pull this off and if it goes horribly wrong how will I ever live past the embarrassment. The mock up seemed to make Stephy very happy and that gave me confidence. After the course we concentrated on getting ready for the wedding in the Dominican which took up all of our free time. On the 18th of April we boarded our flight for warmer climates and said good bye to Canada for eight days. The Dominican was beautiful, the people fantastic and we hadn't ever experienced heat and humidity like that and I'm from Toronto if you know what I mean! We had a wonderful week and met some amazing new people. After making new friends that I'm sure we will have for a life time and spending a vacation with the couples wonderful family (By the way Patrick if your reading this I still want to steal your mom :D) they got married on the 24th of April. The ceremony was beautiful the weather perfect and the food AMAZING!!!!
I love food so let me tell you at a wedding its a make it or break it and this resort MADE IT! We returned on the 27th sun kissed and happy to be home. That is when the cake comes in! Stephy and Patrick had decided to have a reception here for the family that didn't get to accompany us to Dominican and so I began to prepare for the big event. I had tried a chocolate cake recipe from the Martha Stewart collection that was an epic fail before we left. The cake though very chocolaty (a prerequisite of course) was dry and I mean give me a jug of milk so I can wash this slice down dry. So now what to do? Do I try to add some thing to make this cake moist, if that's even possible, or do I go another route altogether? I chose the latter and abandoned ship. Fortunately a great new friend (Rachel Harris) came to the rescue with an old family recipe for the most amazingly moist chocolate cake. Knowing that Stephy loves very chocolaty things I did modify the recipe slightly adding more chocolate into it and the cake turn out great and with an amazing consistency for holding the fondant. I was for warned that the guest would not eat the fondant and there for I should go with pre made there by avoiding wasted time making my own and so I listened and did as such. I still think that the marsh mellow fondant I make is far better tasting, however I was pleasantly surprised as the brand of fondant I bought was not as horrific as others I had tasted in the past. The chocolate cake was covered in chocolate ganache and the middle tier was marble with raspberry filling and chocolate ganache as well. If I was going to change anything in that cake it would definitely be the raspberry filling I for one was not satisfied with it what so ever. So as you can imagine it has now become my sol mission in life (When I'm not caring for my daughter or bloging of course!) to find a great raspberry filling recipe! The top tier was fake as the couple wanted to keep it and the topper was purchased on line by Stephy and might I add that pictures do not do it any justice as it was one of the most beautiful toppers I'd ever seen! The most nerve recking and heart wrenching part of this whole experience was the delivery. We had to drive about a hour and a half out to Drayton Valley with this cake still in the three separate pieces. let me tell you there was a lot of holding my breath, screaming "slow down" and praying to the cake gods. I can only be thankful that Trevor drove or it would have taken us two and a half hours to get there. Its amazing how when you pour your heart out in to a cake it becomes like one of your children, only in this case one that society deems acceptable for you to eat! LOL!! At any rate when we arrived the couple was happy which in all honesty is all that matters and i still had time to make my bruschetta. Every one had made wonderful food and I must admit I pigged out. Maxxine fell in love with Stephy's nephew Owen and would not leave him alone. They must have danced the whole night and when we got back to the hotel it wasn't long before she was passed out from shear exhaustion. In the end fun was had by all and it was a vacation I wont soon forget, a wedding to remember and my first ever wedding cake!!!
