Red Poppy Wedding Cake

Back in August I started work on a dummy (styrofoam) cake with the intention of building it in layers to practice some new techniques I've been wanting to try. It started out with lots of plain white ruffles:

And then those ruffles got a paint job, making them pop out more against the white cake and look a little bit less like petals and a little bit more like strings or frills.

And now, they've grown into bright and beautiful poppies. Straight outta The Wizard of Oz ya'll.

Styrofoam cake for the win. I loved seeing how many different cakes I could stretch out of one! Poppies are one of my favorite flowers and I did them in a slightly abstract style, purposefully leaving brush strokes for a painted look.

I think I might like it without the leaves even better:

Same design, three really different ways. Which is your favorite?

Summer Wedding Cake Tasting

Last week I did a cake tasting with a sweet couple who I am SO excited to be making their wedding cake this August, Hannah and John. Their wedding is going to be an intimate affair and will take place in Oak Island, NC. I will be delivering the cake to their venue personally and so far we have a great start on their flavors and concept. I had fun coming up with the flavors for this one and they really challenged me with some of their new ideas. What we ended up with were four stellar combinations we all loved!

John is a self-proclaimed 'vanilla guy' so we started out with a vanilla bean cake filled with the same Italian buttercream that I frost the outside of a wedding cake with. A summer wedding calls for fresh berries somewhere on the list so I did a vanilla bean pound cake filled with sweetened whipped cream and fresh berries as well for them. Hannah's request was some combination of lemon and almond, which I re-created into a lemon pound cake with almond cream cheese filling. For their last taste, they let John's sugar loving mom choose a white chocolate cake filled with creamy milk chocolate ganache.

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All of the cakes were a hit and we ended up going with a tier of each to make up their three tier wedding cake. As for design, Hannah knew she wanted to go for a traditional white cake with pearl beading border. With a plain white cake, we talked about a few different options they had to make it interesting but keep it white. I covered one of their taste cakes in fondant and did a textured design on another one so they could see both elements. We ended up adding a delicate filagree band on the middle tier for embellishment and we're going to use fresh flowers leftover from their centerpieces to accent. It should be a classy and elegant centerpiece to their reception which I would expect no less from these two. Stay tuned for more details as their cake comes together.