Saturday, February 27, 2010

Oh, how sweet it is! But what the hell is that crease?!? (Seriously Saturdays)

You may remember reading about my least favorite part of the entire wedding here.  I am not super excited about our cake.  Originally, I wanted a cupcake tower - which I would, in fact, have been super excited about.  At one point, Mr Fix It even gave in to the idea...briefly.  Because then he ripped the carpet out from under me and insisted we have a cake.  Not traditional mind you - just a cake.

So we had come up with some ideas for different and unique cakes.  To which our caterer then shocked us by trying to charge an *extra* $1,000 for the one cake we really wanted.  (Remember our cake was supposed to have been included in our catering package.)

Well, that wasn't gonna fly and while she made decent cakes, they kept deterring us from our desires to have fondant on the cake we wanted and from trying our own fondant recipe we wanted to have them use.  They kept going over and over again about how buttercream is the way to go but we are anti-buttercream. 

Mr Fix It had had enough (so had I), so he said, screw it!  Let's just give the money to your mom's friend that makes cakes for all your other family functions.  Fine with me because I am seriously over the cake.  I don't care if it's falling over as long as it tastes good (that's not true actually). 

Well, we met with our friendor who is only charging us $1.00 a slice for our cake.  Mr Fix It is going to build the stand for her because we want offset round layers.  We discussed cake flavors and are happy with having two layers in red velvet with a real cream cheese frosting and another layer with white cake and raspberry filling with a whip cream frosting and then the 4th layer will be lemon with lemon filling and whip cream frosting.  Apparently the whip cream frosting is not as sweet as buttercream and our friend really encouraged us to use it. 

Well, we told her that we'd love to have her try this marshmallow fondant recipe we found.  It is supposed to be the same consistency as regular fondant but actually tastes good instead of bland or dry.  She was on board and made a small test cake for us to see and taste.

Here's what we got:





Now please understand that apparently the cake was perfectly smooth and flat when she first made it.  She gave it to my mom who transported it and stored it in a fridge until I could get it the next day.  My mom insisted it did not look this way when she was finished with it and handed it off to her.  I did notice yesterday as I was reviewing the recipes I had emailed her that one of the web sites said you should not refrigerate marshmallow fondant, so I don't know if the refrigerator did something to it or if time itself had it's way with gravity or what.  I am going to ask her about the refrigeration part and if that is all that the problem is, that would be amazing!  Perhaps the proportions of the ingredients need to be adjusted, too?  But this creasing and melting look that is not perfectly smooth is unacceptable! 

The good news?  It actually tastes phenomenal!  The cake was super moist and yummy...I'm still eating it almost 5 days after it's been sitting in the fridge, too and it's still moist and good!  The frosting (cream cheese) was not too sweet at all and you could not even taste the fondant!  The fondant tasted good (or rather let the cream cheese overpower it).  But now we are stuck trying to figure out what to do because our friend does not think the marshmallow fondant is going to work and we really don't want to have to go with gross tasting fondant!

Mr Fix It insists we must use the regular disgusting fondant if this is what we are going to get because it is more important to him that the cake looks good rather than tastes good.  (sigh)

So now I need to call her next week and follow up on what our new options are.  This cake thing sucks!  Seriously!

P.S.  If you'd like the recipe for the marshmallow fondant, you can find it here or another one here.  It's actually super yummy.  She's never worked with it before so like I said, it could just be that something needs to be adjusted.  ???

6 comments:

little luxury list said...

Marshmallow fondant?! Yum!

I can't believe Mr. Fix-it is more into looks than taste! Anyway to pull him to your side? Good luck on the next cake trial and so cool that you found a cake friendor!

Heather said...

I think it’s likely because of the refrigeration. As the cake cooled in the refrigerator, the fondant likely tightened and condensed, thus warping. I think you should do another test run and see what happens if it stays at room temperature, although I’m not sure how long it’s safe to leave out the cream cheese filling. If the cake must be refrigerated, I’m guessing the fondant recipe will need to be adjusted somehow. Looks yummy!

Kim said...

Oh no, I'm so sorry that the cake has been such a source of stress! Of all things! I would trust your mom if she said that it looked fine before she refrigerated it . . . in the meantime, definitely ask for another trial so you can see what the fondant looks like at room temp.

Sarah said...

I don't want a traditional cake either, in fact part of the reason I don't want one is because my MIL and her sister do all the cakes for my husbands family and we are therefore obligated to have them do it and not someone else. Now their cakes are nice. At my BIL and SIL's wedding their cake was actually pretty neat...until it started to melt and the icing shells they'd made started to fall off- even before the ceremony(and this was in Feb)! I just don't in general go for tiered cakes because I've seen too many leaning cakes. Which would be ALL bad.
But you got to please your man and go with what he wants too. I was lucky and we got a compromise of a little cake or two and then pies. YUM!

Pug(s) and Bugg said...

Yeah fondant doesn't "weather" or settle well. But I bet it will look great for the wedding! Just know if you save your 1-year cake layer it'll look interesting! :)

-kjpugs

Mrs T said...

I am crossing my fingers for a cake miracle. You poor thing. But I guess in the grand scheme of things if this is all that goes wrong - you'll be all good!

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