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Seasons of Love |
by Barbara Jo
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Two of our dearest friends were getting married and we got to make the cake! Being the incredibly brave and trusting souls that they are, they gave us a free hand. They didn't have any idea what the cake was going to look like until they showed up for the wedding! If that's not trust, I don't know what is!
Naturally, being who we are, we came up with an incredibly complicated and time-consuming concept. We called it the Seasons of Love cake, because our idea involved each tier representing a different season of the year and of the couple's life together. We also tried to flavor each tier to match the season it represented. All four tiers were made with the same chocolate cake recipe, but Barbara May came up with the great idea to add different flavorings to the batter for each season. We also used a different filling for each layer, as follows.
Winter - Chocolate cake with chocolate chips added to the batter with a mint chocolate ganache filling
Autumn - Chocolate cake with hazelnuts added to the batter with a chocolate hazelnut spread filling
Summer - Chocolate cake with orange zest added to the batter with a cherry jam filling
Spring - Chocolate cake with orange zest added to the batter with an orange marmalade filling
Each tier of the cake was to be topped with a sculpted sugar plate appropriate to the season, then the sides wrapped with seasonally appropriate leaves, flowers, etc. as follows.
Winter - Blue snowflake sugar plate with royal icing snowflakes around the sides
Autumn - Red leaf sugar plate with gum paste autumn leaves around the sides
Summer - Green lily pad sugar plate with gum paste lily pads and lilies around the sides
Spring - Yellow flower sugar plate with gum paste gerbera daisies around the sides
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Each tier also got a symbolic bride and groom in the form of a pair of life-size little animals sitting on the sugar plate.
Winter - Pygmy yeti
Autumn - Dragonflies
Summer - Frogs
Spring - Caterpillars
The final touch was to involve a giant gum paste flower blooming out of the top of the cake.
In case all of that doesn't sound like enough, I also came up with a structural design for the cake wherein each layer was cantilevered out from the layer underneath so that it appeared to defy gravity.
I think trying to give you a straight, chronological report of our cake-creating activities would be more confusing than anything else, so I've divided my narrative into sections each describing one aspect of the project. I'll warn you now; it's a pretty long narrative. Enter at your own risk!