Something blue-ish?

I just finished a wedding cake class at the Cake Art store, and here is the cake we made in class today!

That's the short story... let's talk about this cake a little bit more.

Remember that Thursday night I wrapped up Wilton Course 3, for which I needed a fondant covered cake and a dummy, and 40 fondant roses.  So I had Friday off, and then for today I needed another cake and 2 dummies iced and ready to go, 350+ royal icing drop flowers, and a whole lot of buttercream. 

Well, I had already made a triple batch of buttercream on Monday, and I was hoping that would be enough, but at midnight last night I had my doubts and made an extra batch.

I started making my cake (the 9" tier) at around 3:30 PM yesterday afternoon, and I decided to try a new recipe from Margaret Braun's book.  Her recipe was for 10" pans, and I thought I scaled down enough batter by making some cupcakes and poured generously into my 9" pans so that I would be sure to have a 4" tier without additional torting.  I overfilled the pans so badly, and made such a mess, it took a Christ-like miracle to make these cakes into something that looked like a reasonably stable 9" tier, and the scraps filled 12 baskets.  Not to mention the giant mess in the bottom of my oven, which I still haven't dealt with...  

So I managed to make it to class on time with all my supplies at 10:30 this morning on not nearly enough sleep and with a serious case of caffeine jitters from my morning coffee. 

I did this whole cake in 3 hrs and 15 minutes.  The class was 3 hrs long, and after we were done with the doweling and stacking, I pretty much felt like I was on TLC's Ultimate Cake-Off.  When there were 15 minutes left I was positively frantic, my hand was shaking like a leaf, and just plowed through to create a complete cake by the time we had to pack up and go.

As a result, I can see sloppiness in parts of the cake, but I think the overall result is still pretty nice.  If I had more time, it would have looked more polished.  But I have real perfectionism issues....

Again, I don't like the plastic pillars, but I did not design this cake.  I learned some new techniques, like the vertical shell columns on the middle tier, and the crown shell border on the top of both the 6" and 12" tiers.

I really enjoy doing stringwork, but I was doing it in a rush, and it drives me crazy when all the strings don't look identical (which to my eye they don't.)  Again, that perfectionism problem.

At the last minute, there was an opening in Cake Art's Business of Cakes class this afternoon, so right after constructing my wedding cake, I ran to Subway for some sustenance (I was shaking violently at this point from lack of nutrition), and came back for a 3 hour lecture on the cake business.  This lecture reaffirmed my suspicion that there is no way I could get a food service permit for my apartment kitchen, but I definitely learned a few new things...

Anyway, it's been a long day of cake!  I'm kind of relieved that my cake courses are over for a bit so I have time to catch up on cleaning up and working out. My kitchen is a mess and my hands have a constant smell of sugar.  But not to worry, there will be more cakes soon...