Cake Friday -Wedding Edition

One of my favorite things to do is create a wedding cake.  I just love it.  Because when you are done, it's usually a HUGE cake.  Which often translates to impressive.  I've done a 5-tier Indian inspired Spice cake.  A small two-tier painted creation.  Several simple, elegant designs that consist of nothing more than just icing and ribbon.  

Unfortunately, BIG can also turn into a big problem.  As was the case with the following cake.  A friend was getting married and wanted the cake from Because I Said So.  OK. Simple enough.  I can do that.

And I did.

And it was beautiful!

That is, until I got it in the back of our Trail Blazer and tried to drive it 30 miles.  It. was. not. pretty.  I will not rehash the horror that was me sitting in a pile of teal icing and tears.  I had to do a very difficult thing and plunge my hands into the largest - and quickly crumbling- tier and rescue the top two.  But lets just go ahead and say that the bottom tier of the cake did not survive.  And being the (actually, I don't know what you would describe this as) --I didn't want to take a photo of the cake until it was 'all set up and perfect.'  Therefore, I have no photo of what it looked like pre-disaster.

But here it is after I had the wedding coordinator yank the dowel out of the bottom of the cake, and I piped a new border, and arranged the surviving flowers.

So, I learned a very valuable lesson that day.  Do not transport a cake that is potentially structurally unsound pre-assembled.  Yeah, I construct all wedding cakes ON-SITE now.  Because, well, I don't like crying like that!  Luckily the bride didn't even care.  And I couldn't bring myself to charge them for the cakes (yes, cakes, I delivered a grooms cake as well.  It made the trip just fine.)  And very few people at the wedding even knew what happened. 

But, I knew.  

I have a wedding cake for tomorrow, and another coming in August!  (They will definitely be delivered unassembled!)