Wednesday, July 6, 2011

How to Make Tiny Wedding Cakes...Sort of

Alrighty gang, I think I have finally recovered from the cake-making mania from this holiday weekend. It went fair, but took much longer than I anticipated. The large (purple) wedding cake went over just fine. The bride wasn't as excited as I had hoped, but then again she was in that "I'm getting married tomorrow, I need a cigarette" mode, so I decided not to push too much for feedback. I didn't actually attend the wedding, but I heard some of the guests were interested in buying their own cakes in the future. Let's see how that works out.

A "meh"  rainbow wedding cake

Let's talk about the mini cake. Last week I was challenged to do a mini wedding cake as seen below:


Super Teeny
I knew I couldn't get it that small, but I decided to take a stab at it and here is what I came up with:

Yes, the layers are rainbow and slightly out of focus.



So again, I am going to have to say...




So how did I do it? I'll teach you how so you can make it yourself.
 
First things first, make the Rainbow Cake Batter per these instructions from the earlier post.

Instead of baking these layers in a cake pan, I used a jelly roll pan, making two colors at a time. I tried two different techniques to get the batters not to mix. Both were pretty successful, so just use the one that you like best.

Technique 1:
Grease your jelly roll pan very well, then place a strip of aluminum foil make into a thick L shape and fit snugly across the middle of the pan. Then add your batter to both sides. Shake the pan a little so that the batter settles evenly across the pan.



Technique 2:
You can make an entire section of the pan a foil cut out so that it actually sits in one whole side of the pan. make sure to spray it really well so it doesn't stick.


The cakes are so thin that they will cook very quickly (between 3-6 minutes). You almost have to stand there and watch them, lest they end up like mine.

Cool completely on a rack before starting the next part.
Now most people would think the next part is cutting those teeny tiny little rounds and icing them to stack. I went a different route. I decided to ice all the layers as if it were a thin, square sheet cake, then used a sharp biscuit cutter to cut through all the layers at once. It saved a lot of time and agony, in my opinion.



There really is no leveling of the layers for this cake, so you pretty much have to cut from the middle or you cake will have a significant lean. This gave me some nice fat layers. The bottom later of the cake was able to keep all of its rainbowy goodness. The middle and bottom layers were far too tall to be accurately proportioned. I ended up removing two layers of cake from both the middle and top layers for aesthetics.

Each section of cake was then individually covered in a layer of fondant and stacked. The layers were held in place with a toothpick. I inserted the toothpick about two-thirds of the way into the bottom two layers and used the remaining part to hold the top layer in place. It worked perfectly.

Tiny little pearls of fondant were rolled from scraps. A little bit of crumbs got stuck in there, that's why few of the pearls have a yellow or green tint to them. It was getting late though, and I was too tired to care on a project that was just to challenge myself.

I was going to make a rose for the top, but my first flower looked like such a pretty, little Calalily. I decided to stick with that instead. It turned out very cute if I do say so myself. The cake is now sitting in my fridge because I can't bring myself to eat it.

So, there you have it, how to make a teeny tiny wedding cake. Enjoy!

2 comments:

  1. The so-called "Meh" wedding cake -- that's the one you made? There's nothing "meh" about it! It's beautiful! Good job! Strong work! And kudos on the mini cake!

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