Dusted Ties the Knot

I finally made an honest man out of the sweetie a couple of weeks ago. We neither one go in for big to do’s, so we chose to say our vows in front of a judge in a quiet park downtown with the kids and Paul’s parents. My best friend Stephanie flew in from Texas, too, but shhhh, don’t tell anyone because my family thinks thing we only had the kids in attendance. We’ve got issues, okay? Sweetie wanted to get married on our upcoming cruise but I wanted the kids there, good photos, and of course there was no way someone else was going to get to make my wedding cake. I also made some treats for Brody’s day care. The recipe for the cookies, their frosting and the design for the wedding cake came from one of my favorite blogs, iambaker . The recipe for the wedding cake came from an old Bon Appetit via Epicurious.

Wedding Cookies

These sugar cookies from iambaker are perfect for rolling out, cutting shapes and decorating. I have used this recipe several times and it is very consistent. It gets pretty hot in my kitchen, so I refrigerate the dough before rolling it out. I usually use her cookie glaze underneath the buttercream, but I skipped that step this time and I was still happy with the results. The cookies soften up nicely after a day or two, making it a good recipe for when you need to bake a couple of days ahead of time. I decorated the cookies to match the style of the wedding cake, but I couldn’t resist adding a little color to the hydrangea cookies. 

Raspberry/Strawberry Meringues

I saw these sweet little meringues on Sweetapolita and since they matched the theme of the cake, I just had to make a batch, despite the pink color. Although they are lovely and I adore how shiny they came out, in the end I just didn’t care much for the taste of them. They are made like a normal meringue, but have a bit of Jello added in with the sugar. The jello imparts the pink color and a fruit flavor (I used a mixture of raspberry and strawberry), but they were much too sweet and, well, Jello tasting for me. Even if meringues aren’t your cup of tea, though,  take a long look around the Sweetapolita site. If 5 minutes on there doesn’t make you want to go bake a cake and break out your decorating gear, I don’t know what will. 

Lemon-Blackberry Wedding Cake with Italian Meringue Buttercream

Paul gave me my engagement ring on April 29th, 2011, which by coincidence happened to be the same day as the royal wedding. I promise you, he had no idea. To celebrate the royal wedding, iambaker posted her own royal wedding cake. I loved it on first sight and immediately wanted it for my own wedding. I got sidetracked for a month or two by a gorgeous black fondant cake, but I came back to this design, partially because I had a perishable filling and black fondant would not do well with refrigeration, but also because it is just so lovely and sweet. I chose a recipe from epicurious for the cake. It was a dense lemon cake and the layers were filled with a mixture of lemon curd and whipped cream and layered with blackberries and raspberries. The frosting was gorgeous. It was the first time I made (successfully, anyway) an Italian meringue buttercream. Please share a moment of silence with me for the huge batch of Swiss meringue buttercream that I threw away a few months ago because I had no idea that if I just chilled it and kept beating the heck out of it that magic would happen. Thank you. This buttercream was very subtly flavored with lemon. I’m sure that the  decorations would have been much more crisp if I had used a decorator’s buttercream (such as on the cookies), but the flavor made up for the softness. I would bet that if I had been more familiar with this type of buttercream, the frosting would have been much more smooth. I honestly didn’t mind the way it came out, though. It looked soft and romantic, perfect for a simple spring wedding.

The flowers weighed almost as much as him!
Photo by http://www.kruppaworks.com

Brody worked up his cake appetite by carrying my flowers (and occasionally bashing them on the ground!).

He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me…..
Photo by http://www.kruppaworks.com

Thank you to everyone for being patient while I had a couple of weeks off. Posts will probably still be a bit spotty for a couple more weeks, but once vacation is over I should be back on track. Remember if you are following along with the weight loss journeythat you can see where I’m at on my weight loss ticker on my “About” page.