Alana
Theresa and I have a wedding cake project for another bestie! Katherine recently became engaged to her man, Brendan, while on a trip in BC. We are SO excited! Our excitement is not only because K is the first of our nursing trio to get hitched, but because Theresa and I will be in her bridal party as well as the ones making her wedding cake!
Theresa and I both worked together to make a wedding cake for our friends Stephen and Ashlea, almost two years ago now. I think it will be a similar process, but tricky because Katherine and Theresa now live in Ottawa! Thank goodness for Skype! After some online chatting we solidified a plan to make a red velvet cake + cupcakes with a purple twist. Tentatively we will be decorating with cream cheese frosting in a rosette pattern.
The first step, of course, is for us to find an awesome recipe to use. I have a few different ones, but I don’t remember the differences between any of them. Somehow none of them have been blogged… The last time I made red velvet cake was actually for Katherine’s birthday a few years ago. She loved it, but as mentioned in my blog post I have no idea which recipe T and I actually used. Oops.
I sent Theresa the first red velvet cake recipe that I ever used, so that we could both give it a try. My cake did not turn out well because (I think) I messed up the baking times, causing my cake to fall and become dense. Theresa made cupcakes that actually turned out well, thankfully. It’s a good recipe, but we both thought we could find ones that’s better. The purple did turn out very purple, however. We both used Wilton gel dye in violet, but I found it to be a very blue toned purple. I plan on trying my AmeriColor electric purple for my next cake.
Theresa and I both think that the rosette look for frosting is really pretty. I have never used this technique before, so this was definitely a trial run for me. I find that cream cheese frosting has a tendency to be rather unstable. While decorating it held up okay, but I think if it were any warmer out that the frosting would not have held it’s place on the cake. We may need to play with frosting recipes as well, and ensuring that the ingredients are cool enough to avoid this problem!
Chateau Gateau 