Let them eat cake....

I'm returning to the wedding theme JUST ONE MORE TIME! On Saturday night, my son and his new wife held an 'event' for all the friends and family who weren't with them in Vegas (namely US!!!!) It was held at Spinnaker Tower, Gunwharf in Portsmouth. As you can see below, the views are spectacular and luckily, the rain stopped, the sun shone and it was a fabulous view of the Solent, Isle of Wight and surrounding areas as the sun went down.

A few weeks ago, they asked me if I would organise a cake for the night - I readily agreed and then started thinking about how I was going to produce a cake suitable for a wedding in the AGA! As I have told you before, the AGA is brilliant for lots of things but I haven't had a lot of success with cakes. There are two ovens - one permanently at 220 - 250 degrees and the other 120 - 150 (not good when you need 180 for a good cake outcome!) This project has caused me one or two sleepless nights and quite a few fretful hours recently...after a few trial runs (and much consumption of chocolate mud cake by whoever would agree to be a tester) I finally found one I was happy with. I wasn't game enough to take a chance on the cupcakes though - the temperature in the AGA varies depending on how much it's being used; therefore, the first batch may cook perfectly and by the time you get to the 4th or 5th, they may not as the heat will have dropped....! Not ideal when you need nearly 100 cupcakes, all perfectly the same size and height!
I found a place in south London called Crumbs and Doilies and they came to my rescue with dozens of beautifully decorated indulgent cakes (two sizes - diet and don't care..) On Saturday morning, we set off early for London, complete with topcake, ribbons etc., collected the cupcakes and zipped down the A3 to Petersfield to the Real Flower Company to collect some of their magnificent scented garden roses to decorate the finished cake. We were lucky enough to find they had some 'chocolate' coloured roses in stock - hard to see from the photo, they are a burnished pinky chocolate colour. Off we went, now laden with buckets of roses, be-ribboned boxes of cakes, bags of ribbon and a fragile iced topcake. The tower doesn't close to the public until 6.00 p.m. and it was about 6.20 p.m before we managed to get everything into the fast lift which whisks you to the top - 30 minutes before the guests were arriving & a seven tier confection to assemble! It was finished with literally moments to spare and I slipped on my high heels as the first drinks were being poured! Talk about stress! This is the end result - I think they liked it - there wasn't a crumb left at the end of the night so I'm presuming they did! I'm crossing Wedding Cake Supplier off my list of potential business ventures as I type this......

Happy week.........s