Tiers and Tears. The Wedding Cake.

A picture is worth a thousand words. I am making the wedding cake for our son and his bride-to-be. I watched my mom make hundreds of cakes. We laughed, we cried, we ate cake for dinner. My mom made the wedding cakes for each of her four children. And anyone else who asked her. She would not take money, she did it for love.

I wish she was here to play in the kitchen with me. I have a dozen questions to ask her. And I need her to level all the cakes. As I was sifting flour and trying to remember if I had added the baking powder, I invited her into the kitchen. I know she is long dead, but maybe she could hang out for bit. She was detail oriented, insisted on greasing and flouring each and every pan. I try and cut parchment rounds and fudge my way around greasing and flouring.  And realizing when an edge sticks that I should have listened to my mother.

The kitchen windows were wide open as I was pondering the possibility of just spritzing the pan with baking spray instead of cutting parchment or greasing and flouring the large 12 inch round pan. A sleek opinionated crow settled on a nearby tree branch and started to fuss at me. Oh, mom, there you are. I could hear her, “Just take the time and grease and flour the pan.”

I greased, I floured, the cake slid right out.

I developed my own recipe for the cake. I have been working on a vanilla cupcake recipe for three years, getting closer with each batch to perfection. I love cake. We ran trials last week of the recipe and it translated well to layers, I think the olive oil is the secret.

I will keep you posted on the cake progress and share the cupcake/cake recipe with you once I get it entered into the recipe software. As you can see by the photo, it is still in post-it-note and hand-written stage. I have not written down the mixing method yet. I am still waffling between the creaming method vs the two-stage method of cake mixing. I am leaning towards the two-stage method.

I will share more about the ingredients as I continue to bake cake layers and freeze them. I would not have considered citrus infused olive oil and Greek yogurt as cake components, but wow do they play well together.

I would love to hear about your favorite cakes and the precious memories that go with them.
Love, Terri