Cake, the week before

Those of you who are still a month, 6 months, or a year away from your wedding are probably wondering what the average woman does a week before her wedding.

Well from my experience this time is devoted to one thing only, baking. First you have to make some cookies (meet the cucumbers for the Groom's Cake).

And really if you're gonna make a batch of sugar cookie dough you may as well finish it out: Along with making cookies I also had to set out to make the cake for the actual cake part of the groom's cake (that was a lot of cake).
After baking for oh an hour or so (cakes take a long time in bread pans, who knew?) it promptly went in the freezer for another day. What do you think I'm crazy enough to do all the cake in one day?

Well okay so a day passed and then I shaped the cake with my handy dandy knife and vegetable peeler set:

Back in the freezer the more hot dog shaped cake went to wait another day. In the mean time on my day of hell I also had to make the bun so out came tons of sugar and rice krispies:

This was the absolute bane of my existence. It was easily the most I have ever sworn at a baked good, oh but I am getting ahead of myself. Before I could really frost the bun I had to fondant the hot dog:
After rolling out the fondant (that I turned red) and adding the cool little end things so it looked more like a hot dog I turned to icing the krispie bun (after spending three hours trying to get just the right color). Once that was done in went the hot dog and then something bad happened:
As you can see from the toothpicks the bun decided that it no longer wanted to stay up nd gravity was taking over. This was on Wednesday and the damn cake had to last til Friday.


Here began hours of swearing and crying as I worried and fretted that all the work I put into this cake was for naught as it wouldn't make it to Friday. On Thursday we added the "poppy seeds" (better known as chocolate chips) and then I got a great idea, just sandwich the thing in between my bookends.


It kept it good and together right up until we got to the restaurant (I was begging it to stay together as I held it on my lap) and we could add the last bits. So here it is, the groom's cake. The one thing that drove me absolutely nutty the week before the wedding:


I knew I was on the right track when the toddler in the back seat kept asking why I had a hot dog and if he could eat it.



Everyone was generally amazed and those who were willing to eat it said it tasted good so I think that despite all the cursing, rolling, baking, stirring, and sweating it was worth it in the end.

My maniacal plan has come to fruition

It's 7:30 in the morning. I'm up sitting at my computer while my guy sleeps, neither of us have to be at work today, and it's still dark out. So why am up so early?

Oh well maybe because I'm getting married in 32 hours!

It's crazy how the time has just snuck up on us and before I knew it, it was October and then the week sort of disappeared and now it's Friday.

Today is going to be mostly devoted to:

1. Trying to clean our apartment up as there is no chance after this morning and we have laundry that badly needs to get done.
2. Meet and greet all our friends and make sure they are settled and have all their shit together (IE their clothes and accessories. I'm not requiring they all get enemas).
3. Practice! Practice! Practice! Okay so we'll probably just do it once and without all the high kicks.
4. Have a really good Greek meal and hand out presents to all our bridal company (I can't wait to see what they think of the things I got them).
5. Get some sleep. At least I hope I can, I've been sleeping very lightly as of late which is slowly driving me mad.

So that's not too bad right? Gonna have a nice relaxing Wedding eve.

Oh I forgot about the bane of my existence this week, the groom's cake. I promise once it's all complete and finished and nice looking I shall tell the tale of how it's been kicking my ass and driving me insane.

For now I'll just offer a teaser picture of it ready for the toppings:

Good Morning and day to you all!

At least it's edible

The day after the pipe cleaner shower, me and my MOH attempted to make our version of a Chicago style hot dog for the groom's cake (this is what we called a dry run, though in reality we had one hell of a watery mess all over the place).

This is our inspiration

To make it even more of a challenge our wedding coordinator and her fiance wanted to come and watch us try to make this thing along with my old roommate. So we had a full apartment watching me make an ass out of myself.

The first thing that I did way back was actually make the cake part. I used a loaf pan to bake the cake and then put it in the freezer for a few days to make it easier to handle. On the day of, I pulled the freezing cold thing out and started to carve it to look like a hot dog.

My MOH had the brilliant thought to use our vegetable peeler to make the curves of the hot dog. It worked out a lot better than me using our bread knife (which caused a nice gash on my finger before I switched).

Meanwhile she made some icing (and by some I mean more icing than a herd of 4th graders can eat) as well as started the rice krispie bun and I began the horrible horrible experience of trying to use fondant. We'd gotten some simple colored stuff from the local Hobby Lobby that was not in the mood to cooperate.

I swore and sweated trying to get the thing to roll out and also keep it from breaking (I failed a lot). We got the hot dog part covered pretty well but that bun was gonna be impossible, we just didn't have enough fondant in one color. So one side was yellow and the other orange.Meet our play-doh hot dog. The colors on the box had looked much more toned down and well more hot dog colored, but upon pulling it out we realized that it was actually a neon pink, orange and yellow.

But we kept plugging along. We had lots of other toppings to add, my old roomate smooshed up some lime jello with pineapple in it to make the relish while I added the tomatoes (cherry pie filling).

My MOH frosted a cookie with different colored green icing (I managed to dye one of my fingers bright green while messing with the food dye). Those were put on top to be the cucumber slice. The less we talk about the "pickle" the better.

This is the final product (minus the poppy seeds) and well we learned a lot of stuff. For one only the hot dog is gonna be covered in fondant, two we're leaving the pickle off, and three we're gonna make stronger rice krispies by mashing them up (also if I am anywhere near dye I have to wear gloves).

The only thing left to do was to try eating it. Oh man you want to talk about a sugar overload, we all only got through some of the cake before we had to give up. It's sad but I think it looked a lot better after we'd cut into it.

Well now I just have to try to make it again all by myself the wedding week. I'm insane aren't I?

Can you build it?

Um, well we're gonna try anyway.

My MOH and I are nuts. There is just no denying that fact. For her wedding we decided to make all her mints using almond bark and adding food dye. Bad idea. Turns out that makes the melted almond bark turn all chunky so we had to add tons of oil to fix it.

Then there was the time we were making hobbit costumes and she thought that to make the feet we should just get some spray insulation foam, spray that onto our shoes and then shape it. In then end our hands were covered in sticky goo we couldn't get off and I had a big glob in my hair. (In the end we just stuffed and spray painted some toe socks)

Now we've decided to try and take on making my groom's cake (or his groom's cake, someones groom cake). My fiance has said that what he really wants is a Chicago style hot dog, what with him being from Chicago and loving food and all.

If you've never seen one they put everything short of mayo and sardines on these things. So we've sat down and tried to figure out all the stuff to make this hot dog work.

• Hot dog - use red velvet cake and then try shaping with and covering with fondant
• Bun - rice krispie treats (thank you Ace of Cakes)
• Poppy seeds on the bun - chocolate chips
  
• Onions - coconut (which I hate but he can't eat onions anymore so it might go on the side)
• Tomatoes - chop up some cherries
• Pickle Relish - a fruit salad with kiwi, apples, melons, and some green syrupy thing
• Cucumber - cookie that we frost to look green
• Pickle spear - possibly a banana we dye green
• Hot peppers - no idea, maybe no one can have them

As you can see from that long list we are in way over our heads. I've baked some (banana bread is the best I can pull out and we all know how well that goes over) and my MOH has a cake decorating kit but I fear we're gonna be doing a lot of test bakes and eating a whole lot of cake.

Is anyone else plotting something equally insane for their wedding or are you smartly just trusting the professionals?