Buttercream frosting

I am a food connoisseur. I HATE artificial ingredients. For me, all butter is the way to go.

Buttercream Frosting

1 lb. powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 lbs. unsalted butter
1/4 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1/8 tsp. salt

In an electric mixer, whip the butter until pale yellow. Slowly add the rest of the ingredients. Once incorporated, whip with paddle attachment. If frosting is too dense, add milk, one tablespoon at a time.

My First Wedding Cake

I love to cook. Baking is not my specialty, but I do dabble in it from time to time. Recently I offered to cater a friend's wedding. Sadly, they had already settled on a local caterer, but she inquired if I made cakes. Hmmmm. I've made cute little cakes for my children. And I've attempted to make a cake for my sister-in-law's wedding 10 years ago. Those cakes turned out okay, but nothing I would take a picture and blog about, much less, use on a cake resume. So I thought to myself, "This would be an awesome opportunity for me to branch out and do something new!" I told my friend I'd make the wedding cake! And for the next 9 weeks, I thought about cake. I dreamed about cake. I perused Pinterest and YouTube, and called every friend I knew who made cakes professionally. Over the next 9 weeks, I made over a dozen cakes, including a 3 tier birthday cake, that resembled a wedding cake for my son's 1st birthday! This is my son's cake.

In this close up you can see A LOT of mistakes. I still had a lot of improvements to make in my smoothing techniques and only 7 days to do it!

Seven days later this is the final product. I was given full creative freedom on the cake, with one exception, which made me very happy. The only exception was they already had a topper picked out, and that is why there is a blank space on top without flowers. I personally don't like toppers. I love putting fresh flowers on the cake, and the bride's colors were daylily orange and fuchsia pink, which made for a vibrant flower display. I still had a lot of mistakes on the frosting, but less noticeable from a quick glance and many mistakes were covered by the flowers. :) Over all, I was extremely happy with my first wedding cake!

Here are the recipes:

Buttercream Frosting
Butter Cake (not a white cake)


Here are some links to YouTube videos that gave good instructions:
Smoothing buttercream
assembling a wedding cake
piping the seams of a tiered wedding cake
informative but long