Just a short post tonight, because I have indeed baked wedding cakes with some success but also, apparently, at the price of a migraine and some serious wobbliness, so it’s an early night for me.
Gluten- and dairy-free (and, allegedly, low-fructose) fresh ginger cakes with blood orange and rhubarb filling and wild hibiscus flower
There will be proper photos – and recipes – later, but a photo of the full cake may have to wait, as it was dark by the time we served it, and I couldn’t assemble the tower ahead of time because toffee + high humidity = liquid toffee and a very sad Catherine whose spun sugar all just melted… and the upshot of all this was that we couldn’t get any photos of the complete work in any sort of light at all. Hopefully the official photographers will be able to help out with this! In the meantime, here are a handful of photos of cakes in various stages of preparation and completion. And a lot of photos of caramel…
Caramel nut spikes (see the end of this post for The Making Of photo-documentary, and special cake-topper feature!!)
Oh, and while I don’t have a proper photo yet, I really was pleased with how everything turned out in the end – the allergy-friendly cakes, in particular, were received with enthusiasm by everyone (including the non-allergic, who decimated the vegan, gluten-free, fructose-free, nut-free chocolate chilli cupcakes with hot chilli ganache and chipotle chocolate mousse in record time). Andrew was a bit bemused at the number of marriage proposals I was getting. Sometimes while he was present.
Chocolate chilli cupcake, with gooey ganache centre but no icing yet.
And the ginger cakes with rhubarb and blood orange filling were magnificent, though I say so myself.
… and here they are, waiting to be iced…
Though it was sort of weird starting to make the hummingbird cakes yesterday evening and looking at this batter and wondering why the texture was so *weird*… and then realising that this was because it had eggs and gluten and nuts and dairy in it, unlike any of the other cakes I’d made recently…
Making caramel nut stalactites…
… which led to this…
… and thence to this, because hey, I’m not going to turn up my nose at accidental spun sugar…
… which then ends up on top of the croquembouche cakes, with a few tiny flowers thrown in…
(and yes, that’s me in the extremely pink corset)
More photos tomorrow, I promise, and there will definitely be recipes, too, for these cakes and the other desserts I made – I have invented and refined so many recipes in the last few days that I need to write down before I forget them!
Good night!
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This time last year…
Learning Petits Fours Recipe: Lemon Meringue Sponge Cake In Which I am Famous, and also have Yummy Cheese
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