The Curse Of The 1St Wedding Cake (Long)
Decorating By lanibird Updated 9 Aug 2008 , 2:11pm by lanibird
As if it's not stressful enough....
So, my sister IM's me Monday morning saying her boss and boss's fiance decided out of the blue to get married on Friday (8.8.0
and could I please please make the wedding cake. I, for reasons unknown, say ok. We work out the details, nothing too big, an 8" & 6" square stacked, and off we go. Bake cakes, make filling and SMBC Wednesday. Working with a new recipe, and the cake isn't rising as high as I'm used to. But I make it work.
5:30 pm Wed night, working away torting and filling, when I remember we have open house on DS's school at 6. CRAP! Get the bottom torts for each tier in the fridge, rush to clean up my self and the kiddos and off to school we go.
Get back, DH goes off to pick up something for dinner, I go to the restroom. DH sends a text asking what we all want, so I seach out DS and ask, then head of to find 3 y/o DD. She's hiding under the living room coffee table. She is surrounded by crumbs. She dug her hands into the 6" waiting to be torted! 
I try not to kill DD. 
After dinner, off to the store I go to buy what I need to re-bake a cake. Just for a measly 6". Cake scaps galore. Get everything baked, torted, filled and crumb coated. No telling what time it was when I went to sleep. Hooray for Red Bull.
Today (Thursday) Things go great. So happy. Getting my SMBC so smooth, I'm a little giddy. Get the fondant on the cakes. I'm making good time! Yay!
Start working on the brush embroidery on the 8" square. It's so pretty. Notice a bubble forming on one side. Poke with a pin, press it down, it goes away. Back to piping. Bubble gets bigger. And bigger. And bigger. Take a break to eat dinner, then back to do something about this bubble. Try to re-smooth fondant, and berry filling starts oozing out the bottom! Frick on a stick! The top part of the cake shifted just past the BC damn, leaving the bottom most layer of filling uncontrolled. Berry filling oozing everywhere. The more filling that escapes, the more the cake starts to sink and fondant is bulging on all sides of the cake.
Rip the fondant off, 3 sides of completed piping gone. Get the kids to bed, send my sister off to the store to get some necessities, because I need to make more SMBC. Flip the cake over, and remove the layer and filling affected by the oozing. Make SMBC, rushed it a bit, and it turned to soup. So it is chilling in the fridge, and I'm typing this out while I wait for it to be ready to re-whip. I love Red Bull.
Cake is due at noon tomorrow. Wish me luck. 
I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors. It's midnight. I'm tired. Waiting for next shot of Red Bull to kick in.
I'm crossing my fingers for you!!!
I'm sure you'll do a great job, though. Can't wait to see the pics! 
I feel your pain good luck sending all positive cake vibes your way. I had the same thing happen last weekend as I was walking out the door to deliver a three tier cake the top layer slid off on to the floor
When I finally looked down on the floor there the cake was right side up not a dent or crack in the fondant cake Gods were with me good luck.
OMG. GOOD LUCK! It sounds like you have handled everything perfectly thus far, I have confidence you will be able to pull this one off!
Don't we all just need a cake fairy sometimes???
Good luck! It will work out 
So how did it all turn out? I'm exhausted just reading! lol
Hey all, sorry to leave you hanging.
First, thank you all for your encouraging words. Oh how they were needed.
After, what can only be described as a stress and fatigue induced bad decision to try and put the fondant on before the SMBC was full chilled, I had to pull the fondant off, again, and re-frost. Went to bed at 3. Was so stressed, don't think I fell asleep till 4. 
Up at 6 since almost 2 y/o DD decided that was a great time to wake up! Got the fondant on, and dowled it right away in hopes to prevent future slippage. Assembled it, and put my sister on pearl duty while I did the piping. Lots of imperfections, but was able to hide most with the embroidery.
At least it is done. Mostly. Just needs the flowers, but those will be put on at the the the reception site. Luckily the reception is at the boss's house, and the wedding isn't until 4, so it's not really, really late. My sister is on her way now to deliver it (I'd do up, but I've got to pick up DS from school in about half an hour). I can't breath and my heart is pounding so hard, I feel like one of those cartoon characters with their heart beating far out of their chest. Gonna have to try the breathing excercise suggested by pugmama (thank you! )!
Here's a picture of the cake, minus the flowers. I'll put the one with flowers in my gallery once my sister gets back.
Oh! dg10148, that is just amazing! The cake gods were totally on your side that day!
OMG... it's gorgeous without the flowers. I can't believe it gave you that much trouble, but it's really beautiful. Great Work!
It is amazing! Great job and thanks for the update. I think I'm really feeling your pain today since I agreed only 1 hour ago to make a last minute guitar cake(1st time) for my brother's best friend for tomorrow. Why do we do this to ourselves? lol
Great Job, I felt your pain, I had a wedding cake today and I went to bed at 4 am and got up somewhere between 7:30 and 7:45. Got it finished at the church where the reception was being held and by the way it was an 11:00 am wedding at the same place and finished about 11:45 am went home to change and was back at 12:15 pm to cut and serve the cake. It turned out cute , but I can't get the picture off my phone yet! Working on that issue. I need sleep!!! But, I have to go to work at 6:00. No sleep till I get home. Your cake was beautiful, sorry for the issues, it's terrible when it does go easy. If it wasn't for my husband stepping up to the plate. I'm not sure it would have got done! Thanks to all those who help us in a time of need.
Nicki
Oh goodness, I HATE days like that! I had a disastre today, too, where I had to rebake the cake.
It was lovely. I loved the brush embroidery.
It's really beautiful! You would never know it gave you that much trouble.
Awww! Thanks guys! I'm so glad you like it! I really love the look of brushed embroidery, and I'm so happy I got a chance to do it on the wedding cake.
The bride called to let me know it made it there ok, and that she was so happy with it! 
I loaded the picture into my gallery, http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1252747 I really love how it looks with the flowers!
And yes, no more Red Bull. Think I'll move to scotch!
Thank you for giving me a place to vent! I so love CC & CCrs!
Hoping the cake gods smile on those of you dealing with your own disasters soon!
How did you do that embroidered look?
I used a large 6 petal flower cutter to imprint the shape onto the fondant, traced it with a thick double line of RI, used #5 tip, then used a damp brush and gentle strokes pulling the RI towards the center. Then took the medium sized flower cutter, centered it in the larger one and repeated. Centers were piped dots using #3 tip.
So you DO have a cake fairy!!
Very beautiful - I love the quilting and embroidery 
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