Hammers, Hacksaws, and Lots of Sugar

On Friday morning, Amanda and I packed my car full of cake-decorating supplies, shortening, cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, aprons, rolling pins, fondant, airbrush equipment, and 14 separate frozen cakes, and drove to New Albany, Indiana to make 2 huge cakes for our friend Monica’s wedding. Amanda and I started work on the groom’s cake as soon as we reached the church. Adam wanted the cake to resemble a dirt racetrack, so we had to hack apart an extra cake to make the hills and jumps, and make an obscene amount of whipped frosting. During the summers, Amanda works at a local cake and coffee place, and sweet-talked her old boss into letting her borrow the pastry airbrush for this cake. The flower girls, waiting for the rehearsal to start, crowded around as we sprayed the cake in green and brown, and stared in amazement as Amanda used a pastry bag and specialty tip to create tufts of grass all around the painted track. I ran to the nearest superstore for a faux pine wreath and wire cutters, and made little pine trees to go with the toy car garnish.



Everything went smoothly for the groom’s cake; the bridal cake, on the other hand, was a struggle from the first. The huge layers of spice and pumpkin spice crumbled at the lightest touch, and we had to lighten the cream cheese frosting recipe to keep from tearing the cakes as we crumb-coated them. This being a very large and tall cake, we needed to cut wooden dowels to support each layer – Amanda had brought Lee’s pocketknife to cut the dowels, and after 1 hour, I had cut 4 of the 25 necessary supports. We retreated to Monica’s parents’ house, hoping to find something more powerful than a pocketknife, and were so happy to find a radial saw in their basement, which took care of the rest of our dowels in less than 10 minutes.

Natch, we discovered the next morning that I had measured the dowels incorrectly. I was sent back to the superstore to buy more dowels, a small hacksaw, and a sifter (I had broken Mrs. Adkins’ sifter the night before – the poor old thing just came apart in my hands).

We frosted and swirled the cakes a second time, and after removing our heels and any objects higher than 2 millimeters off the floor to ensure no tripping between the kitchen and the fellowship hall, we carried each layer out to the table. After all the layers were stacked, we had to hammer a sharpened dowel through the center of the stack to make sure they wouldn’t slide during the cutting process. This time, Amanda failed to measure the dowel, and we spent a breathless couple of minutes with her holding the mostly-submerged dowel steady and me gently working away with the hacksaw an inch or so above the cake. All through the ceremony, Amanda and I fought the impulse to run out of the sanctuary to make sure the cake hadn’t toppled.



We were also given the task of cutting and serving the cake, which was much more complex and sticky than I could have imagined. The cake, due to its moist deliciousness, proved difficult to slice cleanly. We also battled the customary nuisance at any wedding – an adorable yet annoyingly precocious 5-year-old boy, who was constantly underfoot, insisting on “helping”, and dropping plates of cake onto the carpet. By the end of the reception, the cake table looked like the battleground at Agincourt, smothered by the fallen chunks of cake.