When life hands you lemons…bake your wedding cake!

“Your good friend has just taken a piece of cake out of the garbage and eaten it. You will probably need this information when you check me into the Betty Crocker Clinic.”
-Miranda, Sex and the City

Sometimes it scares me how accurate SATC can be. What sweets lover wouldn’t do such a thing for a bite of moist, sweet cake covered in frothy, fluffy buttercream frosting? (Um, ok, getting hungry here). Or at least be willing to bake a dozen of them for her wedding? For those of you who are new to EAD, much (most!) of my wedding is homespun, from-scratch, authentic DIY. Cakes and all! True, I will be having some help, namely from my uncle, who is a German baker (go random family skills!) But I’m certainly getting in on this fun too!

The week of the wedding, I plan on baking some cakes to throw into the ring at our reception. I was the lucky recipient of 6 Meyer lemons this past month, and thought they should go to good use…so, I present to you, my super delicious lemon cake! Not to brag or anything. I think it’s hard to screw up cake. =)

Oh, yes. Made by me several weeks ago (it is sadly long gone), it is a lemon double-layer cake with lemon curd filling and lemon buttercream frosting. A cavalcade of lemony-ness. Let me tell you, it was super amazing (recipe below!) and gone very very quickly. Of course, the actual cake for the wedding would probably have 1 more layer on it to make it a bit more substantial.

I knew from the start of our wedding planning that I wouldn’t have a fondant wedding cake. Not that I don’t adore the nice, clean look of fondant…but it simply wasn’t for me. I adore a good, freshly homebaked cake with fluffy, light frosting that looks like it’s…well…a cake. So for us, the choice was simple…from scratch, and buttercream all the way. It’s really fairly simple to decorate a buttercream cake on your own. The most difficult part is getting the frosting right…something that I haven’t quite done yet (hence the gigantic peony covering most of the cake!). It’s hard to find the balance between having icing that looks carelessly and organically spread onto a cake and having it be all over the place. But I’m willing to sacrifice and eat as many cakes as necessary to perfect it! (So much for fitting into that dress…)

Here is the same cake, with a slightly more rustic style. Great for a barn or outdoor wedding!

You could even switch out the flowers, feature different types of berries…the possibilities!

I just love this idea. More than anything else, I really wanted there to be a lot of homemade dessert options: pies, crostatas, homemade cakes… I can’t WAIT to see how the guests react. We’re not doing favors, so this will be our way of saying thank you to our guests, and leaving them with full, happy tummies.

Here are the recipes I used, in case this post made you as hungry as it did me!

Lemon buttercream
Lemon cake
Lemon curd

How about you all? Why did you decide to go the way you did with YOUR cakes? Any special plans for flavors? Let’s talk cake!!

Much love,

-B