When my mother first asked me to bake a three tier cake for my sister's sweet sixteen, I thought she had lost her mind; but a day off from work and many YouTube videos later, voilà! I am by no means a professional baker and I rarely watch cake competitions on TV, but when your mother asks you for a favor, you make it happen.
From bottom to top the tiers are vanilla with vanilla buttercream, chocolate with ganache over chocolate buttercream, and strawberry with vanilla buttercream. Using fondant would have created a smoother cake, but most people are not big on the flavor (especially me) so buttercream and ganache it was. I prepared everything the day before and assembled the tiers on site the day of.
Supplies:
Wilton Cake Pans - 8, 10 & 12 inch rounds
Edible Gold Flakes
Box cake mix
Cake Boards -
8, 10 & 12 inch
Cake Turntable
Cake Lifter (use for scrapping too)
Cake Tier Set
Cake Platform
Silk Flowers
Rhinestone Lace
For Frosting:
Butter
Vegetable Shortening
Powdered Sugar
Milk
Gel Food Coloring
The only cheat I used to speed up the process was box cake mix. In my experience, there is a much bigger difference between homemade and store-bought frosting than there is between scratch and box cakes, so I took the time to make all my frostings and ganache from scratch. I usually use Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines for cake mix when I am short on time and always get complements on my cake. Only straying from the directions to mix my wet ingredients before adding the dry.
Between the Texas summer heat outside and my oven being on all day, my A/C couldn’t keep up and my kitchen was like a sauna. I started with the strawberry because of the shorter bake time. While it was baking I started preparing the chocolate cakes. Then rotated the strawberry to the cooling racks, chocolate to the oven and began the vanilla. I had to make sure that anything that I used while preparing the strawberry was cleaned thoroughly as my aunt, who would be in attendance is allergic.
Once the last cake was in the oven, I started with the vanilla buttercream. And either because my kitchen was still warm or because the ridiculous amount of coloring I used, I was struggling to get it smooth finish on the cakes. So I decided to let them set in the fridge, then used a scrapper that I warmed with water. It seemed to do the trick. For the chocolate, I returned it to the fridge to set again before pouring the ganache over it.
The next day, at the location, I assembled the layers adding the flowers, gold flakes, candles and trim. There was only a quarter of the vanilla tier left. I got compliments from everyone and was even asked if I did weddings!
