The cake images are in! (Thanks Kei and Shoko for documenting the event!) It was a lovely day, a beautiful wedding, and a very tasty cake. Below are the final steps of my adventure…passed along to you so that you can learn from my mistakes! The cakes were baked in my tiny NY kitchen ahead of time, then transported in a cooler with the frosting and ganache up to Cape Cod. Everything was assembled on site the day of the wedding:

Step 1: Prep. I began by just taking everything out of the fridge (cakes, ganache, buttercream) and arranging everything I would need out on the counter space (pastry knives, rags, paper rounds, etc.). I let the cakes and frostings warm up a bit before beginning work, then whipped up the ganache again in an effort to soften it.

Step 2: Cut the cakes. While the cakes were pretty level thanks to the cake strips I used when baking, I still had a bit of trimming to do to make sure everything was going to turn out perfectly level when all the layers were stacked up. A good knife is key here, so I brought along my own.

Step 3: Stack and chill. A paper round was placed on the lazy susan first, then my first large cake round went down. A layer of ganache was spread on, then another large cake round was placed on top. Instead of doing one very tall cake, I decided to essentially create two two-layer cakes — so at this point, another paper round was placed, then another 2-layer cake was assembled on top. While all this chilled, the small cake was created separately and placed on it’s own paper round for easy removal (and storage, since this was to be the “saved slice”). A note here about the assembly: While I had planned to use cake rods to help stabilize in the cake…I forgot to place them in. Fortunately, it was a really dense cake, and we didn’t have any trouble with tipping or drooping, but if we had gone with a lighter cake, we certainly would have depended on the center rods during transport.

Step 4: Frost. The small cake was placed on top and I made my first attempt at rejuvenating my buttercream. This is where I started to lose a bit of momentum. I had never really worked with buttercream that had been chilled before, and so my first attempt at bringing it back to life was not a success. The lesson here is that if you’re ever using buttercream that has been chilled, let it come all the way back to room temperature before working with it — otherwise it’s grainy and weird, and might start to break up on you. Once I figured this out, all went smoothly.

Step 5: Decorate. Once the cake was completely frosted, I let it chill as long as I could before the ceremony began….then transported it down to the dance hall. I had prepared a handful of topper options ahead of time, so once I saw how the cake was going to sit amongst the other desserts, I tinkered with the top arrangement until I was satisfied. I brought along a little pastry knife so I could cover up any blemishes I created.

Thanks again Jen & Kevin…and congratulations!

I know it’s a little off topic, since we tend to focus on local/seasonal food here, but I just had to pass along a bit about my most recent culinary adventure…

I’ve always been a girl who loves a good challenge, so when my friends who got married last weekend said that they had decided not to make their own wedding cake as originally planned, I decided to offer to give it a go. From the beginning, Jen and Kevin wanted me to know that I had no obligation to deliver (this was to be my first-ever wedding cake attempt), but I assured them that it would happen. In order to deliver on my promise, though, I knew I’d have to plan well. I will be posting pics of the final product soon, but I wanted to give a brief run-down of the process that got me from being a relative cake novice to baking, assembling and serving my first wedding cake…just in case anyone else out there wants to give it a go!

Step 1: Research. I spent several hours watching videos online about how to properly line a pan, cook efficiently, and store, assemble, and elegantly frost the perfect cake. (The bride and groom are going with a very home-spun look to the wedding, so no real need to learn about fondant and royal icing, though I did find some great tutorials on those as well.)

Step 2: Find a great cake recipe. I spent another couple hours researching cake recipes, reading reviews and trying to decide between the simple stand by and the knock-their-socks-off zinger. We decided to go with a dark chocolate cake with orange chocolate ganache and orange buttercream. (Zinger, for sure.)

Step 3: Gather materials. Probably the most fun part of the process was visiting NY Cake here in Chelsea. The place is incredible, and packed floor to ceiling with anything you could possibly ever need to create the perfect confection. Dowels, paper rounds, a lazy suzan, pastry knives, and cake pans were all on the list.

Step 4: Do a test run. I made 1/2 the original recipe and tried out my two pan sizes to make sure I could get a nice result in my tiny oven. Fortunately they both turned out great, and I assembled a little test cake for Jen and Kevin to try. Kevin came back for more. Success!

Step 5: Re-evaluate the amounts. The last thing I had to do in preparation for the final cooking day was make sure I was going to have enough batter, frosting and filling for my needs. The cake we chose didn’t rise much, so I ended up doubling the recipe for the cake, making 1 1/2 times the amount of frosting, and leaving the filling amount as it was. From here I was able to make an accurate shopping list (cake making can be seriously expensive) and reduce waste where possible.

Step 6: Plan the look. I had Jen send over a few images of cakes she admired and we talked about the materials she was using for decorations. From there I came up with a plan based on my (relative lack-of) cake decorating abilities and the desired look.

Next up, the result of all this work!

I began my first summer read, “The Garden of Invention“, recently and am finding it so fascinating that I couldn’t wait to fill you all in on the incredible subject of the book, Luther Burbank.

Like his more well known contemporaries, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, the work of Luther Burbank has become a part of the way America defines itself. If you have ever eaten a McDonald’s french fry or plucked the petals off a perfect white daisy, you have been touched by the genius of Mr. Burbank.

A follower of Darwin, Burbank dedicated his life to maximizing nature’s potential. He cross-bred countless fruits, flowers and nuts in search of the best smelling, best tasting, most desirable variation possible. Out of his home and garden Santa Rosa, California, Mr. Burbank patiently coaxed forth hundreds of new varieties of fruits, potato, tomato, ornamental flowers and other plants.

Less a true scientist than an interpreter of nature and a philosopher of plants, he believed that everything was connected and corresponded with nature in a way that was reminiscent of Thoreau or Whitman. And though he was admired throughout the world for his scientific work, his momentum in the garden often outpaced his desire to keep accurate notes, leaving us with scant details on his process. The evidence of his work, however, is everywhere. His Burbank Russet Potato basically put my home state of Idaho on the map. And his well-earned fame in hybridization of fruits and nuts helped build and support the farmlands made the state of California what it is today.

So thank you, Luther for being a quirky, endlessly curious genius and a lover of growing things.

I’d love to pass along a couple of fun and inspiring resources: Chow.com is an awesome place for general information like recipes, but they also have a fantastic video library — chock full of smart (and often funny) instructional videos. I especially love “Cooking With Grandma”, “Obsessives” and “You’re Doing it all Wrong”. And for the passionate locavore, I highly recommend The People Who Feed Us. Through the videos on their site, Staci Strauss and Craig McCord provide an inside look to the work of the farmers, artisans and chefs who provide us with our food. When you find a little down time, I’d definitely recommend wasting a few minutes to check out both of these fantastic resources.

I wandered into Barnes and Noble yesterday after a rather uninspiring trip to the Union Square Greenmarket. I guess Mondays at the market are still Mondays.

After finally tracking down what I was looking for (”Versed“, the recent book of poems by the recently awarded Noble Prize winner Rae Armantrout — which so far is funny and rye and wonderful), I allowed myself a little detour into the section on all things food related. Here, unlike the sad early spring Monday morning market, I found loads of inspiration. Alice Waters has a new book called “In the Green Kitchen” where she has invited a good number of great chefs to share their secrets to the everyday cooking techniques we should all learn. I picked up a copy of “The Garden Invention” by Jane S. Smith because it appeals to my anthropological side. It talks about the early days of farming in America and how one man over the course of 60 years, developed almost as many new species of fruit, vegetables and flowers — including the blight-resistant potato, elephant garlic, the Lemon Giant calla lilly. Sounds so geeky…sounds so great! This one reminds me a bit of another book that I purchased awhile back called “Cabbages and Kings” that is beautifully illustrated and takes a pretty detailed look at the histories and cultural significance of a good deal of our most common foods (I referenced this in the making of the Food Origins Map). Lastly, a few others that I’m considering for my summer reading list: The Town that Food Saved, Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods, and Urban Pantry.