Project Wedding Cake: Part 1

 

On Friday after work, Joey and I took off and headed four hours north west to spend time with our families and friends for the weekend. It was the first time we had been home since the wedding, and seeing everyone was such a great way to spend the weekend. However, it wasn't just a weekend of play. I also had a mission: making a small, two-tiered wedding cake for the bride and groom to cut into. The bride is a family friend and I was more than happy to jump in and do my part. 

Although I've made wedding cakes before, I had yet to find a basic cake recipe that really worked as hard as I needed it to. A good wedding cake recipe needs to be firm enough to stack multiple layers on top of one another, have a short ingredient list that allows you to churn out batter quickly for all those layers, and, most importantly, it needs to be moist and flavorful. Not an easy task for one recipe. 

After doing a little digging and a bit of research, I found a cake recipe that got great reviews online. And seeing that it had hundreds of positive reviews online, I jumped at the chance to use it for this weekend's baking.  The cake proved to be super easy to pull together and stacked incredibly well. In fact, I think this was the most structurally stable cake I've ever made.

{Nutmeg also jumped into the action, hoping that I would drop a few crumbs along the way. With a face like that, it's hard to resist.}

I was also incredibly pleased with the buttercream I used. I veered from my usual powdered sugar-based buttercream and used a Swiss meringue buttercream made with egg whites, granulated sugar and butter, but I'll break that up into a second post.

{Of course my mom decided that snapping a few photos of me blogging was necessary}

Simple White Cake (makes one 9-inch cake)

Recipe Courtesy of AllRecipes.com

Ingredients 

*1 cup sugar

*1/2 cup butter

*2 eggs

*2 teaspoons vanilla extract

*1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

*1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

*1/2 cup milk

Instructions

*Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease baking pans (whatever size you need for your specific cake; increase recipe as needed) and line with parchment paper. Set aside.

*With an electric mixer, cream together the sugar and butter, beating until fluffy. Add in eggs, one at a time, beating until just combined, followed by the vanilla.

*In a small bowl, combine the flour and baking powder. Add the mixture to the butter-sugar mixture and beat until just combined. Add in the milk and beat until just combined. 

*Spoon batter into prepared baking pans and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 

Happy Baking!

Madison