Rustic Wedding Cake

My younger sister got married this past weekend and asked me to make the cake. I knew it would be a huge undertaking, but I decided to go for it. This is only the 2nd wedding cake I've made but it was by far the biggest . I usually just make birthday cakes, which are so much less stressful! My sister asked for a rustic cake so I thought I could handle it. I know I over thought the frosting technique because I was trying to duplicate a picture. I called her on the wedding day, freaking out a bit, to try to understand exactly what she was expecting(a little late, I know!). She simply stated that she wanted it to look intentionally messy. Messy is hard for me since I'm all about pattern and symmetry, but she was happy with the finished product! I'll explain a little more about the process!

I feel like one of the hardest parts of cake making is getting perfect tiers. This cake is 14 inches, then 10 inches, then 6 inches on top. I was worried about how the biggest layers would turn out, but they were some of the best I've made. That silver thing in the middle of the cake is a flower nail used to make buttercream flowers. It makes a perfect heat core! I made sure to grease it well and put it in the middle of the pan before adding the batter. I also always bang the pans on the counter to even the batter and get out any air bubbles. I only put 1 pan in the oven at a time to ensure that it baked evenly. The cakes baked up perfectly!

I felt kind of dumb, but I just recently learned the proper way to put a cake together. I used to always flip the cakes over and make the bottom of the cake sit on top, since it is always flat. This is all wrong. You want the tops of the cakes to be touching. This way you have the light colored crust in the middle of the layers, and the darker crusts around the edges. It makes for prettier slices, but also made my tiers very even. I didn't even have to cut these. I also cut and placed 4 dowels in each of the bottom two layers and then put 2 sharpened dowels through the middle of all 3 layers.This icing technique required a good, chilled crumb coat before adding the rustic look.

Once the cake had chilled for about an hour, I made a ton of buttercream icing. You want to be very generous when applying the icing. I used a small offset spatula and moved it back and forth and up and down, all over the cake. I would get big dollops of icing and just start moving it around the cake. At times, my husband would catch me creating too much of a pattern, so I would go back and try to mess it up a bit! I wrapped the twine and ribbon that I had lined with wax paper around the bottom of the tiers and secured it with clean sewing pins. It was very secure. After it was done, I placed it back in the fridge to set up a bit. It was pretty easy to transport and didn't move at all! It was a lot of work, but I felt a great sense of accomplishment when it was done!