Waterfall Wedding
I hosted Jen and Eric in my kitchen for a wedding cake tasting. Red velvet is their favorite flavor, so I prepared a small red velvet cake for them to taste while we talked about their upcoming wedding. They had a lot of fun feeding each other cake and sharing their wedding plans.
As Ithaca residents, they love the Finger Lakes region and they really liked the idea of having a cake with a waterfall theme. As we talked, they shared some pictures that showed what they were looking for.
We had a lovely meeting and I happily agreed to bake their cake for them! For their topper, Jen and Eric wanted to have a couple in a boat getting ready to take the plunge over a waterfall. After discussing options for this, we quickly agreed that it would be best for them to have the topper custom made. I could create the topper from gum paste, but it would be lovely if it were permanent. They found Trina’s Clay Creations on Etsy and she made them a gorgeous topper.
I’ve never made a waterfall cake, so I looked carefully at all the elements of the inspiration cakes to pull together the aspects I liked the best. Jen and Eric gave me total artistic license. It is rare to have the freedom to design things based on a collection of inspirational photos. I was really excited about this!
I felt that the contrast between the waterfall and a cake covered in fondant would be ideal. I really liked the perfectly smooth fondant surface against the texture of water. I considered using piping gel for water so that it could be slightly translucent, but opted for frosting mostly because of taste. Lastly there was foliage and rocks to consider. Jen let me know what flowers she had for the wedding and I decided that I’d use those as accents.
With just a week prior to the wedding I still hadn’t figured out my plan for the rocks. In the back of my mind I had planned on candy rocks but hadn’t fully made peace with this idea. I looked at a lot of ideas online and finally found the perfect rock while I sat in the Prudential Center in Boston.
We had just wandered through Sugarfina where I thought maybe I’d see the perfect candy rock. I didn’t, and as we were sitting on a bench I once again started searching online. I found the perfect blog post on Hungry Happenings to make homemade fudge rocks. They looked like real rocks! An added bonus was that they would remain soft and easy to cut through AND they were delicious! Things were fully coming together. I was ready to make this cake.
Sculpted rocks
I followed the directions on Hungry Happenings for the rocks. She suggested using all white chocolate or all chocolate melts with the caveat that if you used white chocolate, the final product could be greasy. Always someone to try something not suggested, I used a half and half mix of the two ingredients. I was curious if it would be greasy that way. It was slightly greasy and as a result the rocks were a bit shiny. I didn’t want shiny rocks. My solution; add confectioner’s sugar to the rocks. This gave them the matte finish I was hoping for.
Time to stack the cake
Once I baked the cake it was time to assemble. I took pictures for the early portion and then when I really got into the nitty gritty of things, I stopped taking breaks to snap pictures. My pictures simply show the prepared fondant cake and then jump straight to the finished product. The picture below shows the cakes getting ready for the waterfall adornment!!
