I have made several wedding cakes and will be making two more this year for friends. One of the brides requested a vanilla cake with raspberry filling, vanilla buttercream and ganache coating. This seems like a very odd combination to me and I’m not even sure it would work to put ganache over buttercream. Any suggestions?

Maybr you can pour a mirror glaze over a light layer of buttercream—that could be elegant and not too thick. Good luck!

Great suggestion, Anne.  I recall that Rose did the lacquer glaze over a light coloured buttercream and it was quite striking.  I have made the white butter cake from TCB wedding cake section in 14” round pans, syruped, torted (4 layers of cake), with raspberry neoclassic buttercream and frosted with white chocolate mouselline buttercream.  I think it could hold up to the lacquer glaze, not sure about ganache.  But the request has me thinking about the Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cake from RHC, perhaps something based on that cake could work too.  FYI the neoclassic and mouselline are great ways to use up all of the eggs—the neoclassic uses the yolks (I personally prefer as a filling) and the mouselline makes a great outer frosting because of its stability.

http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/2010/05/chocolate_red_velvet_passion.html

If you are willing to scroll through my post, the raspberry filled/butter cake is one of the cakes I made for a wedding. (It is coated with leaves if you scroll to the end of the post).
http://forheavenlycakessake.blogspot.com/2009/11/making-of-wedding-cake.html#more

Has she sent you a picture of what she wants?  I have had a few brides ask for a cake that looks like a white buttercream coated cake with chocolate ganache poured over top and left to drip over the sides.  They also add strawberried.  I have attached a picture of what the cake looks like.  It isn’t one of my cakes only because I am not a big fan of it for a wedding cake and don’t really want to make a cake like that!!  I have seen it many times and the buttercream seems to be fine.

These are such great suggestions… somehow I missed them when you first posted, but I am happy to have come across them now. Sherrie, your cakes are stunning. I love the decorations you did with the templates on the white cake…

modern cake, your suggestion about finding out if the bride has a picture in her mind of what she wants is a good one. I’ve been practically begging her to give me suggestions about the decorations and look of the cake, but she hasn’t given me anything yet… too busy!!

I am now leaning towards forgetting the buttercream and just doing the ganache. I made a test cake, one with a raspberry mousseline buttercream and one with the cake boss’s raspberry filling that I found online. I used the raspberry ganache from RHC, which I think is really delicious.  All of the tasters agreed that the deliciousness of the raspberry mousseline is overwhelmed by the ganache, and that the tart/sweet raspberry filling was better. I just have to fiddle around with it to make it a little thicker so it doesn’t squish out the sides. Maybe a little gelatin? (the recipe is thickened with cornstarch).
The latest thing I’ve been obsessing about is the size of the cake. All of the wedding cakes I’ve done in the past have been 12”/9”/6” tiers, but these two wedding are both going to have around 185+ guests. I was originally planning to do my usual size cake and then make an extra tier or sheet cake to be cut separately, but now I’m thinking of adding a fourth, 15” tier on the bottom. I’ve never done such a big cake and I’m a little nervous about it. Any suggestions?

For the raspberry filling, you could consider making either the fresh raspberry puree or the cordon rose raspberry conserve (cooked) from the Cake Bible, and then firming them up with either gelatin or agar.  Corn starch will dull the fruit flavor, especially if you use enough to make it a firm filling. 

For the 15” tier, just wanted to add that that size and more are included in the wedding cake section of the Cake Bible, for either yellow or white cake.

Good luck!

Hi elbee, I usually don’t like doing side cakes, but I’ve learned to give in and admit that it makes little difference to those eating the cake and it’s much less stressful to have to decorate another cake—also make sure you oven will accomodate a larger cake size—I can’t do > 14” round in my oven (sadly…).  Having said that, when I did my cousins wedding a single tier (three layer cake) was all she displayed, but we had three 9"x13” two tier layer cakes for serving which were really nice sliced (tall and nice layer of filling)—so you don’t have to do a single layer slab cake either—can still do a nice layer cake, it’s just not essential the frosting/ganache be perfect on the outside.

The wedding is next weekend, so I’m starting the cake this weekend. I plan to bake the layers, then cool, syrup and freeze them. I’ve looked through this forum about whether it’s better to syrup before freezing and there does not seem to be a consensus, but I like to have my layers frozen when I fill and stack them, so this requires syruping before freezing. Any thoughts from those of you who have more experience than I do?

I made the Cordon Rose Conserve a couple of weeks ago and plan to use that as my filling; then the raspberry ganache from RHC for the undercoat and the chocolate lacquer glaze. The bride wanted a vanilla cake, so I’m going to put some vanilla beans in the syrup to try to boost the vanilla flavor as much as possible, since it seems to get completely overwhelmed by the chocolate. Also, I am putting framboise in the syrup to boost the raspberry flavor.

My biggest concern is getting the cake to the wedding. For all of my previous wedding cakes, I have stacked the tiers and decorated at home, with just a few last minute tweaks on site. I’m more relaxed at home, and think I would be nervous about not having everything I needed if I tried to decorate on site. However, this cake is going to be 4 tiers, rather than 3 and I have never transported a four tier cake before. With the 3 tier cakes, I use plastic straws on each tier to support the weight above and put a stake down the middle to keep it from shifting on the drive (about 1 hour). Does anyone have experience using that approach with a 4 tier cake? The bottom 15” tier is going to be supporting a lot of weight and I’m a little nervous about that.

Wish me luck! And thanks for all the good advice in the past.

Here’s a picture of the cake I made. Although I got tons of compliments, I was disappointed with the way it came out.  It tasted great - the Cordon Rose Raspberry Conserve and Raspberry ganache were delicious. But the lacquer glaze did not set up properly and “wept” throughout the wedding. It was a very humid warm day, so that may have been the reason. The other big problem was that when the caterer separated the tiers, all of the frosting stuck to the cake boards, and he didn’t even try to scrape it off and spread it back on the cake, so much of the cake was served naked (no ganache). Also, rather than taking the cake to the back to cut it, he did it in the reception hall and it looked really messy (because so much of the cake had no frosting on it). I’ve never had that problem before (frosting sticking to the cake board). Again, possibly from the high humidity? 

Making a cake this big was a challenge, but luckily the 15” cake pan fit (just barely) in my oven and the cakes came out fine. Now, I have to plan for the next wedding cake which will be red velvet. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

elbee, the cake looks wonderful!  I’ll bet it was delicious as well. 

My only thought about the frosting sticking to the cake boards is to increase slightly the height of the straws that hold up the tiers, so that there is a very small gap between tiers.  The gap should help keep the frosting neat and make it easier to remove each tier for serving.  The gap can be covered with piping/edge decorations, but in my experience it isn’t very noticeable once the cake is assembled.

Re: not moving the cake to the kitchen, if it were me serving it, I would be very worried about moving the stacked cake anywhere.  I agree with you that the caterer should have tried to spread some frosting back on the cake. 

I’m sorry about the glaze melting- did it set up properly and then melt in the heat?  Or did it not set up properly to begin with?

I think the glaze didn’t set up properly to begin with… I tiered the cake after 4 hours which is the minimum Rose suggests. Maybe if I had waited longer it would have helped, and I definitely should have left more space between the tiers. Lesson learned.

Thanks for the tips!

moderncake - 07 June 2011 02:34 PM

Has she sent you a picture of what she wants?  I have had a few brides ask for a cake that looks like a white buttercream coated cake with chocolate ganache poured over top and left to drip over the sides.  They also add strawberried.  I have attached a picture of what the cake looks like.  It isn’t one of my cakes only because I am not a big fan of it for a wedding cake and don’t really want to make a cake like that!!  I have seen it many times and the buttercream seems to be fine.

I have seen that cake many times also and wonder if that is Italian buttercream or something else.
Ha just realized I replied to a June post.