The et cetera in a job description

A lavender sugar rose, made by hand as the others dry upside down

How do you define a farmer? A farmer is… a guy in the field planting some seeds that will grow into a big plant that he will harvest with this big machine and store in a bin to sell later, that grain apparently feeds the world. Well, the modern farmer today is a man or woman paying close attention to the weather, market trends, a land steward (keeper of soil and plant health), planting and harvesting efficiently to be cost effective, providing for their families and doing a job they love all day every day, etc. 

 

As a farmer, farmer’s wife and farmer’s daughter I know all about that life. I grew up in it. My hubs gets to do most of the hard work while most of my job description now is all about the support team (bookwork – number crunching carries weight, maintaining the home base/yard, etc.) and pro combine operator. I can run the air drill but it turns out driving straight is more of an art that I’d thought. But there’s a sneaky et cetera in that job description which covers everything. Like shoveling out the corn bin on a perfect, hot and humid August day, with no wind. Pure excitement over that discovery.

These last two weeks I’ve been off dreaming of this moment, getting to write this post. Turns out that et cetera now covers more than farmer, farmer’s wife duties. A family member got married last week. 

A week before the wedding the cake decorator had a medical emergency. No worries, it’s all good, the cake is baked and chilling in the freezer. All you need is to slap some frosting on, stack the layers (er, tiers) throw some more frosting on and maybe blow some sprinkles on. Boom, done.

I was asked if I had done anything like this before. I responded with a birthday cake with buttercream flowers and white chocolate rose leaves dusted with edible gold powder. Somehow that little admission entered, no, put me in a freefall into the vast world of wedding cake decorating. Intrepid soul that I can be I googled and pintrested my little heart out.

To my horror, I discovered that not only did each tier have stakes in them to support the next (logical, I suppose) but once all the tiers were assembled you drove a stake through the heart of the cake. Hammered a stake, yes, hammered. Poetic justice, I think yes. Have you seen the cake boards? They’re not flimsy, faint of heart pieces of cardboard.

Uff da.

Felt amazing to hammer this together

 Then there was the little matter of covering the cake. Buttercream frosting requires refrigeration (of the whole cake). And it was supposed to be a beautiful, (hot and humid) gorgeous day perfect for wedding photos. Transporting a cake? Not so much. Fondant and buttercream despise heat/humidity. So that left me with fondant or fondant.

I baked up a quick box cake mix, threw way too much frosting on it and rolled out fondant all quick like. Watching a tutorial video on how to drape fondant over a cake and then to smooth it down with no wrinkles really was a smart move. It turned out pretty good for a first time fondant application event. 

When we actually put the fondant on the cake (I wrangled the mother in-law into helping – it was her other son getting married after all) I learned a few things.

What not to do with fondant or a wedding cake:

Do hire the cake to be professionally done from start to finish

Hire. The. Cake. Out.

If you’re cheap and completely unaware of the stress this can cause, ask family

Don’t make your own (fondant). The boxed stuff actually works great

Don’t roll fondant out under hot lights, in a warm (and humid) kitchen – it will stick and then rip

Don’t use a normal rolling pin. Buy the fondant rolling pin  - even if its basically a super expensive plastic cylinder

Don’t roll too thin – it will rip

Don’t store a fondant-covered cake in a warmish room. It will love you and thank you if it sits in a cool, dry basement.

A fondant-covered cake sitting in a warm reception hall (ac can’t keep and everybody keeps breathing) will start to develop wrinkles like an old glass window and start to melt and create piles of wrinkles on top of the next tier. (This actually happened. It was also due to the cake being improperly frozen, according to pro sources. The cakes should be wrapped in saran wrap after cooling and then frozen. Not simply put in a grocery bag with the handles loosely tied shut. It sucks all the moisture back into the cake so as the cake defrosts it will be a little mushy. This also covers frosting and filling the layers before freezing, a no no. But somehow it all turned out.)

We survived the fondant event and the nail-biting, complaint-filled (mine) drive home (MB roads are a wee bit rough) to store the cake in a cool room. Next up, decorating.

From the photo of cake the bride liked I had to deviate from the design, a lot. Okay, basically the whole design was nothing at all like the photo. It had the flowers and the purple frosting. And my skills are not pro level (hopefully they never will be) but I’ll be okay with amateur status.

It was decided by yours truly that there would be sugar roses and gardenias in purple, the bride’s most absolute favorite color, and there would be white apple blossoms with a pearl center. I spent a total of 24 hours making the dozen sugar roses and 8 gardenias, using cut outs and various tools and a lot of hand labor. Then just in case to cover any imperfections I whipped up 80 royal icing (it dries rock hard) apple blossoms.

Hand-piped apple blossoms

Sleep was not in the equation that week of the wedding. Nightmares of the cake toppling to the floor in a mess, or mushing into the car seats chased me through my zzz’s. (Pickups are not meant to haul wedding cake tiers across some of the worst sections of road and let’s not even think about all the other bad drivers out there.) I was never so happy, and vindicated feeling, to drive that stake through the center of the cake.

Why cake leveling is important

It was a bit of a puzzle to figure out to fill in the gaps between each tier but I figured icing would do the trick. Can’t go wrong with a whole lot of sugar. Cake leveling is a real thing, apparently. And this is why. (I didn’t bake the cake so I didn’t have any input there but I dealt with what I got😊)

Then it was the fun part. ‘Gluing’ the blossoms on with left over royal icing. The creative side is released and seeing the blossoms flow down the cake was magical. Or that might have been the stress of the last week finally starting to let up as I saw the cake come together and look like a wedding cake.

Finally finished... now for some sleep

Turns out that et cetera can get you. And it will take you into some interesting jobs and experiences. Overall, cake decorating was fun but the stress of the unknown and wondering if it would actually turn out was not so fun. But I did learn how to make some fab sugar roses. The cake turned out, it was delicious or so people told me. I completely avoided eating any slice. Too much up close and personal time with it I guess. No, actually I’m gluten-free and this was a bona fide, yummy, made-with-real-flour cake.

May your week be free of the et cetera, perhaps bask in the rain like a cat in the sun and have

iced coffee always at hand.