During that dinner last year, Ben mentioned the concept of a groom's cake, which is a tradition we don't have over here. Suffice to say that within 90 seconds, Rob and Ben had taken it upon themselves to provide Andy with such a cake.
Every so often, Rob would think of a new idea for the cake. Things like a carrot chocolate vanilla sponge cake, that sort of idea. While we were on holiday in March we discussed the possibility of them making a cake in the shape of a computer keyboard, and by the time we got back from holiday Rob was keen to get practising.
Turns out Ben & Jill were having similar discussions, and they even got as far as arranging for Ben pick up boxes and boxes of cake mix, frosting mix, food colouring and flavouring on one of his trips to the States. Ultimately the decision was taken to make a cake in the shape of a Zoom lollipop, which looks like this:
Once Cathy, who was making her own wedding cake (she also made our cake last year), found out that the boys were serious about making a groom's cake, she told them that she wouldn't bake a sponge cake as well as a fruit cake. Which meant that if anyone didn't like fruit cake, the groom's cake was the only alternative. Which meant that it actually had to taste good.
Here's a shot of the boys in action on practice day:
The practice session went well, in that it didn't all work but decisions were then made on how to modify the plan so that it would all come together for the real thing. And it did! Well, almost:
OK, so it's a little wonky, but it wouldn't be recognisable as the boys' handiwork if it were perfect; this was the first cake either of them had made outside of Home Economics class at school, after all.
Not only is each layer the right colour, but they were also flavoured accordingly: strawberry for the red layer, lemon for the yellow and lime for the green. Although the lime one was very strong, despite the fact that Ben put exactly the same amount of flavouring in than he had for the lemon and strawberry ones. In the end they decided to ask the kitchen not to serve the lime layer for fear of damaging people's tastebuds.
Jill was concerned about the top layers sinking into the bottom layers, so I made a quick dash to the shops on the way round to their place to buy cake bases and dowel rod. And as I couldn't find our hacksaw and didn't know if Ben & Jill owned one, I bought one of those as well, to cut the dowel to length. What kind of cake necessitates the purchasing of a hacksaw??? I could only find large cake bases so we had to cut them down to size, and in doing that we exposed the compressed cardboard on two sides of the base, so we covered the exposed edges with duct tape. Because no cake is complete without adding a couple of lengths of duct tape.
It was all a bit of a laugh (although I won't deny that the boys did start feeling the pressure a little), and in the end it actually tasted really good. What's next, boys?
1 comment:
I'm STILL cleaning up icing sugar!
The BEST part was when Andy, whilst cutting the cake, yelled out, there's something hard in here!
That and how surprised people were that it actually tasted good!
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