the 37 cake marathon

for those of you following along on my facebook, instagram & twitter feeds last week, you know i made a lot of cake... 37 cakes in fact. 

those who know me well, also know that i hate making cakes. 

this may come as quite a surprise. sure my cakes are pretty & they taste great, but they are a TON of work and super stressful. when i add a single cake to my weekly workload i have to work around it for days, so when i announced that i had accepted an order for 37 cakes for 1 event, people were shocked.

i wasn't even sure if i could do it, but it was a really cool idea for a really cool couple, so i accepted the challenge. adam & ariela got married on sunday. they had a giant wedding. they also wanted to limit the waste generated by their wedding, so they came up with the idea of edible centrepieces instead of a bunch of florals destined for the compost.

when they first came to me with the idea, i had horrible visions of tacky edible arrangements made of out-of-season fruit decked out in chocolate & yogurt. but when they explained they wanted one of my cakes for each table, i warmed up to the idea. it's actually quite flattering that they thought my cakes were pretty enough to stand in for flowers at their wedding.

i was essentially given carte blanche - any flavour, any colour scheme - which is always nice, so i got to play around with palettes & get creative. i've made my fair share of cakes over the past four years so i know which colours work best but i also wanted a nice variety and for the frosting to reflect the flavour hidden within.

there were many, many lists involved with this undertaking. from the # of cakes i wanted to have finished each day, to the pounds of butter i would need, to the delivery schedule, to the cake boards & boxes i would need to transport them to the hotel - there was a lot to consider.  it was rather daunting to think that i had to fill each of these boxes with an ornately frosted cake:

i cleared my schedule for the entire week leading up to their big day. i was quite the recluse just baking & making frosting, designing colour schemes & piping cakes, day in & day out. each cake was two layers with a hefty helping of frosting in between. never before have i gone through so much butter & sugar in a single week.

i was making frosting by the stockpot-ful. 

and thankfully it all came together, i finished slightly ahead of schedule & the cakes were a huge hit at their wedding. this may, in fact, become a new wedding trend - it really is a great idea.

i made 2 or 3 cakes in each of the colour schemes so they had a nice variety.

here they are:

carrot

pink grapefruit

pink grapefuit

vanilla

vanilla

vanilla

lemon-blueberry

lemon-blueberry

red velvet-raspberry

red velvet-raspberry

chocolate-mint

chocolate-mint

chocolate

chocolate

they also ordered 37 dozen mini cupcakes to go with it all!

when it was all said & done my hands ached, my eyeballs burned & i was exhausted, but it may have been the biggest sense of accomplishment i've ever had.

here they all are just before their big debut:

i'd been stressing about this for months & i'm so relieved that it all worked out.