Making A Two Tier Cake

I had not always been comfortable experimenting with new flavors when it came to baking cakes! I would bake for certain occasions that needed an added charm to it. Let's just be honest, desserts always add a charm, don't they!? But then what made me do this?

Why Was I Making It?

A few months back from today, in February 2021, I had an opportunity to try out making a two tiered cake for my parent's 25th wedding anniversary.

Because I would just bake for some occasions and birthdays, I never really had chances to experiment and fail at something or move on from my beloved chocolate treats which left me scared and anxious for jumping into so many new things at once. That's how I have a first hand experience on why failures are important to venture into something.

It was fifteen days before the celebration that the idea of making a big cake popped into my mom's head. Now I know, fifteen days are not less to execute it, but the difficult part came when it was finalized two days before the big day and I had to jump into the battlefield with no grace days to fix any mistakes or no attempts at any last minute failures. But I had faith in my years of watching bakers do it. I had a couple tricks up my sleeve ;)

The Ideas I Had In Mind.

I had just become so invested in making the entire thing work and surprise everyone with the best one I could. I would stay up until 3AM browsing videos and blogs on YouTube and otherwise.

I looked up to Chelsweets (Chelsey White) the most. Her tutorial and her wedding cake blogs helped me immensely.

I wanted to give it an elegant wedding cake look with fresh florals so I put out a rough design for myself, laid out the flavors I wanted. My hero is a good extra filled Chocolate/Nutella cake. Well, lets just say I am surrounded by chocolate lovers. Helps!

The Flavors.

I wanted to make one tier a hazelnut and Nutella cake and experiment with the other so that I don't mess the whole thing up.

The 8" bottom tier was made up of three chocolate cakes, filled with chocolate ganache, Nutella and Hazelnuts. (Drool Worthy)

The 6" top tier was made up of two vanilla sponges, filled with chocolate ganache (yet again) and a lot of strawberries.

All of it covered in White chocolate ganache and fresh flowers.

How Was It A First For Me?

Now it wasn't just about stacking two cakes together for the first time, I had to work with new techniques, new flavors keeping them fresh, baking well in advance, and the biggest obstacle to transport the cakes by road on a 3 hour journey and making it in one piece. keeping flowers fresh for two days, prepping most of the decorations so that I could assemble the final product before the occasion and keeping it from melting away in heat.

Also working with White chocolate ganache, not knowing the perfect consistency that would work for me. Making sure the cakes wouldn't sink in into each other and would stay intact.

The white chocolate ganache did start melting due to the huge and frequent temperature changes while travelling, when I was finishing up the look of the cake right before the event it did give me a hard time making it look smooth but tasted epic and way better than whipped cream.

After planning everything, I was straight up tensed for two weeks to not let anyone down/disappoint anyone or ruin my parents wedding anniversary cake.

But safe to say, I made it successfully, just not up to my expectations but not even close to a fail. It was only after the cake was cut into and approved that I felt relieved.

Overall I am just proud of what I did! :)

ADDED REEL BONUS HERE!