Several people asked for more details about the cakes I showed yesterday. The vegan chocolate cake was made by my younger son and his girfriend. They found the recipe on the allrecipes.com - here is a LINK to the page.
They made a double recipe in two round cake pans. The recipe calls for 45 minutes of baking but their experience is that about 30 minutes is long enough. You just need to check it with a toothpick to be sure it has fully baked. They also added delicious chocolate chunks to the batter (you can see the bumps in the finished cake above).
Instead of frosting between the two layers, they did a filling of strawberry jam - with lots of strawberry chunks. (The waxed paper is on the cake stand to protect it from frosting and jam).
The frosting was made with confectioner's sugar (about 4 3/4 cups), Earth Balance buttery spread (6 tablespoons), vanilla extract (1 1/2 teaspoons) and rice milk (about 1/4 cup). They added fresh strawberries on top just before serving time.
The cake was delicious - and if you didn't know it, I don't think you would guess it was vegan.
Grandpa's cake was made by a local bakery. It is a specialty cake called Gateau Concorde which is a chocolate mousse cake with a covering of chocolate meringues. Eating this "cake" is like eating frosting with a crunchy topping - very rich and so delicious. I don't have a recipe for this and it is probably a lot trickier to make.
The engagement cake was a sheet cake from Costco - you can't beat their tasty cakes at a great price. I really liked the lattice and heart design and I am working on a paper version to use for cards. Once again - you can find inspiration for paper crafts from so many places.
We spent most of the day resting and clearing up from the party - a big gathering is so much fun but there is a lot of preparation and it can take a while to get things back to normal.
This evening, I was able to design the thank you cards for the happy couple to get started on their notes promptly. They will be printed tomorrow and I'll share some details about them when I have the final version here to show you. We have some more wedding plans to work on, but I'll get back to posting some paper projects in another day or two.
