Project Wedding Cake: Executed

Saturday is a special day.

It's the day we get ready for Sunday.

It's the day we recover from Friday.

I'm happy to inform you that I've made it to the end of the week, which means one thing: I'm done with the wedding cake. Having this monster cake done is a load of stress off of my shoulders. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were terribly headache-ridden days for me. It's like I was going through Finals Week from Hades with the rest of Provo.

So. Today I slept late, lounged around in pajamas, watched a movie, took a nap, finally showered, didn't cook dinner (ward Christmas party!) and strolled around Maceys with my wonderful sweet husband. And I feel much better now.

Sadly, there was one casualty in the whole cake-and-frosting-making process: my poor little hand mixer. It's really my own fault--I worked him too hard, and, well, he died.

It kind of reminded me of that scene in Gone With the Wind, where Scarlet is so anxious to get back to Tara, and she starts beating her horse to make him go faster, and he just keels over. My poor little mixer just couldn't take any more.

So on Wednesday night I took a trek out to find myself a new mixer. After salivating over the KitchenAid stand mixers with the hefty price tags, I found myself a good, strong hand mixer:

I got home and started to use it, and I quickly realized which one of us was in charge (hint: not me). So my mixer now has a name: The General. This muscular fellow had no problem whipping through the same stuff that killed my poor old mixer.

So, the wedding cake. It turned out pretty well, for the most part. It was a little bit of a nightmare baking ten cake mixes, and whipping up 31 cups of icing. But once that was all taken care of, and I got myself all set up in the church kitchen, I was having a pretty good time. It was actually pretty thrilling for me to see my creation come to life.

There was this really cute little 5-year old boy (the bride's nephew) who was glued to my side the entire time. For two and a half hours, he was right there, asking questions about what I was doing, making comments, trying to find excuses to taste the frosting, and telling me about his kindergarten class, and how he was a better minder than his younger brother. And he would boast to anyone who came into the kitchen, that he was helping with the wedding cake. As the cake started to come together, and I was putting the decorations on it, I had another few kids hovering around--30 more fingers to try to keep out of the frosting.

And, the finished product!

Ta-da!

Not perfect, but that's all right--I never expected it to be. I'm just happy that it didn't topple, and it tasted good.