When I started planning our wedding last fall, I was overwhelmed by how darn expensive everything is.  $600 for a wedding cake?  It’s just a cake!  I can make a cake!

And so, half-jokingly, I decided I would make the wedding cake myself.  Partly because of sticker-shock, partly because then I could wait until the last minute to decide on flavours and design, and partly because I have trust issues on things like this.  For Christmas, I asked for enrollment in a cake decorating class so I could learn what this stuff is all about – I’d made a few cakes in my time, but I’d never worked with things like fondant and gumpaste.

Now it’s May, and I’ve made it through all 4 Wilton Method Decorating courses in 4 straight months.  Some of the courses were better than others, but I learned a lot and, more importantly, gained a lot of experience.  I’ve come to discover that I really enjoy decorating cakes – which surprised me, since I generally do not consider myself a very artistic person.

But it’s not the art that I enjoy the most – it’s the style of the projects.  Each project has a definite start and end, and a pretty short production cycle.  Every cake is different, and so it presents new problems to solve and challenges to overcome.  It’s just as much engineering as it is art and baking!

Now I’ve found myself committed to making birthday and event cakes for most of my friends and family.  And although I’m still planning on doing our wedding cake this summer – I now truly appreciate why they are so expensive.

I’ve posted up a dedicated page which features cakes I’ve been working on, which I’ll be keeping up-to-date.  You can check it out here!