Anniversary Cake

This past weekend my family and I got together in celebration of my parent's 35th wedding anniversary. I had a small party at my house, and the cooking and entertaining was fun of course, but the biggest part of the weekend (for me at least) was giving them their anniversary cake!

I had it planned for weeks, and watching it come to life was really fun. This was the 1st 3-tiered wedding type cake I've done, so I was admittedly (very) nervous about it, but all in all it came out great and wasn't as hard as I thought!

I did two layers of chocolate cake (one filled with raspberry jam, the other with hazelnut chocolate frosting) and one layer of spice cake filled with blackberries (recipe is forthcoming!) and topped the whole thing with buttercream and homemade marshmallow fondant. The calla lillies, leaves, and "35" on top of the cake were made of gumpaste and brushed with silver luster dust.

In terms of assembling the cake, I just placed each cake on top of a piece of cardboard exactly the size of the cake that sat on it, and placed one wooden dowel in the center of all the cakes (make sure you cut a whole in the center of the cardboard before you put the cake on!) so they didn't slide from side to side. Then on the bottom and middle layers, I studded the cakes with wooden dowels the exact height of the cake to support the layer above it.

The cake was a success, and my parents were very appreciative of it and the party!