I promised some WeddSplosion activity, so here’s the first installment.

First: Hooray Jeanne and Malcolm!  This cake wishes you both a most excellent life together.  Many platonic hugs, Me.

A Cake! Only a little blurry (it was getting dark).

A few weeks ago I made a Strawberry Cake with Chocolate Ganache Frosting, specifically in preparation for the cake you see here.  The icing is, of course, exactly the same (how do you go wrong with chocolate ganache?  Oh that’s right – you can’t), but the innards are completely different.  I did use a nicer chocolate this time, though; no Scharffen Berger (alas!), but some nice Ghirardelli that my local Publix was able to supply.

Marble cake is actually one of the flavors I’m proposing to my friends whose real-life wedding cake I’m making for them.  So making this was not only a wonderful and tasty present for Jeanne and Malcolm, but also a dry run for marble cakes for me.  When I first read about marble cakes for a wedding, I wasn’t sure if it would look “professional” enough (not that I’m a professional, just that I wouldn’t want a wedding cake to look like a 1st grader made it).  I was definitely wrong.  Check out how beautiful these swirls turned out:

It's marble-tastic.

Also, check out how nice and even my slices are this time. ^_^  Nice coloring, eh?

This is a Martha Stewart recipe (damn her for knowing her stuff!), and I was mostly very pleased with it.  The only slight concern I had was that it was juuuust a touch dry, but that was before I put the frosting on.  Naturally, because like the Lemon Loaf it was a gift, I was unable to taste any of the final product, but I am confident that these flavors will be excellent together.

A slightly fuzzy closeup.

Tomorrow I’ll wrap the cake in plastic wrap and freeze it overnight, then ship it to California where it will hopefully not end up tasting like a freezer or melted into a puddle.  This was another baking experiment that I had a lot of fun with, and definitely displayed improvement over my last attempt: it did not have a giant divot in the middle, I cut the layers evenly, and this time I caught and used the frosting before I turned completely hard.  Glad I worked out some of the kinks before making a “real” present out if it. ^_^

Again, a very grand congratulations to the happy couple – I hope you enjoy the cake!  …And Jeanne, I promise more strawberries for you next time. 😀

Marble Cake

Martha Stewart’s Marble Cake.

3 1/2 cups batter made 1 6×3″ cake, plus 4 cupcakes.

For the ganache I used 8oz Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate and 8oz heavy whipping cream.

Mary Gezo

Formerly of both n00bcakes and !Blog, the two magically become one on Spatialdrift; expect some lazy baking and serious nerditude. Also, I love semicolons.