pounds and pounds of butter

vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream

We don't get a lot of requests for chocolate buttercream so I haven't tasted it in a while. I'd forgotten how DELICIOUS something as simple as chocolate buttercream can be. I highly recommend it. We put in 3/4's of a pound of 55% chocolate in there so it was intensely chocolatey.

This cake was for Julianna's Christening. Her mother had a very special Christening gown made for her and wanted the cake to reflect the details in the gown. Anthony and I have been extremely excited to do this cake because we wanted to whip out some techniques we don't normally get to use.

We Ron-Ben'ed this baby.

This is now a phrase by the way.

Ron Ben-Israel, a prominent NYC cake designer, makes good use of silicon molds to customize his cakes and add details from a bride's dress, or a special piece of jewelry. Here's a link to a blog that details the process. It's amazing.

We used silicone molds to make detailed fondant pieces that matched the details on Julianna's Christening dress. We then painted the pieces by hand with silver luster dust and attached silver dragées to add a little bling.

We also made peonies for the first time. It was a nice break from an endless line of roses and daisies.

And we also made a two-tier buttercream wedding cake to go with a slew of delicious cupcakes made by one of Anthony's close friends and cupcake wizardress, Tara Roed.

I'm still reeling from the amount of butter and sugar we went through this weekend. I had fifteen pounds of butter in my freezer and it is GONE now.