Freezer Cake

Those are regular size cocktail table candles.

When planning a wedding you are faced with more decisions than you can sometimes handle. I'm sure you know of at least one bride that has crumbled at some point over something that seems insignificant. I've heard of brides weeping over the dress not available in the right color, she couldn't get a certain flower for the center pieces, or someone was accidentally not invited and the whole family was in an uproar. This moment came to the bride of my wedding, my husband, over the cake.

I spent some time looking at cake designs and decided on a pretty simple but elegant cake design. It was a white 3 tier square cake with some simple black icing design. Top with some flowers, and badda bing, badda bang, a cake! My very dear friend Janine had offered to make my cake as my wedding gift. I was over the moon! She is the best baker I know, her food always tastes fantastic, and a simple wedding cake costs around $1500 these days. She asked me what kind of cake I wanted, and I said I don't really like cake all that much, but I do love her carrot cake. And being that it was a fall wedding I thought carrot cake would be acceptable.

My husband thought that was a silly idea. Carrot cake? I stood my ground and convinced him that once he tasted this carrot cake he would understand. So I set a time up with Janine for us to come do a tasting and talk about the design of the cake. She asked me to pick a few flavors to chose from. So I ask my husband and he says peanut butter.

To fully understand the peanut butter thing, I have to first explain his fascination with Reeses peanut butter cups. It is somewhat a day off tradition to run our errand together and at some point stop for gas and a coke. And every time he comes out to the car with the latest Reeses product. There are cups, dark chocolate, white chocolate, king size, dipped in peanuts, rolled in dye no. 9 and xanax. There are pieces with more peanut butter, dark chocolate, milk chocolate centers, all orange, it doesn't matter that none of them taste as good as the original, if it says Reeses on the label, he buys it.

So I laugh and tell Janine that he want to try a peanut butter and chocolate cake along with the others we talked about. She sounds as confused as I expected but reluctantly agrees.

We arrive at her house and she does the best little presentation you've ever seen. She's a little like Martha Stewart, if Martha Stewart liked jagermeister, loud rock and roll, and had the cops called on her annual July 4th party for blowing up giant fireworks off the roof of her garage. We taste several cakes, yes including a peanut butter cake that was really good, but we all know I wanted carrot. After a long tug of war, trying to convince him that peanut butter is not a flavor you serve at the rooftop of a major hotel, he agreed that the carrot cake was incredible. Then the discussion about the cake design began.

She asked all the right questions about how many people the cake needed to feed and so on. She obviously knew what she was doing. But somehow the wedding pressures had weighed to far on my husband, and he decides that the cake needs to be more of a statement. He gets out a ruler and begins showing Janine how big he wants it. The look on my friends face was priceless. She explains that this cake is going to be really big, and will likely feed an army. But she agrees to do it the way he wants it, sparing a vital bridezilla breakdown.

When we arrive at the reception site and they show me the room all set up I was so blown away! It looked so wonderful! The flowers, the table clothes, and the GIANT wedding cake! She did such a great job, but this cake was easily 2 feet wide and almost 3 feet tall. I have about 85 guests. When they asked if I like to keep the top of my cake for my freezer I said Id love to. When they brought it to our room later I thought I'll need to rent a deep freeze.

As we are cutting the cake Janine leans to me and says, "Don't eat the black icing. It will stain your mouth." A piece of advice given to all the guests, all except my mother who's tongue looked like she licked Texas gold. The carrot cake lived up to it's rumors and everyone thought it was delicious. Several people mentioned how yummy it was over the next several months. And so did the bar full of drunk people that got the leftovers the next day when my family that went to have pizza.

So on the one year anniversary we pulled the cake from the freezer and as it thawed had a celebration of one year of married bliss, and the return of serious freezer space. My husband says that cake was way too big, with a smile on his face. Thank you so much Janine for getting a Cosco card to make the cake, and for making such a wonderful, decadent, beautiful, Mark McQuired wedding cake. It was fabulous then, and surprisingly stupendous a year later!