Puzzle Wedding Cake

I've known Angela and Simon not very long ago from a friend, actually I've known Angela first. I happened to know Simon when Angela ordered a birthday cake for his birthday, the panda cake back in February. Long story short they got engaged and was planning their wedding.

When Angela contacted me to do her wedding cake I was ecstatic because I've never done wedding cake before. She wanted a not so big wedding cake because they held their wedding reception in an buffet restaurant which come with dessert buffet, she said the cake will be for photo opt purpose.

The brief was to follow the invite design, on the invite they have a love heart puzzle with a message 'I've finally found the missing piece of puzzle of my heart' which I think really appropriate for this couple. She also wanted figurines of bride and groom holding one piece of puzzle from the love heart puzzle.

So I started planning the cake, I bought heart shape cake tin back in February planned to use it on Valentine's day but never happened so the cake tine made a debut with this project. Not really a master on making figurines but I try to improve every time I got a chance and I think these figurines are the best ones so far. Initially I wanted to have the figurines sending up but I decided to have them sitting down to make it easier to incorporate the missing puzzle. I also added a layer of cake underneath the heart shape cake solely so I have something for the figurines to sit on and have something to stick them on.

The figurines waiting to set on top of dummy polystyrene

Initially I wanted to cover the heart shaped cake with red fondant but the challenge of have to take one piece out made me to decide the love heart puzzle should sitting on top of the white fondant cover heart shaped cake so it's more like a true puzzle.

Love heart puzzle setting on top of the cake board

I've been working with ganache instead of butter cream for the last couple of project and I'm loving it so far. It's easier to make and to work with, the only down side is you can not make a mistake when you cover the cake with fondant as the chocolate will stain the fondant. I've developed new skills working with ganache but still need improvement.

Big love heart chocolate so appetizing

For the cake Angela asked me to do mocha cake, never done it before but we bake test some recipe and found a perfect one called Goldilock Mocha cake the best part of this recipe is the butter cream it contains Italian almond liquor called Ammareto...yummm yumm yummm.

another view of the cake

View from the top

I had so much fund doing this cake especially because I got to practice my ganaching technique which I think am getting better. I added pearl necklace on the bride to make it nicer and actually it was the only thing that matched the bride, she was wearing pearl necklace that day. 

The only thing is the dress of the figurine, when I made the figurine I had them sitting in the middle of the cake so I have the dress draping to the side but on the actual cake the bride was sitting on the edged hence the dress was hanging on the air but I don't really mind.

At the end I received a text message from Angela she said how happy she was with the cake and it's exactly how she wanted it. I'm so happy with her respond and it made all of the hard work paid off.

Thanks for checking my blog, will update you with my next project.