Edible Cakes, Pops and Nests

The wedding cake can be a very intimidating part of the wedding. Everyone has a cake ... or at least some sort of dessert. Some cakes are huge and beautiful and become a focal point of the decorations. Some cakes are so overly decorated an aesthetically pleasing that they end up not tasting all that good in the end. But they sure are pretty ... expensive. I think my style and budget call for something a little less extravagant.

Here is the plan.

Originally, my mom and I (plus other family and whoever was around two days before the wedding) were going to bake and frost about 150 cupcakes for the wedding. Nothing fancy, just frosting and maybe sprinkles, but we wanted to try to save on costs by making them ourselves. I thought "Making cupcakes is easy and this will be fun! Right?".

I think it was about two weeks ago when I had a mini freak out that I had too many things to hand make and assemble for the wedding. I realized that I would much rather visit with friends and family two days before the wedding then bake and frost 150 cupcakes! I'm sure my sanity will be pushed to the limits those few days anyways, why add extra tasks.

Bollo's Bakery in downtown Blacksburg will be baking our cupcakes for the reasonable price of $1.25 per cake. They have great cakes to choose from, they are a local business that I enjoy and like to support. Bollo's can mix and match any flavors I want and even have a vegan option! Plus they only need four days advanced notice so I can wait for all my invites to come back before I place the order. That's one sweet deal!

To spice things up a bit and add a decorative element to the cake table we got a three-tiered staggered cake stand and I ordered fun yellow and blue cupcake liners from an Etsy shop.

Since I am obsessed with having a personal touch to all things for the wedding there will be some hand made things gracing the cake table as well, don't worry. :)

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While looking up cake alternatives I discovered "cake pops" and they are so adorable that I had to include them! We will be hand making these but since you can freeze them before dipping them in chocolate we can make them well ahead of time. Expect little yellow and blue mugs of cake pops arrangements on the cake table.

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I didn't want a huge cake but I still liked the idea of having a cake to cut into with my new hubby. So on the top tier of our cake stand we will have a small 8" two layer cake. (Bollo's will also be making this).

We have sort of a bird theme going on so I thought two birds and a bird's nest would be a great cake topper. (Our theme is really just "things we like". I like birds. They are going on the cake.)

The two birds will be handmade by Alice Strand a friend of my mom's in Northern Minnesota who makes adorable little sewn animals.

The nest will be made out of sugar cookie and fondant. I found a recipe online and tried it out with my mother the last time I visited.

Here is how our trial baking day went.
Once again please excuse my shabby appearance. Apparently, I like to do crafts in my pajamas.

Using brown food dye we rolled out sugar cookie sticks, baked them and then stacked them to form a nest. I used frosting colored with brown food dye to secure the sticks. (The next time we make this we will roll the sticks a little thinner and add more texture. They puffed up a bit in the oven.)

Again using brown food coloring we dyed the fondant and rolled it out flat. Then we cut into thin strips and laid them out on upside down spoons to give them a little shape. Once dry, we flipped over the spoons and dumped the fondant in the middle of the nest.

We added some colored MnM's for the eggs. With Easter coming up I'm sure I can find some more realistic looking eggs in yellow and blue to use for the final nest.

Mavis and I packed up the nest in a box so I could bring it home to show Dan. He ate up the whole thing. I guess that means he liked it! (don't we look cute in our robes?)