My friends Leonard and Marie Jones' son David was married today. For almost two weeks I have been working on the flowers for the cake. They are made from gumpaste. David and Scarlett make a beautiful couple. They have started a small ministry close to my farm in Valle de Angeles.
This cake was the hardest cake I ever made. The cake wasn't hard, the decorations were not hard, but the fondant was a disaster. The first batch of fondant which had about 10 pounds of powdered sugar in it, just would not work. I tried and tried but to no avail. Finally about 10 o'clock, the morning of the wedding I called in a friend to help. She seemed to think it was a humidity problem and a too cold of weather problem.
When she arrived about 12:30 PM I was panicked. I had to drive the cake up the mountain to El Hatillo to La Cumbre and I had heard that the road was out and that there was a long detour. That mixed with the fact that the wedding was at 5 o'clock and my neck was a tight as a fiddle string.
With the help of my friend we made another batch of fondant using the same recipe and it worked just fine. But to put fondant on so three layers takes a while.
We threw the cake into the car and took off with flowers in hand, leaving the house at 4:45 PM for a 5:00 PM wedding... we drove up the mountain and then found that the detour was a horrible bumpy, potholed road... I prayed that the cake wouldn't fall...
The fondant did fall a little, but thank God I had made extra flowers, just in case.... So I covered the sags in the fondant with a few extra flowers. I arrived at the wedding at 5:15 but the wedding had not yet started... The groom was as cool as a cucumber, saying, "You are not late, the bride is not here yet and the wedding doesn't start until she gets here." In Honduras the bride arrives when she gets darn good and ready... Good for me on this particular occasion... she arrived as I was leaving one hour later after the cake was set up!
Then they had the cake table next to the lit fireplace. I am working on the cake, getting the flowers on it and it is squatting.... Then I had to move the cake, the table and all, praying all the time that it would not collapse... Well it didn't collapse... It did look pretty, except for the few extra flowers where the fondant split on the rocky road. Everyone said that it tasted great. I used over 100 eggs in the cake... It should have tasted great!!!