A Sunflower and Pastry Wedding

So here goes the long-awaited post about Maria and Nicholas's fabulous September wedding! I've already been posting recipes from the various desserts at the wedding for a while now (vegan chocolate pumpkin cupcakes, key lime heart pies, pomegranate-basil-vodka cheesecakes), but I have yet to give you all the big picture, so here goes.

This was most definitely my largest order thus far in the history of my little pastry start-up. I not only made Maria and Nick's wedding cake, but also a whole dessert bar! We'll get to that, though. First--the cake.

Chocolate cake

with cherry filling, dark chocolate ganache,

cream cheese frosting, and sugarpaste flowers

Maria is a huge chocoholic, so she most definitely insisted on a chocolate cake, and they wanted cherry, so I decided to make a chocolate cake with dark cherry filling, dark chocolate ganache, and cream cheese frosting on the outside to balance out the darkness inside! (I don't believe in fondant and try to avoid it whenever possible.) The sunflowers were all made by hand out of sugarpaste.

I have to admit, though, as much as I liked the final result with the sunflowers and ducks (Maria and Nick have an awesome rubber duck collection!), the cake looked even better after they had cut into it and taken the first slice. I'm so glad that I was around for it--it makes me feel so special that a couple is eating a cake that *I* made for their special day.


Anyways, so now on to the good part: the dessert bar! I have to say that I love this new trend at weddings. I did another similar dessert bar set-up in August for another wedding, but that one was far simpler and involved a lot more miniature cupcakes. Maria is also a huge tea connoisseur, so she wanted to have a fabulous, miniature pastry spread for everyone to enjoy with tea post-dinner. *Right* up my alley! So I whipped up the most fantastical menu I could think up for them:


Dark chocolate truffles with crushed cacao nibs

Espresso dark chocolate truffles

Amaretto dark chocolate truffles with almonds

Chocolate cupcake with pumpkin buttercream (vegan)

Fresh fruit tart

Pomegranate-basil-vodka cheesecake

Key lime pie

White and dark chocolate dipped strawberries

Lemon pie meringues

Man, was it a spread! Three different types of handmade truffles (for the chocoholics, of course!), cheesecakes, tarts, pies, cookies, tuxedoed strawberries! Everything turned out to be quite a hit, and the desserts really flew off the tables... Yes, that's tables. Here's just one half of the set-up:


*whew* It was so much fun to do a large mini-pastry order like this, I really have to thank Maria and Nick for the chance!

Oh, and before I'm done, a quick peak at those truffles:


(What you see there off to the sides are the lemon pie meringues--basically, the best parts of a lemon meringue pie, minus the crust--and fruit tarts.)

Congrats on your marriage, Maria and Nick!