We love Quinces!

Weddings are cool and all, but you can’t tell me you don’t love quinceanera cakes!  These cakes are like wedding cakes, but often times BIGGER!  And you usually get to meet more of the family when planning and tasting and designing these cakes.  They are just all around super awesome!

My latest quinceanera cake was over a year in the making. Anissa and her mom came in to taste cake and discuss design in February of 2020.  We all now what happened in March….sigh.  Anissa turned 15 in August of 2020, but wasn’t able to celebrate until restrictions recently eased. Isn’t she adorable?!

Anissa chose a six tier buttercream iced cake with two jumbo tiers, so it was height equivalent to seven tiers and served over 250 people!  Her flavors included Almond Cake with Raspberry Filling, Strawberry Cake with Cream Cheese Mousse Filling, Chocolate Cake with Strawberry Filling, Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Mousse Filling and Italian Cream Cake with Cream Cheese Mousse Filling.  Can you say delish?!?

For the decoration of Anissa’s cake, we iced each tier smooth with our favorite icing smoother.  The bottom tier was covered in Tip 1M piped rosettes. So. Much. Buttercream.  The rest of the tiers each had a silver painted fondant band and alternated with quilting and piping.  For the quilted tiers, we used a diamond impression mat and added sugar pearls at the intersections.

When stacking a cake of this size, it’s important that each tier be straight on the sides AND level on top, so that each tier sits centered,  level and straight on the next.  If just one tier isn’t level, the entire cake will lean or look crooked.  So when we stack these cakes, we use all sorts of fun tools including small levels, bubble straws, quarter inch dowels and a rubber mallet!

Once this cake was stacked…it was TALL and HEAVY!  But at that point we were able to decorate it with the silk purple flowers the client provided.  Some people deliver their cakes fully stacked and some stack their cakes at delivery.  For me, living in Oklahoma where the humidity is awful, I prefer to stack in my cool kitchen and deliver the cake intact.  Handling individual tiers at the time of delivery, when they are soft and require additional decorating isn’t my preferred method, but there’s nothing wrong with it!  Stacking at the venue also means that I spend more time at each delivery and can’t deliver near as many cakes in one day.  Saturdays get SUPER BUSY April-October, so shorter deliveries mean I can deliver more cakes!  And more cakes means more revenue and who doesn’t want that?  So my rule is, if it fits in my van, it gets stacked at the shop.  We then box it, so it doesn’t get bumped or damaged.  We also tape it thoroughly to keep any moisture out, which creates a little cooler for the cake to travel in.

The height and weight of this cake definitely tested the limits of my delivery nerves!  It was a two person job, for sure!  But look at the smile on Miss Anissa’s face…totally worth it!!  Happy 15th!!