Laurie’s Cobalt World Blog

My brother married his childhood sweetheart. It’s a sweet story, but doesn’t sound all that unusual. What’s unusual about the story is that there was a 25-year interruption between the time they were sweethearts and the time they got married.

When my brother falls, he falls hard. But their parents thought they were too young to be serious and broke off their relationship.

My brother didn’t date another girl all throughout highschool. And he never forgot his first love.

Nearly twenty-five years later, she decided to look him up. And three weeks after that, they were married.

My brother had never married. He spoke of her often throughout the years. He had compared every woman he ever met to her. It was like a dream come true for him when she called him out of the blue.

My brother and I are very close. So when I got a phone call from him, before he said anything about having met a woman, I knew he was getting married. He just had that, “I have a huge announcement to make” sound in his voice.

So our family got together and planned a small wedding reception for them. I made the wedding cake. I rarely make cakes anymore because I suffer from tendonitis in my arms. But this cake was really worth it.

I hate a cake that looks gorgeous and tastes awful. It’s worse than a cake that looks awful and taste awful. At least your expectations aren’t elevated before your disappointment!

So the inside of this cake is home-baked and the outside is cream cheese frosting. Here’s the recipe (for a regular-sized cake - the wedding cake took several recipes):

• 2 sticks of butter, at room temperature (please do not use margarine)
• 2 cups sugar
• 5 eggs at room temperature
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and flour 3 8-inch round cake pans. Set aside.

Divide eggs. Beat yolks and set whites and yolks aside. If you get any yolk in the whites, discard them and start again.

Combine flour and baking soda. Set aside.

Combine buttermilk, vanilla, and pecans. Set aside.

Cream butter and sugar well. Add beaten egg yolks to the mixture and blend well.

Alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, stirring well after each addition. End with the buttermilk mixture.

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form but the whites are not dry.

Add a small amount of the egg whites to the batter and stir. Then gently fold the rest of the egg whites into the batter. It is okay if tiny specks of egg white remain unincorporated.

Pour batter into prepared cake pans. Bake for 20 minutes or until a cake tester or toothpick comes out clean.

Cool for a few minutes before turning cakes out onto cake racks to completely cool before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

This recipe makes ample frosting to fill the cake, ice it, and decorate it, if desired.

• 2 8-oz. packages cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1 stick butter, at room temperature
• 1 2-lb. bag powdered sugar
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups chopped pecans, optional (delete if you are going to pipe decorations)

Beat ingredients together until smooth. If you are using the frosting as icing, you may need to add a little more powdered sugar to make it stiff enough to smooth and hold the piped decorations.

* * * * *

Here’s a little caution about nuts. If you are making the cake for a group that you do not know well, either delete the nuts or add a notice saying that the cake includes nuts. Nut allergies can be deadly.

For the wedding cake, I used nuts since we knew everyone invited to the reception. But I only used nuts in the frosting that I used between the layers as filling since I wanted a smooth surface for decorating.

Along with the cake, we gave my brother and his wife the blown glass wedding topper. Another idea is to give the cake and a cake stand as a wedding present.

So, all’s well that ends well. My brother gets the girl, you get my favorite cake recipe, and I - hopefully - get you to look at my gorgeous new pedestal cake plates.

Sounds like we’re all winners here.

Laurie