00:00I'm Lucy Fink.
00:01I'm a video producer at Refinery29, but every so often I like to try other people's jobs.
00:07It's wedding season, so today I'm going to see if I have what it takes to make a wedding
00:12cake.
00:12This is Lucy for Hire.
00:33My first challenge was to consult with the bride and sketch the cake.
00:37Making cakes are fun, but usually when I have people come in, even to intern and trail,
00:42by the end of the day they say, oh my gosh, I had no idea what goes into this.
00:47It's not a very big wedding, about 45, 50 people, so I need something of that size.
00:54What are you thinking?
00:55Developing an idea for a wedding cake is a learned skill.
00:58There's a lot to know, including the architecture of actually building the cake, and you definitely
01:02need to look at some examples for inspiration.
01:05I took a really good look at the cakes Lauren's created, and after listening to the bride's
01:09request, we came up with a workable design.
01:11We settled on a three-tiered yellow cake, filled with raspberry buttercream, coated with vanilla
01:17buttercream, and decorated with cascading sugar flowers.
01:20You ready to bake?
01:21I have never been more ready to do anything in my entire life.
01:24Perfect.
01:25To the kitchen.
01:26Off we go.
01:28And once we knew which direction we were going in, it was time for my second challenge,
01:33baking the cake.
01:35What we're going to do first, grab eggs.
01:38Smells so good in here.
01:40So this is a two cup.
01:42Uh huh.
01:42So you can just measure two of these.
01:46This is a dream.
01:49Three cups of oil.
01:52I've baked plenty of cakes from scratch before, but I've never made anything this large.
01:56Let's bake.
02:16This is a gym membership, right?
02:20Within each of the three tiers there are three layers of cake.
02:23So essentially, for a three-tiered cake, we needed to bake nine cake layers.
02:29For your third challenge, we're going to fill, crumb coat, and ice the cakes.
02:33So what's in there?
02:34So this is buttercream.
02:35Okay.
02:36So it's meringue-style buttercream, which we've already made and have ready to go.
02:39We folded fresh raspberries into the buttercream, add some nice color, and then I tasted it.
02:45We're going to fill the fridge so that they will chill a little bit.
02:47We could also see if we could speed it up, but we'll see if we'll pull it.
02:51Most important, center the cake on the board.
02:54Once you do this, you can't move it really.
02:57Exactly.
02:57You use your thumb as a guide, and you spin it, and you kind of look at that distance between
03:03there.
03:05We do a dam.
03:06So this way, it's very thin, but it just is sort of your little barricade.
03:13Okay, here it goes.
03:14Building a buttercream dam is not as easy as it looks.
03:18So, would you hire me yet?
03:19Listen, that's why everyone comes in for a trial period.
03:22I filled each layer of cake with the raspberry buttercream, wrapped each tier up, and popped
03:28them in the fridge.
03:29After each tier was filled and chilled, it was time to add the crumb coat.
03:33A crumb coat is a thin layer of frosting that's spread over the cake, acting as a base layer,
03:38so that there won't be any crumbs caught in the outside layer.
03:41And then we finished it off with a final layer of icing.
03:44For your final challenge is to build and decorate the cake.
03:47Okay.
03:48Ready?
03:52Building a three-tiered cake is a complicated process.
03:54We added wooden dowel rods to each layer to provide the cake with support, and added some
03:59final structural buttercream.
04:00Because you can never have enough structural buttercream.
04:03Now that it's built, we're going to do the decorating.
04:05So what we're going to do is make some sugar flowers for the cake.
04:09Is this edible?
04:09It is edible.
04:11What we use tastes like a marshmallow sugar.
04:14Mm-hmm.
04:15Marshmallow sugar.
04:16So it's just like doing a cookie.
04:18In that equal pressure, pop it out, and go.
04:23Wow.
04:23We punched out sugar flowers of all different shapes and sizes, and then used a ball tool
04:28to frill the petals.
04:29We painted them with edible gold shimmer, and just like that, we were ready to decorate.
04:35Making a wedding cake is an art, and a blank cake is just like a blank canvas.
04:39It takes design skills and a keen eye to know where to place each flower, how to angle them
04:44properly, and how many decorations you need until it's just right.
04:48We made a wedding cake.
04:49We made a wedding cake.
04:50We made a wedding cake.
04:51Beginning to end.
04:51How'd I do?
04:52Pretty good.
04:53Do you think that you would hire me here?
04:55As an intern.
04:56An intern?
04:57Alright, we're getting somewhere.
04:59Perfect.
04:59I was hired as an intern.
05:00This was way harder than I anticipated, but the payoff is great.
05:04Of course, making the cake is only step one.
05:07Transporting the cake to the wedding venue, well that's a waltz down another aisle that I'm
05:12not quite ready for yet.
05:16We made a cake.
05:17Hey YouTube, click here to subscribe to Refinery29 on YouTube, and here to watch another episode.
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