I just found The Best Thing Ever.

So, I have been contemplating baking my own wedding cake. I feel like, in the end, it will be much cheaper, and much more delicious than one baked by, well, someone who is not me. Professional wedding cake bakers don't do a lousy job of baking, necessarily, but I find that, since they may do several cakes in a week, they make their cakes somewhat ahead-of-time, so by wedding day, they may look pretty, but be rather dry. And a lot of them use shortening in their frostings rather than butter! *gasp* While shortening, a solid at room temperature with its high melting point, has its advantages in, say, hot weather (where butter would just melt, causing your cake to, well, melt and droop), buttercream with butter just tastes a whole lot better. If your wedding is indoors (in a banquet hall, in a hotel, an air-conditioned venue, etc.), your cake should be fine.

Anyway, I just found The Best Thing Ever on the Wilton website, while I was just browsing for the heck of it, because the internet in my apartment just started sucking really hard, and won't let me watch videos.

I feel like this is every chocolate-obsessed bride's dream, who wants to send her wedding reception guests into a chocolate coma. Not to mention, it's chocolate, covered in chocolate, with more chocolate on top. How can you go wrong?

I feel like I could totally pull this off, too. I may alter the amount of cake, but the design is pretty, requires minimal effort, and is flexible enough to incorporate any new ideas, like, oh, chocolate-covered strawberries, perhaps? I'm seeing this as chocolate layer cake filled with raspberry jam and chocolate ganache, stacked with the solid chocolate discs, and decorated with the truffles, and perhaps some fresh raspberries or chocolate-covered strawberries? The possibilities are really there.

The other great thing about this cake is that a lot of it can be done ahead of time. The chocolate discs and the truffles can all be made days (or weeks?) in advance and stored in the freezer. And, since the truffles are the main decorations, with just an icing comb used to decorate the sides of each cake/tier, there's no piping detail to worry about. It seems that the main time investment is making the truffles, (which are also the main decorations) which, as I said, can be done well ahead of time. Just get to the reception site, and frost, stack, decorate, and, you have the most chocolatey chocolate wedding cake ever.

Also, some people might say that a chocolate cake is not appropriate for a wedding. While even I at first thought that there wasn't going to make a chocolate cake as elegant as a white cake, this idea is a perfect example of how chocolate covered in chocolate with more chocolate on top can look absolutely elegant, and still be, well, chocolate.

Not to mention, it's your wedding, and you can do what you want to.

Mira