194/365 Stacked

Rather than today's picture of the day being the first in the series as is usually the case here, today it will be the last one.  You'll have to make it through this series of pictures, imagining some missing parts, to fully appreciate the ending.


Once upon a time there was a panicked bride.  On the Wednesday before the Saturday she was getting married, the source for her wedding cake informed her that she would not be able to make her cake. (Something about just having had a baby.)   With only three days until the wedding, what was the bride to do?

She remembered that she had a colleague with a young, trying to get experience, daughter who had recently graduated from culinary school and moved back to Texas.  She sought out her colleague who in turn phoned said daughter with the bride's dilemma.  In a moment of weakness (and poverty), the young baker said yes to making the cake.

Soon more pounds of butter, flour, and sugar than one normally consumes in a year appeared.  Eggs were cracking.

NOTE: The band-aids have to do with sharp edges on cake pans and plastic wrap boxes.

Soon , the last lonely egg joined the others from its dozen in a scrumptious cake batter.

Being that the bride's dream was a four tier cake that would feed two hundred people, there was A LOT of batter.  A lot of batter means a lot of baking.  Here we go with pan number one.

Fast forward . . . all four tiers, which were each two layers, are done and headed to the freezer.

During the baking process, the gum paste flowers were being made - each one by hand.

Once the layers were done and the first layer of flowers were busy drying (see yesterday's post), it was time to make the butter cream frosting to go between the layers and that would also be used to mask the tiers so that the fondant would stick.

The young baker decided that she would also make all of the fondant from scratch.

Tier three successfully covered.

Tier two successfully covered.

Tiers one and four were also successfully covered.  This cake process was nearly non-stop for three days.  Obviously I missed photographing many steps.

Then came the scary part.  The tiers of cake and all of its parts had to be moved to the reception venue unassembled.  Once there, the tiers were stacked, the fondant trim and finally the flowers would be added.  The transporting of this sugar monster nearly thirty miles was a little crazy making for all of us.  So many things could have gone wrong that would have been disastrous; the biggest thing that we knew we were fighting was the heat - it was  103 degrees.

All of the decorative flowers were packed in the empty egg cartons.  Surely if these masterpieces of cardboard can protect eggs in their travels, they will protect these delicate flowers.

There are zero pictures of the cake assembly process. We were all too busy praying.  Okay, I was praying; the young baker was frantically working to the mantra, "I will never do this again.  I will never do this again. I will never do this again." I tried to be the picture of calm.  That did not work to calm the young baker.  She said that the only reason that I was calm is because I had low standards and therefore did not stress out.  Yeah, whatever.

The young baker worked for an hour and half sticking dowels on the tiers of the cake so that they could be stacked.  She added the trim to each tier and then added the flowers, none of which broke in transit!  The florist came by and offered a few left over rose petals if they could be used to add a final touch.

The young baker added the final touches . . .

 . . .and the cake was done.  It was done in three days, by one young baker who had never made a four tier fondant covered wedding cake before (and may never again).

The young baker has come a long way. from this in 1993 . . .

 . . .to this in 2013.

"Stacked Tiers"

And they all ate happily ever after.  The end.

. . . except for the beer that happened at the Mexican restaurant on the way home.

How Did We Get To Stone Hill Inn?

1. Though both Weber and I travelled a fair amount during our first marriages, neither of us had a honeymoon.
DECISION: We would definitely have a honeymoon.

2. We wanted to go someplace that neither of us had been before. Had to be somewhere in the continental U.S. because we are responsible for and had to be easily available to the Offspring. We both preferred mountains to beaches. We have both been to the mountains in the western part of the U.S.
DECISION: East coast mountains.

3. The Poconos and Niagara Falls are too cheesy for us. I've been to North Carolina and Virginia. The farther north, the cooler. (At least that was the fiction at the time we were making this decision.)
DECISION: Vermont

4. Once we settled on Vermont, we did what every educated person does when they are looking for information. We Googled "honeymoon spots in Vermont."
DECISION: Stowe

5. We then Googled "where to stay in Stowe, Vermont"
DECISION: Stone Hill Inn

This process led us to an amazing, luxurious, romantic inn nestled in the mountains of the quaint town of Stowe. The inn advertises that it is for couples only and all of its amenities are designed so that the two of you can truly enjoy each other's company.

Vermont is worthy of its name. Everything was lush and green. The wild flowers along the roadside were beautiful and the intentionally planted gardens were awesome. The inn was surrounded by both.

Here is our first impression.
Each of the inn's nine rooms is decorated differently though they have the same amenities. Each has a view of the gardens, a fireplace, a jacuzzi tub, a king sized bed, CD, TV, and DVD player.

We stayed in "The Fiddlehead"

The bath was huge and shared the two-sided fireplace. The tub came complete with a rubber duck as well as an assortment of herbal bath salts.

Each morning we had a gourmet breakfast at a candlelit table for two.

The meals consisted of fruit, homemade muffins and coffee cakes, a choice of entrees that ranged from Eggs Benedict to Waffles smothered in Vermont maple syrup. A piping hot carafe of coffee awaited us each morning. These morning feasts made it easy to get up and get going each day.

The inn was surrounded by beautiful gardens. Scattered throughout were pairs of chairs where we could sit and read, talk, listen, or nap. These were our favorites. This is where we read Morning Prayer each

day. Below is another picture of the gardens - and us. The inn keepers, Deb and Dana, were amazing. They were attentive without being intrusive. One evening when we were enjoying hors d'ouvres in the garden, Deb came out and said that she thought that she needed to take a picture of us together so that it didn't look like each of us had been on this trip alone. She took a few pictures, asked if we needed anything else and then left us to enjoy our food, drink, and each other.

We planned this whole trip using the Internet and gut feelings. Our experience at Stone Hill Inn far exceeded our expectations. It is nice when something is actually better in person than it appears on the Internet!

It is going to be hard for any place to beat our stay at the Stone Hill Inn!

Stay tuned for more from Vermont . . .

All In A Week

A little over a week ago I was concerned with things like punch bowls, flowers and the fact that I could not have a cookie or a handful of M&Ms every time I wanted to and still zip my wedding dress that was fitted a few months ago. I am happy to say that the punch found its way to a bowl, the flowers, which Erin requested be sunflowers mixed with the blue that Weber and I wanted, were perfect, and I had no problem zipping my dress! Here is the proof.

July 10, 2010

The girls were my attendants. They were beautiful. We each had a role - Brooke was the skinniest; Erin had the best hair; I was the happiest.


In the past week, I have forgotten about punch bowls, flowers, and whether or not my dress will zip. Weber and I are honeymooning in Vermont. We are staying at an amazing bed and breakfast, which I will tell you more about in a later post. For now suffice it to say that breakfast consists of more food than I had been eating in two days. We have been to the Ben and Jerry's factory. Yes, they give free samples and yes, I had a double dip of Imagine World Peace in addition to the free sample of Cookies and Cream. We went to the King Arthur Flour Baking School and Store. Samples? Yes. Free? No, but worth every penny spent on the chocolate croissant. Worth every calorie too since the dress doesn't matter anymore. Then there was the Cabot Cheese Creamery. Free samples there too! And let me not forget the samples of Vermont's best microbreweries that we have had every night with dinner. Fortunately it is my luggage they will weight at the airport and not me when we head home.

I said earlier that I no longer am concerned with flowers. That is not quite true. I no longer am worried about whether they are the proper color or if they are arranged correctly. Today, that is the responsibility of the Vermont countryside.

July 17, 2010

ADD, BTU's, and "I do."

Someone once explained ADD to me as the experience of watching TV with the channels changing every few seconds so that the world seems to be a collection of unrelated pictures where nothing makes sense. For the past two weeks, I have felt like I have been placed in an intentional state of ADD. As I have said before, I really don’t like multitasking. Unfortunately, being one with any single task lately has not been an option; too many things have needed my attention. Fortunately they are all things that I care about so I was able to put my notion that utopia means a linear progression through life aside and deal with all that has been going on.

The big accomplishment is that Weber and I were married yesterday in a beautiful service surrounded by all of our wonderful friends and family. More on this in a later post.

In addition to the last minute wedding plans, we have been making many decisions about the house remodeling, I am teaching summer school, and we still have the demands of daily life. The potential for disaster was great, but I am happy to say that disaster was averted.

We did not try to serve champagne from the lovely rubbed bronze shower spigot. (We are grown ups now! The days of bathtub punch are long over.)

I did not ask my class a test question that involved which tile would look best in our new kitchen.

I did not ask where the dimmer switch was for the unity candle.

I did not give the florist a Glidden paint sample as an example of the color of blue flowers we wanted.

We made it to church with the service bulletins rather than a stack of appliance manuals outlining cubic feet and BTU’s.

I did not respond to Paul’s (the contractor) question, “Do you really want to keep those glow in the dark stars on the ceiling?” with a heartfelt, “I do.”

Though 15 minutes before the wedding I was still wearing my Birkenstocks, I did not walk down the aisle in them even though this is summer and we can dress a little less professorily for class.

I did not make my class sight sing, “Love Divine, All love excelling.”

For those of you who know me well this is pretty impressive, huh!

My ADD adventure came to an end when I walked down the aisle and saw students, fellow parishioners, my Franciscan brothers and sisters, family and friends, and Weber. At that moment, I knew that all would be well . . .now, and for a long time to come.