Homemade 50th Anniversary / Wedding Cake

For Granny and Cordy's 50th Wedding Anniversary, I wanted to have a nice cake to celebrate. I decided that it would be cool to try to go it myself instead of buying one.

The celebration was to be Thanksgiving day, so the weekend before, I made the cakes.

I wanted the cake to look similar to their original wedding cake - stacked layers. (I think they had three layers originally - but there would only be 16 people for the anniversary party - three big layers seemed too much.)

I used one 10" and one 8" springform pan - greased and floured.



I knew I needed a cake topper, so I went to the local hobby store. In the wedding section I found your basic plastic 50th emblem and a pretty centerpiece with lovebirds (it wasn't made for a cake - really too heavy - but Granny likes birds so I thought it was appropriate.)


I've made lots of cakes over the years from "scratch". Lately, I've determined that your basic cake mix is just as good - sometimes better. So, I opted for with two basic yellow cake mixes.

The cakes turned out good - baked them 60 minutes since the cakes were so big. After cooling, I put them in the freezer for a few hours. I wanted the cakes to be absolutely flat, so I just turned the frozen cake on end and sliced off the "domed" top with a long serrated knife.



Nice and flat, upside down. Did this to both layers, wrapped both up in plastic wrap and back to the freezer for a few days until ready to decorate at the last minute.


Fast forward to Thanksgiving day - I had transported the frozen cakes to Mom's house. I coerced my former chef brother Eddie (once a chef, always a chef?) to help me with the decorating. I have done a few kids cakes over the years, but I figured (correctly) that he'd do a better job!!

He has a neat turntable cake stand..makes decorating easier. We made a buttercream frosting -




Easy Buttercream Recipe -

4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup Crisco
1/2 cup REAL Butter
2 tsp. Clear Vanilla (regular vanilla would work - but the icing would have more color)
2 Tbls. Milk - (I ended up using more than this)

Mix on med/high speed for several minutes - this is critical to make the right smooth texture

(I will now apologize for using the word "we" - it's mostly "Eddie")

We didn't get a lot of photos of this process, but Eddie used a cake saw to split each layer in two. Just cut right thru each layer at a constant level. I'm sure you could do this with a long knife to adequate result. He did this to be able to put another layer of icing in the middle. I guess I could have made two of each layer - but I only had one of each pan....


The 8" layer was too big - I should have used a 6" pan for the proper stacked "wedding cake look". So Eddie just used a 6" bowl and cut the cake. Ugh - now we had "raw" edges. After a little discussion with Mom and experimenting, we just thinned down the icing a little and slathered it on. It was not particularly pretty at this point, but the basic shape is there.



After you've got the ugly "crumb coat" in place, you need it to re-solidify the butter. You could put it in the freezer, but we had an outdoor freezer!! So we just sat the cake outside for 20 minutes and the icing was nice an firm.

The rest went really fast -

Since the "crumb coat" is nice and solid, the nice, clean icing can be applied next without getting anymore crumbs in it.

Eddie used this straight spatula and the turntable to put on a thick coat of icing. Nice how it makes the sides so straight and even.


I had bought some "Wilton's" brand disposable bags and some basic nozzles. Eddie, of course, has hundreds of these - but he was winging it at Mom's with the basic stuff I had brought. He just did these little sculpted "blobs" along the base of the cake, then little stars along the edges of each layer.


Then he made little evenly spaced "dots" on the sides. Took him maybe 5 minutes to do this.

Thanks, Eddie - it turned out great!!



Set up at Granny's house, ready for the toast!