I know Robs is our unofficial blogstress, but today I (Bailey…not Steve…though he would make a lovely blogstress too, I’m sure) have a story to share.  My friends Rachel and Jonathan got hitched this weekend (yay congrats guys!!). It was roughly a year ago that Jonathan jokingly told me and my friend Lee Ann that he wanted a groom’s cake that was shaped like a barrel and that actually poured beer.  What Jonathan saw as a joke, Lee Ann and I saw as a personal challenge.  I mean, I make beer and Lee Ann makes beautiful cakes…remember these guys from our soft opening party and from Robbie Burns Days past?

Naturally we figured that somehow we could pull it together Captain Planet-style (you know, “with our powers combined…”).  So we thought on it.  We drew structural drawings.  And finally we ordered a miniature oak barrel off of the internet, which we decided to fill with beer and place inside of the cake (so it took a slight Hamlet turn…a barrel within a barrel…).  I don’t want to give away all of the secrets, but suffice to say the construction of this cake involved: a gallon of maple syrup, an electric drill, obscene amounts of pizza (to fix my rehearsal dinner hangover and Lee Ann’s cake-induced migraine), liquid nails, 8 lbs of fondant, a whole lot of wooden dowels, and oh yeah, 5 cakes and 2 liters of beer. Here are some photos of the construction process:

Post-construction there were two feats left to pull off.  1. Getting the cake to the wedding, and 2. Removing the cork from the barrel, which was under about 8 inches of cake, and attached to a wooden dowel that ran up through the cake.  So first we drove about 15 mph to Belle Meade (sorry everyone driving on Woodmont Ave. last Friday around 2:15 pm!). and carried it to it’s home:

 

Then, when cake-pouring time arrived, while the entire wedding stared at us with anticipation, we prayed to anyone listening that the cork would pop out…and guess what…it DID.  I have no pictures of that, because I was holding a pitcher under the spigot and wiping nervous sweat from my brow, but I know they’re out there somewhere…

Moral of the story: Watch what you say around me.  Anything from “wouldn’t this cake be awesome,” to “starting a brewery would be cool.” It’ll probably happen.