Wedding Under the Stars

Last week I had the honor of providing the sweets for the wedding of two friends of mine.  The wedding took place on my old stomping grounds in Berkeley, CA (Go Bears!) at the Lawrence Hall of Science.  The bride and groom, both Cal alum, chose a Berkeley/academic/nerdy theme, complete with a blue and gold color scheme, a composition book program, and test tubes filled with candy.

For the wedding reception dessert table I prepared blue/gold mini trifles (lemon pound cake/mixed berry compote/lemon curd whipped cream) and red velvet mini cupcakes topped with blue and gold flags.  The bride joked that my red velvet cupcakes would be the only red allowed at her wedding.  The Cal and Stanfurd rivalry can be pretty serious!

I'm thankful for all the hands and hearts that made the dessert table a success.  My sister let me use her equipment and kitchen, my parents made the cupcake toppers, and my friends from Brooklyn who also traveled to Cali for the wedding took their spot in the assembly line and helped put everything together.  Last but not least, my nephew who just graduated from high school and aspires to be a baker, became my assistant.  He squeezed and zested about 30 lemons, cut up hundreds of pieces of pound cake, and came with me to the wedding to get hands-on experience of catering an event.  My nephew was so excited about  the feedback we received that on the ride home that he asked if we could make the mini- trifles for his upcoming graduation party.  I said sure, but asked him if we could use store-bought pound cake to cut down on time.  He said no way.  I asked if we could compromise and use box mix pound cake, and again he said no, stating that we needed to bake everything from scratch like we did for the wedding.  I couldn't be a prouder auntie.  He answered my trick questions correctly and passed the first test.