One of the brides, Lindsay asked us to make her a wedding cake. She informed us her ceremony and reception venue will be outdoor, surrounding with live peacocks. We brainstormed ideas of what her cake will look like and came up with the following: a three-tier, cream cheese frosting with vertical textured stripes, two little peacocks (we found a pair from Michael's) on top tier, and a couple of peacock feathers.
Lindsay's fiance, Marilena, doesn't like buttercream frosting and requested a cream cheese frosting that could withstand the Oregon heat. Originally, we weren't keen with the idea of cream cheese frosting for an outdoor summer wedding. But apparently, we are having a late summer here in Oregon, which reassured us that the cream cheese will not melt under heat. We had to come up with cake flavors that would go along with cream cheese: hazelnut, devil food, and of course, red velvet.
We simply thought of adding natural hazelnut flavor into a white cake recipe, however, the search for hazelnut flavor was a struggle, so we came up with a back-up recipe: hazelnut liquor! Several of the top hazelnut cake recipes recommended Frangelico Hazelnut liqueur. But who wants to spend more than $20 for a bottle when everyone is just going to eat cake, not drink booze? Dekuyper liqueur hazelnut was the most affordable one we could find in our local liquor shop. Should we sizzle this recipe up? Absolutely!
In our trial run of making the hazelnut cake, we added ground fresh baked hazelnut (thumbs up to the Winco bulk section!) and the result... DELICIOUS! Sadly, Linds remembered a couple of her guests had nuts allergy, so we ended up not using this recipe. Hazelnut liquor alone gave a weak taste. We still needed something that would bring out the hazelnut flavor, without using real hazelnuts. While shopping for cake supplies, we spotted Lorann hazelnut oil. Thank you, thank you!!! It highlighted the true nutty flavor of grounded hazelnut, without the nut risk.
At the end of the day, the most important thing to us is that the guests, especially the brides, liked the cake.
The reception was filled with a lot of sugar goodies: Voodoo donuts and Cookies from Portland Cookie Co:
Congratulations Lindsay and Marilena!
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