They'll all want seconds, and you know what? It's okay. Our wedding
cake serves 125 and is only 282 calories a slice, with a mere 5.7 grams of fat.
"For batter or for worse" and "If anyone here objects to this
cake, speak now or forever hold your peace" were our Test Kitchens'
mottos. We tested, retested, and re-retested our recipe until there wasn't
one "Hmm, not quite there" to be heard. And so, without reservations,
we present -- dum dum de dum dum dum -- our Fresh Orange Wedding Cake with
Apricot Mousse Filling and Buttercream Frosting.
One thing, since a wedding
is such a rare occasion in one's life, we do offer the choice of using
butter instead of margarine in the icing (although if your marital track record's
not so great, you may want to stick with the margarine). Honestly, we felt that
the margarine tasted better than the butter. Also, the cake, filling, and frosting
recipes can easily be scaled down to make cakes for other special occasions.
In fact, we think you should hold onto this recipe for birthdays, graduations,
lottery wins, and other celebratory events -- your golden wedding anniversary
among them.
Before you begin to make the wedding cake:
Plan ahead. Read through the entire recipe and Equipment Checklist.
Allow an entire afternoon to bake, cool, wrap, and refrigerate or freeze the
cake layers. Allow a couple of hours to prepare the apricot filling. The frosting
is best made the day of the wedding or the day before.
These instructions will help you get started. The Basic Cake Recipe yields
about 5 1/2 cups batter. You will need enough ingredients to prepare the Basic
Cake Recipe seven times. This will require 1 cup of freshly grated orange rind
or 1/2 cup dried orange rind (buy two jars). Specifically, you will need to
make:
- 2 (14-inch) cake layers, which requires making the Basic Cake Recipe four
times
- 2 (10-inch) cake layers, which requires making the Basic Cake Recipe two
times
- 1 (6-inch) cake layer, which requires making the Basic Cake Recipe just
once
- 1 batch of Apricot Mousse Filling
- 5 batches of Buttercream Frosting
