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