So, a little background... Hi, my name's Ben. I am, among other things, a recent graduate of culinary school. Yay, how fun was that? About two weeks ago, my sister Eve announced her engagement; the first of my siblings to do so, and there are a lot of us. Congratulations, Eve! Then, about a week ago, she asked me if I would be interested in making her wedding cake. Duh! That would be such a cool, personal way for me to contribute to the wedding. Heck, I was already reading The Making of a Pastry Chef. (You never know, right?) Of course, a wedding cake is a huge project, and my professional kitchen experience is, at this point, zero. I told Eve that I would definitely start researching it, but that she should keep a backup plan, just in case.

This blog is intended to chronicle my progress in learning to design, bake, assemble, decorate, and transport a colossal, amazing, elegant, delicious, crowd-pleasing, non-sister-disappointing masterpiece of a wedding cake. Day One: Yesterday, I went online and did a survey of Amazon's half-dozen or so most popular wedding cake books. Far and away the least sucky-sounding was Dede Wilson's The Wedding Cake Book. I mean, check out those (hopefully authentic) reviews! Nothing else really came close. Amazon offered me free shipping if I could just manage to spend an extra $0.50. Somehow, I managed. In the interest of saving money (on shipping), I also rang up The Art of the Cake: Modern French Baking and Decorating, simultaneously knocking an item off my Wishlist and furthering the wedding cake cause. It's all for the cause. That's what I'm telling my credit card company, anyway.

Day Two: The books are in transit. Hey, progress is progress.

Moral of the story? My friends can look forward to a long, sugar-filled summer. How many dinner guests do you think it will take to eat through a series of giant, trial wedding cakes? I'm guessing a lot.