Almond mountain, our wedding cake

Each of the the three tiers (6", 9", and 12") was made of four layers of almond pound cake filled with rasberry curd-whipped cream and covered with rum buttercream. I decorated with borage and nasturtium flowers and leaves from the gardens of my friends and family. The raspberry curd was made from rasberries my mother picked from my aunt's yard, and the many dozens of eggs (ten or twelve?) that went into each component of the cake were all from hens and ducks (yes, huge duck egg yolks in the buttercream!) which roam in backyards from MA to ME.

I may need to make a separate post about the technical aspects of this cake, but I must mention that one clever idea I had that worked--and I am no fan of shortcuts in foodmaking, normally--I made almond paste using almond flour which I ordered (along with their Queen Guinivere cake flour) from King Arthur. I have become very particular about almond paste, and have found that good almond paste is not something you can buy (it is awful, the stuff I have found in stores, even in the most distinguished specialty shops), but few books I have read suggest making it at home. Fortunately I learned to make almond paste at my grandmother's knee, and tracked down her recipe in the 1975 edition of Joy of Cooking. My old method, when I've made it for marzipan, was to grind the almonds in the blender four times, but using pre-milled almonds saves a heck of a lot of trouble, does not cost more, and as far as I can tell, yields an acceptable result, certainly better than any commercial almond paste I've ever found! I had worried that the pre-ground almond meal would lack oils that freshly ground almonds would have, but the result seemed perfectly acceptable to me.

So worried was I that there would not be enough cake to go around, I made an extra 12" tier as backup! In truth, a cake this size should feed 150. There are still a few chunks of it in fridges around here..

photo courtesy of Drake King

Marzipan

Here is this year's marzipan. I made around 200 pieces to distribute to friends and family.  As you can see, I made pears, apricots, carrots, oranges, onions, garlic. Last year I made some very darling sprouted garlic cloves. The oranges have whole cloves stuck in them to imitate the stem end. I used small twigs and broken cloves for the pear stems. The apricots' stems are made of cardamom seeds. 

My marzipan is made entirely from ground almonds, beginning with almond paste: I ground blanched and slivered almonds to a fine powder in our very powerful blender. Then I stirred in a sugar syrup and some kirsch, cured the resulting mass for several weeks, then kneaded it with one egg white and a quantity of confectioner's sugar. The recipe is taken from the Joy of Cooking (1975 ed.), and from all the ones I've tried, seems the best. Last year I did extensive research on flavorings. I tried hard to replicate the flavor of my favorite commercial marzipan, Niederegger. This year I saved stones from nearly every peach, plum, and apricot we had this summer intending to use their noyaux, but when the time came, I elected to add just a few drops of almond extract instead of grinding those kernels of bitter almond flavor.

I typically form the pieces forty at a time, let them dry for an hour or so, then paint them with food coloring diluted with water.