Anniversary Pt 2: Cake & Wine

We were always told that you're supposed to save the top layer of your wedding cake and eat it on your First Anniversary.  I read one site that said it was because you would be poor on your first anniversary and another that said you were supposed to have a baby by your first anniversary and then the leftover cake would be served at the christening.  I'm not sure either of those are true but we decided to go ahead and save the top layer for our anniversary.

I think normally the cake bakers usually make the top tier pretty small so that there's really just enough for the two of you or maybe a little more.  Well, I'm not sure what happened but our top tier was gigantic!  I didn't even realize until after the wedding when the hotel delivered it to us in a box but it was probably 8" or 10" in diameter by about 4" - 5" tall!  Seems like enough cake for 20 people.  Fortunately, when I got home from the wedding, I wrapped the cake several times in Saran wrap.  Then, I happened to have an airtight container that was the EXACT size of the cake.  So the cake fit in the container with no room for air, got sealed up and put in a safe spot in the chest freezer.

When I took it out of the freezer and unwrapped it, it still looked pretty good.  See how big it is??

But how would it taste??

We didn't even remember what flavor was in the top layer since each of the three layers had a different flavor.  Apparently it was Vanilla Chocolate Marble.  I didn't let it thaw quite long enough so it was still pretty cold but it tasted ok.  The next day, when it had fully thawed I had another piece and it tasted almost as good as the original.  But it was a HUGE cake.  What was I supposed to do?  Throw it all out?  No way.  That's perfectly good tasting cake...I'm not wasting it.  So I peeled off the fondant, slapped some fresh frosting on it and brought it to work.  Don't worry - I gave plenty of notice that it was freezer cake, LOL.

It was pretty fun listening to the office conversation - a few people were horrified at the idea of eating year old cake.  But most of them gobbled it up and said if it wasn't for the note they would never have known it was a year old.  Great job cake baker, everyone loves your cake even a year later.

While we ate our cake, we also opened our Anniversary Wine Box.  When we got married, we wrote each other a letter on our wedding day and then during the ceremony we put the letters in the box.  

Some people seal the box and only open it if you are struggling in your marriage but I wanted ours to work a little differently.  Instead, we open our box on our anniversary, drink the wine, read our letter from last year and reminisce...and then each put in a new letter!

I had included a couple of disposable wine glasses - mostly just to keep the bottle from rolling around.  But right before we poured the wine Ryan remembered we had fancy champagne flutes we could use from our wedding.

We drank our wine and ate our cake and read the letters we wrote to each other last year.  The wine tasted fine I suppose, but neither of us really drink wine and we forgot to take it out early and chill it.  For next year we're seriously considering putting a bottle of Coca Cola in instead of wine, LOL.  It was so fun reading our notes to each other and remembering how we felt on our wedding day.  I wrote my letter and was ready to put it in the box and seal it up but Ryan still hasn't written his yet, LOL.  He promised to write it before we go to see the Nutcracker so we can seal it up again for next year.

PS.  Our cake was from http://www.creativecakesandcandies.com