Firstly a big congratulations to Mr and Mrs Westrup on their big day this past Saturday. As you can see from above the scene was set to have an amazing day. I think the only thing missing from the picture above are the flowers and the cake, which came early on Saturday. Graham and his friends did an amazing job with the lighting and as the sun set The Dolphin did look stunning. With up-lighters in the trees and fairy lights dotted just about everywhere it did look very pretty. Saturday meant a busy day for me as I was on double duties. Not only was I to produce all the food for the wedding but also I was an attendee. I had an early start in the morning to start getting the last preparations done. Then at 2pm I had to make a mad dash to the church for the ceremony and 45 minutes had to make a swift exit to get back to The Dolphin ahead of all the other guests to give them the heads up on the canapes. They were quickly consumed as everybody headed into the marquee for the wedding breakfast. It was an informal affair. The food was served family style so that everybody around the table could just dig in and help them selves. The started consisted of a platter of cured meats, a platter of smoked fish and a platter of grilled veg. This was accompanied by some breads with houmous and baba ganoush. Main course was served in the form of roast chicken with roasted new potatoes, asparagus, veg, Thorpeness leaves and gravy. This was all served family style too. Then the dessert is the thing that had consumed most of my time during the week. It has been kept a secret from everybody attending the wedding since we cam up with the idea.
A whole year ago some bright spark suggested that we have a whole multi-coloured cake on the table that people can cut them selves, this bright spark was me. It seemed a good idea at the time but it did consume alot of my time. The cake you can see above I had to make 12 of. This meant that I made 28 individual sponges to make up all the layers. Having only 3 cake tins this took me some time and saw me for 3 days working 16 hour days. So 20kg butter, 200 eggs, 11kg flour, 11kg caster sugar and 15kg of icing sugar went into the cakes and I must say that I am very pleased with how they turned out. They are not perfect but it was the first time I attempted anything like this, so am pretty pleased. I must give a huge thanks to my cousin Kelly who helped me with them too. I was lucky enough to be sitting with Kerry’s family and joined them as the main course was sent out. All of the other staff that were working that day also had their own table so they were able to sit down and reap the benefits of their hard work. I was nice to see some faces that I hadn’t seen since I was at school, having gone to school with Graham and the Best Man there were a few familiar faces. Next saw my attention turn to the evening food which consisted of a briaa and a lamb spit.
After the briaa was ready cook on on went the bore wores which went down a treat with all the South African visitors that we had at the wedding. Ivan had made an amazing marinade for the whole lamb which was made up with paprika, lemon, and thyme. There was also rump steak available from the briaa and an array of salads to fill your plates with. Every body partied hard into the night and the dance floor was never empty. I must say a huge thanks to all the staff that worked on Saturday. They all worked extremely hard and their hard work paid off as everybody had a fantastic time. The reports I’ve heard back are brilliant. All in all it was a really enjoyable day that saw lots of happy face and lots of proud faces
