Bears and Logs, It’s A Forest Up In Here

For our wedding, I bought one of the cutest cake stands of all time.

It’s from West Elm, and I bought it on promotion a few weeks ago for just $23 (at the time of posting it’s down even further to $19.99!). For god’s sake, look, it’s a bear butt.

Our spread will not only include our wedding cake, but also apple pies, and italian cookies baked by Pete’s parents that we’ll display on a second cake tray, one from their wedding. It’s an exciting time, and it calls for special tiered dessert preparations.

For our cake itself, I veered from the traditional stand and decided to make a unique base using slices of wood. Big, heavy tiered cakes need a solid base, and by using a bunch of dried logs (pulled straight from our fireplace decoration) this cake stand alternative was both convenient and f-r-e-e.

With each log that I used, I cut the end clean, and then measured each cut to be 5″ long with the help of a piece of scrap wood to square the cut so that the piece of log would sit level when placed upright.

This step was especially important because no log rests as smoothly on a chop saw as a piece of sawn lumber. Lining up the end with a piece of scrap wood helped in positioning the log to be cut evenly. Sometimes the log would need to be rotated a little bit or angled when cut in order to chop the most level angle, and it worked well consistently.

Note: At first I tried to clamp that piece of scrap wood onto the saw, but its presence had a tendency to make the freshly cut log want to lunge from the saw blade and was immediately deemed a dangerous situation (despite all of the face protection I was wearing, any airborne log is scary).

Within about a half-hour I had cut enough pieces to sufficiently complete a full 20″ circle, which I deemed to be the maximum size that our baker’s cake tray would be. The tray could be as small as 12″, really, so I designed the stand to be modular for that reason; I can adjust the circle down to accomodate a smaller cake tray. I also cut extra pieces to sit within the circle and support the weight of the cake from beneath where it really mattered.

The chopped logs are really lovely.

I’ve seriously contemplated cutting more logs and drilling into them as candle holders, but when I consider how dry this wood is, putting flame near it just doesn’t seem like the best idea. I know loads of people do it on Pinterest, but this bark is the perfect kindling and I don’t feel the need to cause an unexpected fire on my wedding day.

Since I like it, I’m gonna put a cake on it, and that’s when it’s going to be perfect. For ejemplo, it would look something like this:

We’ll be sure to share photos of this project in play at our wedding!

P.S. The cake illustration is from about.com. It’s a free download used for people looking to make DIY stamps!