The "Martha Stewart" wedding cake is approaching...and I'm starting to get worried! I need to make all of the leaves and have not decided whether to use MMF or white candy clay or wafer paper. The leaves are supposed to be almost the same color as the ivory frosting.

Then, she also wants those cherries...I think they're called Rainer cherries? I think it might be too late in the season to get them by the end of September so she said I could also use yellow raspberries. huh?? I don't even know if those are available here at all?? And if they are, how would I prepare them? Should I glaze them somehow in sugar and egg white, or just plop them on the cake?

Has anyone ever made curly strips using orange or lemon peels? How do you make them stay curly??

All of this and I have one wedding before this, plus a wedding reception open house (mine!) and also a surprise birthday party. No free weekends at all. I just took on a HUGE project at work. My son is in varsity soccer so I can't miss any games, and my dear sweet dad has just been diagnosed with "spots" in three areas of his body. I'm soooo stressed out!!!!!!

Thanks for letting me vent...and I hope that someone can answer a few of my questions! Prayers for my dad would also be greatly appreciated. Thank you all!

Hi there.
Very sorry to hear about your Dad, I will keep him in my prayers, hope all works out well!
Well, it is too late for the cherries, that season ends in July. The yellow raspberry season starts now and ends towards mid-October. Don't know if you can get them where you are or not. Try a search and see.
Raspberries are a fruit that the juices tend to bleed out a lot from, so sugar coating them may be fun at the best of times. Sorry not familiar with the cake you are planning. There are different ways of sugar coating fruit including the one you mentioned, but for raspberries you need to clean them shortly before you use them and make sure they are really dry. Coat them with a coarser sugar, because the sugar may dissolve otherwise. I think you need to buy a small quantity and experiment. Otherwise you would likely be better off with grapes if that would be satisfactory.
You could coat your raspberries also add a little iridescent glitter to the sugar to get some sparkle.
For the lemon and such, you need to use either a paring knife or a zester to cut thin strips. You don't want to use any of the white pith, just the rind. If you do a continuos strip all around and immediately place the strips in ice water, they will stay curled. There are various kitchen tools on the market for making these kinds of things.
Hope that helps a bit.
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes

I am sorry about your dad.

If you can not find fresh, I have seen Martha make the cherries and yellow raspberries out of marzipan, and they were very pretty and would work just perfect for her.

Here is the cake

http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml?type=content&id=channel191950&contentGroup=MSW&site=weddings

I would have to agree that making the berries or cherries and leaves out of fondant or marzipan would be your best bet. Besides you could make them up starting now. You can likely even get these kinds of molds for them, or just shape them by hand. I think that is what I would do. Otherwise, with the raspberries, you would have to worry about the juices running on the fondant and such.
Hugs Squirrelly

Are those cherries real? They look too perfect! I would go the marzipan or gumpaste route, starting with the yellow, then you could airbrush them for the color variations. Real raspberries could be a disaster if they start leaking!

You don't even need to airbrushif you don't wnat to, you can either paint with colours mixed with vanilla or oil based flavourings or you can use petal or lustre dusts to achieve those same effects. Those would be really easy to do, but they will be time consuming, still not as bad as flowers and such.
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes

Now that you brought that up, I remember Martha used dusts to color them. That is about all I can recall.

Heehee, I just mentioned that because a lot of people don't have an airbrush and I think it would be easy to get this effect with the dusts.
Hugs Squirrelly

Martha Stewart did a wedding cake for the pbs series Baking with Julia. I have the cookbook that goes with the series. The directions for the cherries, raspberries and leaves are in the book(I bet your local library has a copy). It's actual an excellent book and covers bread, cakes, pies, pastries, etc.

Sandra