Wedding Cake

Getting married is kind of a big deal. It takes a lot of planning, a lot of hard work, and a hell of a lot of luck to pull off exactly as you plan… all of which gets condensed into a quick ten minute ceremony and if you’re lucky, people will stick around after eating their cake.

Yesterday, my partner and I went to a wedding of a couple at church, and one which I made the wedding cake and groom’s cake. Why people want me to make their wedding cakes, I don’t know. I’m not a professional, a majority of my works leans toward the quirky, I only make cakes that can be stored at room temperature at least until they are cut, and I prefer taste over aesthetics, all of which screams, “Hire a real cake decorator!” But then they throw money in my face and I give in.

I do enjoy making cakes, but sometimes the cakes don’t enjoy being made. Sometimes my buttercream doesn’t want to stay where I spread it or form rose petals which magically become “mystery flowers” instead or in the case of joining two colors from the top to the sides decide they really weren’t meant for each other after all and the side color decides to slide away. “What? You like how the sides gently curve towards the cake board? Oh, I know, me too, it just gives the cake so much character, don’t you think?!” Sometimes as a decorator, you have to make executive decisions, and this one called for some decorative scrollwork to somewhat disguise any imperfections. Nothing fancy, just what I call “Viney Vs, Ss and lower case rs.” This was mostly done to hide the fact that chocolate cake likes to leave crumbs on the sides, even after two crumb coats to contain them. Fortunately it was just enough to make the cake look finished for me, and the kitchen crew church ladies agreed.

Now, making a groom’s cake is something different altogether. Groom’s cakes, by nature, have a quirkiness to them that draws me to wanting to make them, like a bear to honey. I just wished more people ordered them, and fortunately this bride did. Inside jokes that you plan to share with everyone at the reception work beautifully, as do what you really want your wedding cake to convey but your mother won’t let you. The best part of this whole experience was making the groom’s cake, which was simply decorated with a huge banana that had her phone number on it. At the reception, she told the story of how she didn’t have a piece of paper so she wrote her phone number on a banana, and he looked frantically in his man-bag for a banana to write his phone number on to give her, to which she said that he didn’t need to write it on a banana, a scrap piece of paper would work just fine. Yes, a goofy story, but a personal one and he loved the cake and found it hilarious.

Of course, the downside to making wedding cakes is when you give your expertise, they like it, then change their mind about a dozen times before the wedding. For one thing, I don’t like to use artificial flavors, especially when it is paired with the real thing. For the groom’s cake, decorated with a giant banana, was a banana cake and frosted in artificial banana flavored buttercream. The competition between the stand-out artificial and the delicate natural didn’t mesh well for me, but this wasn’t my cake. I did say that I didn’t think the combination would work well, but she thought it would and, well, customer gets what customer wants… even if that means that I can’t put the sliced fresh bananas on top of the vanilla cream filling between the cake and cover it with deliciously melt-in-your-mouth white chocolate ganache.