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HOW TO
Shop for a Wedding Cake
Usually left for one of the last duties in the planning of a wedding
is the selection of a wedding cake. And no matter your rationale for
getting it, a wedding cake is a centerpiece of the decoration on your
special day and deserves no small amount of care and thought.
 These
days, at least, wedding cakes are actually eaten. The tradition dates
back to Roman times, and for more than a thousand years it involved
breaking small unsweetened wheat cakes over the bride's head to ensure
fertility (which is the same reason wheat, and later rice, were thrown
at the couple). The guests were expected to scramble for crumbs to bring
the same blessings upon themselves.
After a
while, the tradition changed to piling up small sweet cakes. The couple
attempted to kiss over the heap of the baked goods, and the higher pile,
the more affluent the couple would become. Once again, guests were
expected to scrabble through the ruins for crumbs.
About 500
years ago, everything changed when French chef visiting the court of
King William III of England, appalled at the spectacle of cake crumbs
everywhere, decided to produce a "pile of cake" with some design behind
it, inventing the tiered wedding cake we now expect at receptions.
Originally frosted in pure white, it was cut by the bride to symbolize
her separation from family and impeding loss of virginity. Now couples
feed each other the first slice as a demonstration of the lifelong
support they plan to offer each other.
If you
haven't shopped for a wedding cake before, you're in for a major
surprise. Expect to spend several hours just looking at photographs of
somewhat standard designs, and, if you choose, you can take it from
there. The choices of decoration and color are nearly unlimited, and
that's just the beginning.
There are
multiple options for frosting, but keep in mind that your cake will be
baked at least a day in advance, probably even earlier if it has any
fancy decoration. Whipped cream frostings are delicious, but it's a
struggle to keep them fresh and looking good through a long decoration
cycle and a hot afternoon.
Enter
fondant. This popular "frosting" is made of white chocolate (which is
really cocoa fat) and sugar, beaten and kneaded until it has the
consistency of pie crust. It is the rolled out and stretched over the
individual layers of the cake, producing a solid, shiny and smooth
surface. Fondant can be colored in many ways, but think carefully.
"We had a
customer ask for navy blue decoration on a silver fondant cake," said
Manette Roxas of Goldilocks Bakery, with locations throughout the
Bay Area. The requested color, however, necessitated so much food
coloring that the frosting began to fall apart. thus, the lesson - while
this probably your first wedding cake (or at least close to it), it
could well be your baker's 400th of the past year. When in doubt, defer
to the judgment of the experts.
The
bridal couple can help out by doing some homework in advance, at the
very least to see if there are styles of cakes that they don't want to
consider. The fondant icing makes it possible to do some structurally
amazing things with a cake, such a making it appear to be a series of
wedding gifts piled casually atop each other or a stair-step of tiers
with candles and even fountains in the spaces between the layers.
Fondant
is thick and sturdy, but it's also heavy, so if you have your heart set
on light, spongy cake you will be somewhat limited in the type of
frosting you can use. the cake, however, can still be a traditionally
elegant tour-de-force of rosettes, swans, decorative swirls and flower
petals.
Be
certain to arrange with your caterer, and with the hall or room you
rent, to have a table large and sturdy enough to display your cake
throughout the reception.
"We did a
wedding where the guests crowded around the table and someone bumped one
of the table legs, "said Jaeca Yuzon of Goldilocks," and the
table, with all the cake's layers, collapsed into a pile on the floor."
A baker will decorate, assemble and deliver your work of art, but it's
up to you to make sure the caterer is prepared to properly display and
serve it.
It's all
worthwhile, of course, because it's one of the lasting images people
carry from your wedding - the magnificent confection that you designed
and selected, and that they got to share with you in your first married
hours in a tradition more than 2,000 years old.
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