Choosing a Cake

According to the very few bridal magazines and sites I managed to gag my way through, the cake is the most photographed item besides the bride and groom. I sat and pondered that, and then tried to remember the cakes from any of the approximatly 3 dozen weddings I’ve attended. I remember the castle themed one from a friend’s loosely-renaissance themed wedding, and I remembered the triple tiered bundt cake largely because it was one I saw in June. I remembered the flavor of a wonderful champagne cake but couldn’t remember whose it was. I remembered the kind of shockingly colored fondant-covered cake at a friend’s wedding last October. I have vague recollections of tiny sugar cherubs on a wedding cake for a distant relative when I was about eight. And I remembered the cake for my Maid of Honor’s wedding, where it was apparently dropped before hand and glued back together with toothpicks, which they did not point out to us before we cut into it. Fortunately, no one died in a horrible toothipick accident, but it was a shocker.

Beyond that, eh, it’s a cake. “Wedding Cake” has somehow become synonymous with “large foofy white sugar overload costing as much as the dress.” I have no idea how that happened. If you’re interested in the history of the wedding cake, there are plenty of sites online that can point you to the very true traditions and help you keep in strict period theme, if you so desire. In a nutshell, wedding cakes used to be just stacks of cakes brought by the guests and piled up, or they were a loaf broken over the bride’s head to guarantee fertility. Personally, I don’t want cake in my hair, nor do I want a stack of random cakes, so I opted for a modern solution.

Cake Options
Well, really, you can buy or you can bake (or get someone else to bake). If you want to keep to a Medieval, Renaissance, or Fantasy theme, you’ll probably want to avoid the standard Safeway, Fred Meyer, and Albertson’s cakes. Those are a fantastic way to go for cost and taste both, don’t get me wrong, but you do tend to get the standard tiered white nightmare cake.

If you have lots of bucks or are one of those folks who really does photograph the cake a lot, I just have to say that Mike’s Amazing Cakes are pretty amazing all right. They are awe inspiring artistic creations, and I hear they taste pretty good as well. However, I wasn’t about to spend more on my cake than on my dress, so I nixed that idea early on. I really sort of wanted the wedding castle, but I am more than happy with my final plans, so it’s all good.

If you don’t like to bake, don’t. Go to a baker and explain the theme and just work with them to get what you want. I baked my own because I wanted to, not because it was required.

Cake Layout
If you’re baking one, you have lots of options. You can have a single sheet cake. You could have several sheet cakes, several round cakes, even a pile of cupcakes. You could do mini bundt cakes for each guest, and stack them up in imitation of the old way of piling up cakes. You can tier your cakes on a cake stand, or the hard way with pillars. You can have several cakes on the same level.

If you're really a freak, you can actually make your own cakestands. I know, because we did it. I started out wanting wooden tops covered in fabric, but that sucked. After a minor fit, I decided to use a round of wood for the base, spray painted gold. Then the stem part was a piece of cherry tree from Todd's woodpile, and the top was a clear acrylic cake plate, screwed on. I wrapped ivy and grapes around them, and made one short, two medium, and one tall. Not too shabby!

Baking Your Own Cake
I hear you must be certifiably insane to bake your own wedding cake. I disagree. If you’re going to go for one of the Towering White Creations, you’re probably insane to bake it yourself when you can get a perfectly lovely one from a baker for a reasonable price. If you like to bake and want something more in-theme, you’re not insane, you’re just industrious. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Cake Flavors
Bakers and wedding cake specialists have a set menu of flavors to choose from. Go sample! I mean hey, free cake, right? They range from fairly standard white and chocolate to cheesecakes, carrot cakes, spice cakes, even custards. If you are looking for something in-theme, a spice cake or carrot cake (yuck) is probably more appropriate than something with chocolate. If you’re looking for “theme-esque”, as I was, then the presentation is probably more important than the contents.

I looked up several Medieval sites looking for cake recipes, and mostly they’re plain pound-cake type cakes. I personally opted to go with four cakes of four flavors, two more “period” and two not.

Candied fruits, mint leaves, herbs, and edible flowers can set off a cake in a nice period way. Yes, it’s okay to eat rose petals, pansies, mint leaves, even snapdragons. Some bakers might be able to do this for you, or you can do them yourself easily enough. But please, before you candy your own greenery, be double sure it’s an edible flower or plant! Some lovely ornamental plants are highly poisonous. And be sure you know the source, so you know it’s free from herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and other contaminants. Wash and dry your greenery before starting. For more tips, see my cookbook.

My Cake
I chose to bake four bundt cakes in cathedral-shaped bundt pans, and place them on four cake tiers. The front tier is 6” tall, the two side ones are 12” each, and the back one is 18” tall. I covered these in velvet, and put the cakes on the professional foil-covered-cardboard cake trays, secured to the stand with pins. Somewhere along the planning process I decided to make them themed by the seasons as well as “medievalesque”. Please see my cookbook for the recipes for each cake and any edible decorations.

• Irish Crème: A chocolate and Bailey’s cake, glazed with chocolate. Camille and I added marzipan and fondant fruits and vegetables, for autumn.
• Groom’s Cake: A rather plain cake I pulled off the web, accented with Citron and candied fruits. Glazed with a rather scary cheese-orange sugar glaze and decorated with sugarplums and crystalized mint leaves, for summer.
• Champagne: A champagne flavored cake, glazed with light pink confectioners glaze. I added crystalized flower petals and mint leaves from my yard, for spring.
• Handfasting Cake: A very plain honey lemon cake, frosted with white glaze, and decorated with rock candy crystals, for winter.

The Cake Table, fully assembled