Bittersweet Tales of Wedding Cakes

By CYNTHIA COWAN

A recent wedding magazine featured a multi-tiered creation composed entirely of cupcakes. A short-lived trend, one hopes. This ziggurat of blue-frosted dainties looked more like the piece de resistance for a kindergarten show and tell. What is next, Twinkies artfully arranged in a Lincoln Log-style fortress? What has happened to tradition and good taste … that tastes good? And what's with the blue frosting? Other than in blueberries, blue is just about the most unappetizing food color imaginable. The palest blue buttercream piped into a delicate dotted Swiss or miniature decorative rosebuds, discreetly placed, would be infinitely more palatable.

Given the escalating price of wedding cakes, it is understandable that brides are considering different options. Sometimes, however, choosing a nontraditional cake or opting for economy over quality can have disastrous results. Fortunately, after enough healing time has passed, these stories of wedding cake blues can be recounted with humor.

Picture one such nightmare, when guests watched helplessly as the whipped cream-swathed layers gave in to the hot July sun and fell like dominoes onto the potluck buffet table. Some tried valiantly to secure it with kabob sticks, but to no avail.

Another incident involved one economy-minded bride with expensive taste who became outraged when the waitress was unable to slice the wedding cheesecake into enough one-inch bites in order to accommodate the 150 guests. The restaurant supplemented with 30 slices of assorted, semi-frozen commercial layer cakes -- thoughtful, but just not the same.

A cutting-the-cake ordeal of a different sort occurred when a waitress detected a foreign object while slicing into a middle layer. Unruffled, she hooked the suspicious mass onto the knife and gently glided it out of the cake and onto the floor. Before inconspicuously shoving it under the table skirt, she identified the offending article as a Betty Crocker box top. The secret was out.

All too familiar at wedding parties are the lonely slices of bland cake blanketed in Crisco-laden "buttercream" that remain uneaten at each place setting. Guests will go so far as to perform humiliating renditions of The Macarena and the Electric Slide to avoid eating such cake.

Each of these bittersweet tales attests to the challenges present in cake selection. What is the thoughtful bride-to-be to do? Perhaps the only way to ensure satisfaction is to make the cake yourself. Or, enlist the help of a best buddy. In either case, one of you must possess considerable culinary prowess, and the wedding party should be of a modest size, say fewer than 100 people.

There are several good recipes in the old reliable cookbooks, such as Joy of Cooking and Fanny Farmer. Useful instructions in quantity, assembly and basic decorating techniques are also provided.

The easiest and prettiest decorating tip is to go simple with the frosting and lavish with the fresh flowers. Why try to recreate with buttercream what nature provides beautifully? Find a picture of a gorgeous cake crowned with flowers and model your own fetching masterpiece after it.

If making it yourself is out of the question and a professional cake baker will be enlisted, it is wise to request a cake-tasting appointment. Several talented Island bakers provide this service. Bring along a friend or two for second and third opinions. Aside from taking much of the worry out of choosing the right cake, it is great fun, too.