Cake. Cake makes people happy, at least until you scoff the lot and then stand on the scales…
I’ve been making and decorating cakes for a lot of years now. I used to only ice or decorate a cake once in a blue moon – but that was probably because as a teenager I suffered from chronic cant-be-arsed-itis. Now, I feel wierd if I don’t decorate them. Even a dust of icing sugar gives me feelings of cake-nakedness.
I have made a bunch of cakes for myself and others in the past couple of years and they have consistently been getting more grandiose and, as I would have it, sillier. This has spurred the creation of my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Auckland-New-Zealand/Somethings/179789461358?ref=ts&__a=9&ajaxpipe=1, and now at the suggestion of my sister in law, this blog.
This week is Wedding Cake Week, and it seems fitting that if I am to start a blog, it should start with an Event. My girlfriend Rachel is having a (vaguely) art deco themed wedding on Saturday and it has been my task over the past few months to suggest cake flavours, fillings, colours, and decorations. I confess I have learned a lot more about art deco style than I expected, and with it has come a deep abiding affection for vintage Cartier jewellery. I wish I could afford it.
So what of this deco wedding cake?
Well as Rachel is a classy girl, this is to be a classy cake. Three square tiers, tinted neapolitan-esque in pale cappuccino, pistachio and pink, decorated with chocolate brown motifs. So far, so elegant.
But Rachel is also a bit avant garde – and so there would be no boring “fruitcake” dull “chocolate cake” or tasty but snoozeworthy “plain old vanilla maderia” inside this baby. In a literal mood, it occurred to me that the colour should dictate the flavour, brown for brown, green for green, pink for pink. The flavours became obvious: Chocolate chili spice cake, Pistachio victoria sponge and Crumbled Raspberry maderia cake.
In a further literal take, these are layered with sour cream ganache, pistachio buttercream and crushed raspberry buttercream. From pre WCW experimentation, I can humbly assert that we have achieved multidimensional flavours.
Some have suggested that this is OTT and in all other ways unsuitable for a wedding cake. These people have been roundly ignored. Cake should be like the best kind of people. Sensational on the outside and the inside.
Next post… The Mixings.
