Since Portia shared her and Jin’s wedding photos and story I thought I would (maybe rehash?) write about the wedding that I helped make a cake for.
This was probably about 20 years ago when my dear (and now sadly departed) friend Sue decided that for a friend’s wedding that she would provide the wedding cake.
And that I would help.
At D&D. Me on the right, Sue on the left in front.
Now this wasn’t a burden on me since Sue and I had spent years cooking together. As a matter of face we met when she hired me for my first job out of college, in the pastry department at Dean & Deluca in NYC. The wedding would take place in a resort in the Poconos, slightly off season. and Sue was going to use the kitchen of a friend in Brooklyn to bake, decorate and assemble the cake, and I would ask the friend in NYC I was staying with if we could use her car to transport us and said cake to the resort.
So we would be back in NYC, baking, shopping, and hanging out. Heaven. Now, I wasn’t really looking forward to asking my friend to use her car: A teensy Honda that would be pressed into service to take Sue, her husband and child, me AND a wedding cake. I knew it would be disaster, but I did ask my friend. Phrasing it so she could easily decline. Which she did. Which turned out to be a good thing: the car rental agency we booked in mid-town Manhattan had given away everything by the time we got there save a Harvest Gold Cadillac sedan, which had ample room for our little group, their luggage (which was ample) and the individually boxed layers of the cake.
rolled fondant
Which in itself took days to make. Ours was a well equipped but not commercial kitchen, so baking the layers was in stages. Then the cooled layers needed to be soused with sugar and booze (necessary to keep them moist for days), frosted, covered in fondant (also for moisture retention) and boxed up for travel. Decorating would be finished in the hotel room. If you ever get the idea that you can finish decorating a multi-tiered wedding cake in a hotel room in the Poconos, especially using Martha Stewart ideas, gum paste, and your car keys, let me save you a world of hurt and tell you to rethink that idea. We had to. Luckily we did have ingenuity, piping skills, and fresh white flowers to save the day, the cake, and us from double homicide. The cake turned out, the bride was happy, and we were left with a nice glass of white wine trying to figure out a way to cram a lobby full of Heywood Wakefield originals into the trunk of a deVille.
Not the actual car, but close.
A car that I would buy in a heartbeat if they still made them. Now, I do love my sporty little roadster but lordy that Caddy was POSH. Not snippy German luxe like a Mercedes. No. This had about 6 acres of harvest gold leather swathing every surface that wasn’t covered in zebrano wood or chrome. It glided over NYC potholes and turnpike expansion joints like a magic carpet. While it didn’t pitch and yaw like the my Mom’s did, the ride, the quiet, and the comfort still whispered “why are you going so fast? It’s not going be any to nicer there. Sit back and relax” while also saying “this may be a livery car so I don’t care if I kill you” to people in Audis who don’t want to let you zipper merge. I hated giving it back.
I love New York. To visit. It was wonderful on those autumn days running around the city to places to buy stuff (who knew there was an entire neighborhood devoted to baking supplies? Only in NY..) Taking the subway, just running around feeling coolly competent in your NY persona. Knowing that in 5 days you will be back in your LA place, with the car in the garage and the 3 Trader Joe’s a short stroll (or drive, this is LA after all) away.
Have you ever made a wedding cake? Driven a big old Amurrican sedan? Want to? Share in the comments.
Photos: Mine, Pexels, and Wikimedia Commons.
I have NOT made a wedding cake, but I came of driving age in the era of big ol’ cars. I had a 68 (?) Dodge Coronet 500, I think. And my boyfriend had a Pontiac Bonneville with fins and no power steering, you had to spin the wheel around several times at each turn, it was like steering a ship.
No power steering? Yikes!
Definitely never made a wedding cake. lol. I’m a good cook but baking never much interested me.
All cars were big back then. My dad was a very physical man and loved speed, so all his cars had BIG motors. Never cared about luxury. He was always a bit wild, fearless, and crazy and so much fun! He taught me to drive like him, when I was 12. Joie de vivre!
Funny thing is that this one while considered big now is actually small in comparison to the ones that I grew up with. This 2000’s deVille is a front-drive car that’s feet shorter than the RWD caddy it replaced from the late 70’s which were feet shorter than the ginormous ones from the early 70’s. I can remember my Mom seeing the new 1977 deVille and wailing “but it’s so small!”
The people we bought the house I grew up in built special garages so their extra-long Imperials would fit. I could have parked two of my FIAT spiders in one of those garaged with room to walk between
What a great story and incredible car too! Thank goodness cause all that luggage and cake! I’ve never baked a wedding cake. At our wedding, we had a professional bakery do the big white cake, and my new sister-in-law made a big chocolate groom’s cake. This was soon after the movie “Steel Magnolias” had come out. No, it wasn’t shaped like an armadillo! Apparently it was amazing. Mr. C and I never even got any. Every crumb was eaten up.
Lol! It was Martha Stewart’s chocolate groom’s cake that got me interested in making a wedding cake!
I an really glad we didn’t have to do a grooms cake. I am sure Martha’s version is intense.
I have a second-hand copy of her huge aqua coffee table book called “Weddings.” It’s gorgeous. I wonder if it has any recipes in it?
I honestly don’t remember. I do remember that she had a cookbook that NYT kind of took to task because of the difficulty of the recipes and that they weren’t complete on directions. Having made things from her hors d’oevres book I can tell you that some of them require specialty equipment and minions to make and assemble.
I hated her for YEARS! because she ‘forgot’ (?) to let folks know that marshmallow damb near TRIPLES in size when you’re cooking it…
… have you ever cleaned burnt marshmallow off a gas stovetop???
She “forgets” a lot of things..
It does! That’s where the groom’s cake recipe resides, along with a whole buncho wedding cake recipes
I’ll need to dig out my copy..
I loved that movie and it was the first thing I’d heard about the groom’s cake. The armadillo was hilarious.
I loved that movie, too, and bawled through it cause my mama had nursed me through a serious illness as a kid, and I related to the storyline. Mr. C wasn’t phased, so I decided he was a keeper! 😉
It kind of made me want to move down South. But I went southwest instead.
Never driven anything American but have made a wedding cake!
I made my own, almost 40 years ago. A rich fruit cake fed brandy every week for 6 weeks pre-wedding day. It was iced & decorated by my late MiL. Only one layer for our small, low key ceremony. I remember it being very moist, I had a heavy hand with the brandy but no one complained.
Oh I love those! They aren’t “fashionable” anymore and I think they got a bad rap along with all fruitcakes. My mom used to make ones for Christmas for friends and is was soaked for literally weeks in booze. If you didn’t want to eat it you could use it as a hearth log and it would burn for days. But it was so delicious, even if you could only have a sliver.
Ah, Tom, you’ve told this story in bits in the past but it’s great to read the whole shebang.
I’ve never made a wedding cake. And I’ve not been to a wedding in decades.
On cars, a lifetime ago, when my parents lived in southern New Hampshire my father’s job came with a car, a baby blue boat of a thing. I recall once driving it from Hampton where they lived to Exeter very early one morning (like 5:30 or 6 AM) to meet the Greyhound bus to pick something up for him. I don’t know why I was the one to do it but apparently I managed the whole process with courtesy and aplomb because the report back to my father was very positive and good for his standing at his company. The things we do.
I had a big blue Seville for a while (Portia rode in it) that was beautiful but just too much car for me. I went from a little Civic to it, then to the white Z-3, which was a gnat in comparison.
What a fab adventure Tom.
No I have never made, or wanted to, a Wedding Cake.
Ours was made by a friend and I still have the topper.
One day, when the world is a bit nicer and your country isn’t quite so do-lally, we should go do NYC for a few days.
Portia xx
Yes lets hope the country is still standing then.
Omg. NO! But I almost did. For a friend’s very casual wedding. But he declined. Then another friend, who also declined
Wasn’t my baking skills… neither of them wanted an actual cake.
In hindsight I am grateful.
::but I would’ve loved doing it::
I’d bet you’d make a spectacular one!
Sometime in the mid 1960’s my dad came home from used-car shopping very pleased with himself, having scored a great deal on a beautiful and luxurious Buick Electra 225 (fondly known as a deuce and a quarter). It had a leather interior, a powerful engine, all the best bells and whistles of the time, and best of all, automatic windows (a feature heretofore unknown to us). After we all admired it for awhile, my mother said diffidently “Honey, do you know it’s pink?” No, my father didn’t know it was pink; he was colorblind and thought it was a tasteful shade of pale gray. He drove it back to the dealership and tried to get them to take it back, but to no avail. It was our car for years, and very comfortable it was, but he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder whenever anyone mentioned its color. To be fair, I don’t think he cared that it was a “feminine” color, but objected to an unserious color for a luxury vehicle. The rest of us found it pretty damned funny but tried, not always successfully, to hide it.
Great story! The ‘59 Buick with the shark fins were crazy cool. Even in pink. Or as I believe they called it, “Persian Sand.”