Let them eat cake Let them eat cake (February 11, 2005)

Artistic wedding cakes offer new flavors, bold designs

By Jamie Schuman

The thought of a triple-tiered, black chocolate mousse cake or 500 individual heart-shaped vanilla cakes with apricot frosting may make some couples forget about planning their wedding dinner. With so many delicious and artistic wedding cake options, choosing dessert can be much more fun.

Nearly all local bakeries are offering nontraditional flavors such as lemon poppy seed or tiramisu, rivaling the standard chocolate and vanilla. And the outsides of many cakes also are getting more risque these days: real flowers are replacing buttercream ones; and square shapes and architectural forms such as Coit Tower, are supplanting the traditional, tiered circles.

The Coit Tower cake is a creation of Kathy MacDonald, owner of Kathy's Kreative Kakes in San Mateo. Her store has made custom-carved wedding cakes since 1976. MacDonald also has designed the 500 heart-shaped cakes, as well as tasty versions of the Taj Mahal and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The most common order she receives is for tiers of fondant-covered, rectangular cakes that are meant to look like stacked presents. Fondant, a smooth icing that makes the cake look "blanketed," is becoming the "in" icing at many weddings, MacDonald said.

Alexia Benrezkellah, who took over ownership at the Palo Alto Baking Company last July, also expects to use much fondant this wedding season. She spent last summer filling the former owners' orders, which were more traditional.

Now she is excited about putting her distinctive touch on cakes. "I like the idea of the uniqueness of creating something for each individual bride," she said.

Her California Avenue store now specializes in French desserts, and her wedding cake types are based on French pastries. Flavors include Opera Cake (almond cake with mocha buttercream and chocolate ganache), After Eight (chocolate with mint), and Empress (white cake with hazelnut and chocolate buttercream, and caramelized almond slivers).

Woodside Bakery only uses traditional buttercream frosting, but its ten cake types are all exotic. It offers flavors such as chocolate mousse, tiramisu and raspberry ganache instead of the traditional vanilla and chocolate. Couples get the luxury of sampling the ten cake types before choosing what they like best. Woodside, like many other area bakeries, has been decorating many of its cakes with real flowers instead of iced ones in recent years.

But some couples forgo flowers entirely and choose more sentimental toppings. Prolific Oven cake decorator Renee Apostolou said one of her favorite cakes used icing that looked like a simple string of white pearls.

And MacDonald of Kathy's Kreative Kakes remembers one time when a mother wanted a traditional cake, but the couple, a Japanese woman and a Jewish man, preferred a more whimsical and personal design. The compromise: half of the cake was traditional and half was covered with frosted motifs of sushi, chopsticks, gefilte fish, cats and faces of the bridal party members.

"It made everybody happy," MacDonald said.
Sources:
Kathy's Kreative Kakes, San Mateo, 348-5253 Palo Alto Baking Company, Palo Alto, 321-3234 Prolific Oven, Palo Alto, 326-8485 Woodside Bakery, Woodside, 851-7247
Additional sources:
Hong Kong Bakery, Mountain View, 969-3153 Los Altos Baking Company, Los Altos, 559-0382

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