Perfect

July is racing to a close, and I am pedalling furiously to keep up. The culminating Marrowstone in the City concert for Number One Son is this evening, Little One has a sleepover, and tomorrow is that yearly debauchery otherwise known as the Microsoft Picnic. Sunday we “relax” by going clamming, and we might even be able to do nothing that evening by watching The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the park. I don’t think we’ll be able to squeeze in a leisurely stroll through the Bellevue Arts Fair or kick back and watch the hydro races, though. We might catch the brides one more time before they fly back to Switzerland, but even if we don’t, we’ll have some sweet memories.

For it was the absolutely most perfect wedding I have ever been to. No pretenses, only pure, unbridled joy. There were oodles of children, resplendent in summer dresses, clip-on ties, and keens. The brides’ two daughters and two nieces created a path of rose petals, a string trio played the Wedding March, and, after toasts were made with champagne and the cake was cut, they danced a slow waltz together. Hopeless romantics dabbed their eyes.

But it wasn’t a wedding. Because legally, the brides, who have been together nearly as long as me and my Darling Husband and who have grown their family in parallel, were not getting married. Rather, they were celebrating the civil union that they registered in Switzerland on Valentine’s Day of this year. There were numerous mentions of the irony of an American lawyer having to go overseas to marry, but the fact remains that this was a great wedding party: the brides, still very much in love, weren’t twenty and had had plenty of time to think about what they wanted in a wedding. And what they decided was that family came first, both their own and those of their friends. No one needed to hire a sitter to come to this event, we all brought them with—and they nearly outnumbered us. There were buttered noodles in the buffet (along with more adult roasted potatoes and asparagus, broiled salmon and a tasty organic greens salad put together by Tuxedos and Tennis Shoes), an entire room was set aside for kids with coloring, hula hoops and games, and an ice cream truck stopped by just when nerves were getting ragged. With meltdowns averted, at least for now, parents packed up their sticky children and headed home. We returned home thoroughly content at how things turned out.

The Saturday before the wedding was a different story altogether. With some of the muggiest weather I’ve ever sweated through, I had set to baking on Friday afternoon, turning out a handsome enough pair of 9” layers. As they cooled, though, the middle of one layer collapsed. No matter, I said to myself, I can bake a new one tomorrow. With the kids in bed, I tucked a 12” cake into the oven. It came out heavy, refusing to rise more than a quarter inch. Not good.

Saturday was supposed to be an easy day: I only had to bake the little 6” topper (in génoise, the brides’ first choice) and an extra 12” (for the kitchen, a bit of slight-of-hand that magically produces plates of cut cake within minutes of the ceremonial cutting). The big layers did a repeat non-performance, barely budging upwards. But the little six-inch cake, destined for the aptly-named bridal suite at the Salish Lodge, puffed up perfectly, and made me wonder just what I was doing wrong with the supposedly easier butter cake. I reviewed Rose’s prose, checked my math, and tried the big butter cake again, this time using a bit more batter. Still domed, still dense and just plain heavy. Not at all what I had in mind.

By this time, my family had been relegated to eating at the little kids table in the corner, as our normal table was covered with an expanding collection of failed layers, not to mention having to tiptoe around an increasingly edgy chef. Darling Husband earned years of brownie points by not only washing up after each failure, but not complaining about it at all. But I clearly needed some perspective. So, I curled up and read, not a cookbook, but Hunting and Gathering, a novel I’d been sipping all week. There’s an intense scene where the protagnist sits at her easel and begins a pastel nude. She picks up the blue pastel, but after a few strokes she stops and changes to red: the subject demanded it. I tuck in my bookmark and head back to the store for more eggs and cream (to assuage the nightmares about not having enough cream to cover the cake).

And so I do what the brides wanted all along. I bake three more cakes, all génoise this time, enough for a beautiful three-tiered wedding cake—for all the little girls to dream and wonder about—and one more 12” cake for the inevitable second helpings.

The day of the wedding—sorry, the celebration—dawned even muggier, and I changed my worrying to the cream. If I felt like I needed a shower after the effort of getting dressed, how must the cake feel, having to stand there, smiling and looking pretty for three hours? As it turns out, I had nothing to worry about, for it was, as I mentioned before, a perfect wedding.

(photo by Cory Parris)

And no, there were no leftovers—unless you count the four butter cakes in my fridge, covered in all that extra cream.

From the bottom up

Procrastination aside, I was waiting patiently for the opportunity to try out the largest layer of The Wedding Cake, when our conductor announced “party Monday evening!” before the downbeat of our finale (Stars and Stripes Forever, since it’s that time of year).

I started off my Monday morning by infusing 4 cups of cream with saffron, and adding cornstarch to cook it to stabilize the cream once whipped. Once it’s cool, I’m to add rosewater, so I open up the cupboard and take out two bottles: one half bottle leftover from Germany, and a new blue plastic bottle from Whole Foods. I open the German flask and sniff; it smells heavenly, like delicate roses on a dewy morning. But I only have a little bit left, and I need three teaspoons. Since this is a test, I figure I should open the other one. The smell is heady and strong, like a purple-haired lady’s perfumed soap. Vexed, I take both bottles upstairs to Number One’s nose, which is buried in a thick book. He validates my impression: the blue bottle is soapy-smelling – clearly, we need to investigate alternate sources, but I need to use it for now. I make a note to visit the Persian market to see what they have to offer, and dash off an email to my mother-in-law in the Vaterland to see if she’s game to picking some up. I set the pudding-like mixture out in the cool morning air with a sheet of plastic wrap to keep it from skinning over. The boys eye and sniff it, but wisely decided it isn’t interesting enough to stick their fingers in.

I then set up to make two 12-inch layers. The Cake Goddess warns me that I can’t go larger than 12 inches, since the genoise doesn’t have the structural integrity to support itself in a larger size. I set up the bowls to separate 10 eggs, when Number One happens by (the way the adolescent male stomach reacts to activity in the kitchen is an interesting phenomenon). He receives the same explanation my mother gave me when I asked why she used three bowls to separate eggs, and grabs an apple from the fruit bowl. He does humor me by cutting the parchment circles for the cake pans – with one hand, since the apple takes a few minutes to devour.

Mixing the batter goes off without a hitch, though I make a note in the margin of the recipe to use my absolutely largest bowl to fold in the egg whites. The batter fits in my big bread bowl, but there’s not a lot of room to spare.

Thirty minutes later, I remove the two layers from the oven, and go to turn them out on the racks. It is here that I discover I should have read Rose more carefully, for she admonishes me to not only check that my pans fit the oven, but that I have enough and sufficiently large racks. Alas, my racks are a scant 10 inches. I grab a roasting rack that is just barely 12 inches for one, then do a quick wipe-down of my oven rack. They’ll do in a pinch, but their wires are a bit far apart, so I make yet another note, this time to go to the restaurant supply house and get some real ones.

We pile in the car to go grocery shopping (I have used up the last of the canola oil and we are running short on ice cream). The Persian market has rose water, to be sure – in quart-sized bottles. But it’s only $4.99, so I buy one. The woman must think we’re odd, as we pile in the car and immediately twist off the cap, our noses vying to get a sniff. It smells good – stronger than the German one, but not as soapy as the blue bottle. We devise another test with little bowls of cream flavored with A, B, and C rose waters. We three decide that the Persian bottle is fine, but Darling Husband is adamant that only the German one will do, and promptly issues stern orders to his mother to hie to the store and express a package hence.

With but a few hours until the party, I begin assembling the cake. The Cake Bible notes that a layer can be expected to shrink a bit, but I am alarmed to note that the shrinkage that was apparent in the six-inch layer is greatly magnified for the twelve, with the bottom diameter now a full two inches smaller than the top. I have two options at this point: either trim the cake or fill the voids with cream. Fearing a syndrome similar to trimming table legs, I opt for the latter, and whip up eight cups of cream. I end up using about six cups, half a cup more than Rose predicted, but it doesn’t look lopsided at all.

The party-goers’ reviews are unanimously rave; one person asks for the recipe, another for my business card. However, that same light texture that makes the cake delicately yield makes it very difficult to cut the cake into small portions, and I only get 30 servings out of a layer that is supposed to yield 75. Even an extra layer in the back room won’t make up for this shortcoming, and I must consider other options.

The next morning, I sit down and spend some quality time with Rose, adapting her basic butter cake for this recipe. Instead of whites or yolks only, I opt for whole eggs; butter is replaced by oil, since I fear the butter flavor will overwhelm. A single six-inch layer is my test subject, and it holds its shape perfectly as it cools. I feed it to Darling Husband and British Neighbor, both of whom are familiar with the original. We are surprised to find the delicate flavors of cardamom and lemon peel more pronounced in this cake, but there is no consensus on the texture: Darling Husband feels it has lost its special quality, but British Neighbor is pragmatic, pointing out that if she had never tasted the fluffy genoise she would consider this a terrific cake.

The brides will blow into town in a few days, and we have decided that they will be greeted by two cakes. They will have to make the final call.

Start at the top

The wedding invitation arrived yesterday, it’s clearly time to begin testing for the cake. So, with friends invited for spaghetti supper (one of the benefits of the couscous party is that people recall it’s fun to break bread together, which leads to multiple social engagements in the months following), I got to work.

I joined Number One Son and Nose in a Book (a quasi-adopted child who cheerfully spends much of her time at houses other than her own) in doing math homework. Bless her heart, Rose, the high priestess of cakes, provides me with tables for figuring things like scaling recipes and numerical factors for baking powder (which counter intuitively decreases as the cake grows). I fill a page in my notebook, resizing my original recipe to yield three separate tiers of wedding cake: 6”, 9”, and 12” (Rose tells me you can’t make a génoise larger than 12”, since it lacks the structure to stay together).

I decided that we’d start with the smallest layer, the six-incher. Pretty straightforward, still small enough to make by hand in a bowl. Yup, I make this delicate cake by hand (I do use a hand mixer to whip the egg whites); the food processor isn’t gentle enough for my purposes. I use up the last of my cake flour, and have to cut little parchment circles to fit the bottom of the pans. I make a note to see if I can find alternate sources for these: alas, restaurant suppliers don’t have this size circle (and I don’t want a 100-pack of any size), and I can find no source for organic cake flour. The batter fills the pans to 2/3—a perfect fit! Tucked into the oven, they are not done as soon as Rose says they should be, so I give them a wee bit more time to reach their golden state, and they reward me by cresting perfectly level with the top of the pan.

I note that Rick’s heavier pans create a firmer crust than my light springform. I’ll have to watch this as I move to the larger circumferences, since this crust helps the cake layer hold its shape for the day that passes between baking and assembly, but the crustless bottom of the cake shrinks a bit, leaving me with a slightly inverted trapezoidal sectional view. I end up trimming the very crispy edges and using the frosting to even things out the rest of the way. Still, topheavy is not stable.

It is good that I am doing a test run, as Rose’s icing guidelines prove completely off. She tells me that I need two cups of icing for a two-layer 6” tier. That means one cup of cream, half of it heated with cornstarch and saffron then cooled. The cream does double when whipped, but two cups is nowhere near enough – I run out of icing halfway around the cake, and end up scraping it thinly to eke out a crumb coat. The cake looks rather naked and guests are coming in an hour – not enough time to infuse and cool more cream. I take the remaining cream from the pint carton (minus the tablespoon or so that already went into some salad dressing), and whip it with some uncooked cornstarch, rose water and powdered sugar. Its texture is chalky when I taste it, but by the time we eat the cake, the starch has softened and not noticeable.

We take two slices over to the neighbors afterwards, leaving Darling Husband with one large slice for midnight perambulations (we’ll call it two servings for the purpose of this test). Which means that Rosie underestimated what happens to good cake: she tells me that this layer should serve 20 people, but we got only 15 servings out of it. My neighbor, licking cream from the corner of her mouth, suggests we might want to make an extra layer for the kitchen, since there’s no way a cake this tasty will serve 100 people.

Dress rehearsal

During our visit to Germany this spring, I made the Persian Love Cake for two newly wed friends. With the cake still in their mouths, they blushingly made a request: would I help them plan their stateside reception by tasting wedding cake, since I clearly knew what they liked? It was easy to agree.

Home again, I dutifully went to the website of their prospective caterer, and looked over the offerings. Drop-dead gorgeous, special cakes indeed, and the flavor combinations sounded lovely for a July garden party filled with laughing children and flowing dresses. But there was a voice whispering in the back of my mind, and it started to rant loudly when I started looking at the prices and paired it with the look on our friends’ faces when the rose cake came out of the fridge.

I have a composition book where I scribble random eco-foodie thoughts, and the page for that day has a big question circled: Could I make it myself?

I begin mulling over the idea, but know I need more information. I turn to the library, which yields books with numerous variations of elegant tiered structures. I learn that the engineering isn’t a huge issue; it’s all basic support systems – circles and dowels – to keep layers from squishing each other. But looks aren’t what I’m interested in. My cake is all about texture, a sensual experience for the mouth. These books talk only about appearances. They don’t address scaling up the softness of my saffron whipped cream and candied rose petals, instead suggesting hard, inedible royal icing swags and piped flowers. I’m not sure it’s possible to do what I want.

I turn to friends: I recall that my friendly dessert rival Rick once made a wedding cake for friends, and posted a web site detailing the entire process. I read it through twice, filling the rest of that notebook page with answers and as many questions. My notes have the word “Cake Bible” underscored three times, and a school parking lot meeting has him handing over his dog-eared copy (the marginalia are informative, alternating scathing and gushing), along with cake pans and a Styrofoam “cake” for practicing with a pastry tube. Rose Levy Berenbaum’s tome falls open to a picture of a pistachio rose wedding cake. It is clearly meant to be, and within fifteen minutes, I am online, ordering a copy for myself. I am ashamed to admit that my shelf is missing this exquisite book, one that talks not only of construction techniques but considers the texture of the cake—and then tells me how to achieve it.

I know then that I can do this, though it is equally clear that it will call for planning and some serious test kitchen runs. My family is game for the testing phase, they assure me. Emboldened, I call our friends in Switzerland and pop the question: May I make their cake? They say yes, yes, yes!

Everything I read tells me that wedding cakes are butter cakes with buttercream frosting. My cake, when I make it at home, is a light génoise with a fluffy whipped cream coat. Joy tells me I need a sturdy cake; Mastering the Art talks about icing: fondant, buttercream, ganache, all solid. But I really want my soft génoise and whipped cream. Rose (for we are now soul mates and on a first-name basis, though she never calls me) comes to my rescue, assuring me that stabilizing whipped cream is not only possible, but will give me that tongue-yielding texture I desire in a package that can endure July afternoon temperatures. I must, however have a cream with between 35 and 40 percent fat content. A call to the 800 number on the back of the Organic Valley whipping cream reveals that its fat content is a whopping 38%. The reticent Midwesterner on the phone is a bit taken aback by my enthusiastic reaction, but I’m too busy with my happy dance to notice. Things are falling into place.

Armed with little génoise cupcakes, I devise a nefarious test to abuse frosting subjects A, B, and C. Frosting A is stabilized with cornstarch, cooked into the cream (handy, since I must heat the cream to infuse the saffron anyway); B is my unadulterated recipe, and C is an attempt to stabilize with gelatin (ironically, I have gelatin in my cupboard only because one of the brides handed it to me in a grocery bag during their move last year). C is by all accounts a failure—my fault, not Rose’s, since she warned me not to beat it too long, and I allowed myself to be distracted by an overly cute child. We left A & B out for long hours under hot lights, refrigerated them without covering overnight, and repeated the cycle. Visitors to our home were recruited to help evaluate the guinea pig cupcakes, and the results were resounding: B, while tasty, was drooping, so beautiful, tasty, yielding A wins. We have our frosting, and I know that I can eschew the piped look for the gentle cream wisps and rose petals.

Ah, the roses. Last year's roses were from that self-same bride’s garden, now under new ownership. I must find a new source for roses. I call the co-op, and they apologetically tell me they just can’t guarantee a source. Hmm. No problem, I think: all the wedding cake books I’ve read make it sound like a simple matter to just call up the florist and ask for unsprayed roses. I systematically work my way through the yellow pages, and only one florist, Lawrence in Bellevue, deigns to reply, telling me that I really don’t want his roses, for beautiful as they are, they are bred for appearance not fragrance and sprayed far too much to risk eating. He is, however, willing to help sample the baking! I relate this exchange to some parents at pickup that afternoon: an eco-reactionist friend tells me of the 230-odd chemicals that are sprayed on the roses she just picked up at Whole Foods, and the cello teacher-cum-friend quietly mentions she has beautiful, pink, fragrant roses that bloom early, and she never sprays. I smile and ask if I may have some. Yes, indeed, she says, though her motivations are not entirely altruistic—she has heard of this cake and has a soft spot for cardamom. She’s very happy to help test, should the need arise. My ranks of willing guinea pigs are swelling.

Now I only have to figure out two more things: how to actually make the cake, when all I have is a hand mixer and a 6-cup Cuisinart, and how to present it.

I figure I’ll tackle the easier matter first. I heard to the cupboard and measure all my platters. My largest is 14” in diameter, but not flat. I need something designed for the task—I can’t envision a towering cake on a tiny plate. I search for cake plates online, and discover the large silver-plated display pedestals commonly used by professionals. Yikes, though—ninety dollars for something I’d use once and that looks, well, too traditional for my purposes. eBay does a bit better on pricing, but shipping erases any advantage. I decide I’m not ready to buy a plateau, but I do look at some of the support systems for sale, and find that there are very reasonable plastic cake rounds that will fit the bill. I carefully note those specifications for later. A few days later, I’m enjoying a morning cuddle in Little One’s bed, and I look up at the delightful recycled glass icicles and hearts from Bedrock Industries that we used to embellish the IKEA light fixture: I hop downstairs, and look online at the glass curtains they make to spec. The prices are comparable to the cookie-cutter cake plates on eBay, but I can easily see myself using a handmade glass plate in many scenarios. I make a call, and Chris assures me that it should be no problem to make up something to fulfill my image—just come in some day and we’ll chat.

Which leaves only the cake itself. Rose tells me I can have my génoise, but no larger than 12 inches in diameter, and I trust her. It's still a lot of cake to make in one go, though. I think of the people from whom I bought my violin. Grounded Henry, often humming over his luthier’s workbench, is complemented by effusive Debbie, who, discovering that I bake too, leads me with a grin into the back room. Their typical 50s suburban storage room sports a wall of honey-bottomed violins and violas on one side and heavy aluminum professional baking appliances on the other. He is a third-generation luthier; she comes from professional bakers. In a place of honor stands an A200 Hobart – twenty quarts of pure mixing pleasure. We exchange baking war stories, and she says to let her know if I’d ever like to borrow it. Is she kidding? I shoot off an email, and, yes, she remains enthusiastic about sharing her toy.

The scene is set.