A piece of cake
Lenora and I wanted our wedding to be a little different, to reflect the different facets of who we were. We decided to get married at a west coast First Nations hall, have a Chinese banquet, take photos at a Japanese garden, and give out puzzles as wedding favours. Planning all that was a lot of hard work. But the thing that took the cake was the wedding cake itself.
ou’d think it would be a cake walk. You walk in, look at the catalogue, pick one you can afford and walk out.
You’d think it would be a cake walk. You walk in, look at the catalogue, pick one you can afford and walk out. But after entering the bizarre, white, frilly underworld of bridal fairs, where they have everything you can imagine if you have no imagination, you can get overwhelmed with choices.
We made an appointment with the manager at True Confections, a dessert place we visit when we have lost interest in our waistlines, which is often. Lenora had seen pictures of something called a crock of stuff or burning bush or something like that. It was a pile of cream puffs intermingled with flowers.
e met a full-bodied woman who took her cake seriously. She was more of a cake goddess than a mere manager.
We met a full-bodied woman who took her cake seriously. She was more of a cake goddess than a mere manager. “We could, of course, make you a croquembouche,” she said, using the French pronunciation of the thing I said. “But I will tell you that it can be tricky to serve and it is not inexpensive. Let me show you some alternatives.”
We flipped through albums of past projects. Tall ones, short ones. Square ones, round ones. Formal ones, whimsical ones. White ones, coloured ones. Stenciled images, stamped images. Real flowers, sugar flowers. Soft buttery icing, hard, rolled chocolate. So many possibilities. And that was just the outside.
I let ideas simmer on the back burner of my brain, while we moved on to the question of the cake itself. First was the question of quantity. We figured that after a 12 course Chinese banquet, including two dessert dishes, the guests shouldn’t be that hungry. So we just ordered enough undecorated cake for each table to sample, instead of providing two hundred individual servings.
e had enough calories to satisfy a small army, but we just invited one other couple to help us choose.
Then it was a question of flavour. The cake goddess offered us everything from chocolate to fruit mousse. We took home eight or nine different kinds to test. Like I said, wedding preparations can be a lot of hard work.
We had enough calories to satisfy a small army, but we just invited one other couple to help us choose. I have a cousin with discriminating taste who is not one to turn down free dessert. She and her man came over the next night. We each tasted each species and scored it from 1 to 5, using “universal appeal” and “general aesthetics” as our primary criteria. This was a new experience for me because I usually judge food according to how much I get. By the end of the evening we had met our annual requirements for fat and sugar, and decided that the triple fruit mousse with berry sauce was the crème de la crème.
After about a week, I finally came up with a killer concept that Lenora could live with. It combined elements of both our backgrounds. In Japanese weddings, the big symbols are the Japanese crane and the tortoise. The crane is a symbol of happiness and the tortoise of longevity. In Chinese weddings, the icons are the Chinese dragon and the phoenix. The dragon represents the male and a phoenix represents the female. I also kept in mind that red and gold are lucky colours for the Chinese. The restaurant was making signs with our names in gold characters on a red background. We were wrapping the wedding favours in red with gold ribbon. I would be wearing a vest covered with gold dragons and my face would turn red every time I bent over to tie my shoes.
My vision was a two-tiered structure, with four overlapping bands of hard, rolled red chocolate spiraling around it. The upper edges would be wavy and trimmed with a misting of gold. On every other band, imprints of golden Chinese dragons and silver Japanese cranes danced upward toward Heaven, or at least toward my mouth. I wanted to combine Japanese and Chinese imagery yet simplify the design and save on the number of rubber stamps I would have to create. I thought a dragon looked more distinctive than a phoenix and figured that the crane would be better at flying than a tortoise, Gamera notwithstanding. I did not mean to imply that weddings are only about male happiness.
The cake goddess was pleased with our design but insisted that we needed something to top it off. We bowed to the wisdom of her pastry prowess but struggled for a solution. Obviously, we couldn’t just go with a plastic bride and groom. I looked for Pez candy dispenser heads of a dragon and a crane, but without success. “How about a dinosaur and Big Bird?” I asked Lenora.
“I think you’re getting a little carried away with the symbolism.”
“Okay. How about Homer and Marge Simpson?”
“No.”
Picky, picky, picky.
The cake goddess suggested something organic. I saw some twisty bamboo things, but they looked a bit heavy and a collapsing wedding cake would not be auspicious. Eventually we decided on curly willow. We found a branch in a flower stall at the market, with just the right amount of curviness. We left it to the minions of the cake goddess to cut it down to size, spray it gold, and arrange it in a bouquet emerging from a circle of red confectionery roses.
Finally the big day arrived. We performed the customary anachronisms early in the reception so the photographer could capture the Hasselblad moments for posterity. After the bouquet tossing and garter flinging, we moved on to the cake-cutting. My cake-tasting cousin delivered our pièce de résistance to the Chinese restaurant on time and in one piece.
Lenora looked resplendent in her white dress and flowing organza jacket. The white wedding dress was a western symbol for a western custom and would also provide a less competitive backdrop for the cake. The show-stopping gold brocade kimono and stunning red dress with gold phoenix and dragon designs came later in the evening. I, of course, was just a prop for this showcase, but my black tails and rented gold vest did not look too shabby either, if I do say so myself.
The dream of our cake was now reality. After all the effort we had put into making it, cutting the thing seemed almost sacrilegious or perhaps sweet sorrow. But we took the plunge anyway and it tasted as good as it looked. I was relieved to know that in the end, you can have your cake and eat it too.
This article was originally published in the December 2001 issue of the Pacific Citizen.