Wedding Cakes!

After months of planning and crafting and hair-pulling, I’m now a fully-licensed married woman and, thankfully, may resume my normal life.

It was a beautiful wedding followed by a wonderful party, and there were seven cakes.

Yep, seven.

The important thing is different for all. For some it’s the dress, for others, it’s the music. For me, it was the cake. This was verified by the fact that, after I got engaged, the first question asked—even before “when’s the big day?”— was “are you going to bake your own wedding cake?”

Was I?

And I get just one?

A great Gastronomica article on the history of the wedding cake mentions an old superstition: “The bride who bakes her own cake is asking for trouble.” While I certainly didn’t want trouble, I knew it wouldn’t be my wedding if I didn’t bake something. Yet I also knew that, for me, baking a cake for 150 people while actually being the one getting married would be more than trouble—it would be cause for a breakdown.

As I was sure I’d find many more reasons to fall apart over the coming months, a compromise was made: I would bake “something” and a professional would bake “something.” Those “somethings” turned into seven: four Orange Flower Water Cakes that I baked (ahead of time and froze) and three wonders made by my girl-crush, Betsy of Nine Cakes: an Almond Cake with Pear Buttercream, a Chocolate Cake with Pomegranate Buttercream, and a Pumpkin Walnut Cake with Maple Buttercream...


Photo by Jen Causey

Trouble? Hardly any.
Breakdowns? Two.