When my son, Ela, and his fiancée were planning their wedding, they asked me to make their wedding cake. I was honored. I was also intimidated. I had never made a wedding cake before, so I thought I should practice first. I bought Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible, and with that, four years' worth of Bon Appétit, and the cookbooks in my kitchen, I started my research in earnest. [Remember that this was well before the invention of the internet!]
The first practice cake was a three-tiered hazelnut linzertorte cake with raspberry filling and white chocolate icing that I took to a Winter Solstice potluck. Because it was beautiful to look at
and full of complementary flavors, my friends pronounced it a grand success, but I wasn't so sure about its value as a wedding cake. It was difficult to make, and I didn't know how to adjust the recipe for 100 people.
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| Hazelnut Linzertorte cake for my 75th birthday, July 2019 |
The next cake was a chocolate génoise, rich with ingredients and adequately complex for such a special occasion as a wedding. The recipients of this trial said it was delicious, and it was, but it wasn't very pretty because it hadn't risen well. So I nixed that one.
Next I tried something less exotic, a more simple but just as promising yellow butter cake that would, the recipe assured me, serve for any occasion—birthday, anniversary, graduation, or, I assumed, wedding It looked so beautiful when I took if from the oven I thought, "This might be the best cake I have ever made." Then I dropped it on the floor! I managed to salvage most of it and frosted those pieces into the semblance of a whole. The next day I took it to a friend on the coast. The buttercream frosting was good, but the cake was dry, and I nixed the third recipe.
My son and his fiancée didn't want a traditional tiered cake, so the Cake Bible's wedding cake recipes were useless. When I found I couldn't make heads or tails of the charts for altering ordinary cake recipes for 100 people, I began to get uneasy. Then Ela said that because the theme of the wedding was circles, what they really wanted was a ring cake, like a donut shape. Ai-yi-yi. Now I was really in over my head. Despairing, I contacted my sister's friend, Sheryl, who owns the Dessert Place in Atlanta.
"You're brave to take on such a project," Sheryl said, scaring me. Then she said, "I'm not so sure about the ring cake idea," scaring me again. Finally she said she had recipes for two nontraditional wedding cakes made in bowls. "They use all sorts of yummy ingredients and are already proportioned for 100 people," she said. "Why don't you use one of those?"
I thought she had come up with a solution to my dilemma, so I called Ela and said, "Maybe the most important things are that the cake be really good and that I not be so stressed I can't enjoy the party, so maybe I could make one of those bowl cakes instead of a ring."
Ela said, "I really want a ring cake."
Then he told me he had tested the idea with pieces of paper cut in half, mitered at the inner corners, and placed in a ring. "It looks like it would work," he said. "I think you can do it."
I pointed out that cake doesn't behave like paper, that moving cakes around isn't like moving paper around, that my recipes didn't make cakes 8 1/2 x 11 inches, that you can't just take a cake recipe for one size pan and stuff it into another size pan, and that it wouldn't matter if the cake were in a ring if it wasn't good. But because I think the wedding couple should have the cake they want, I kept trying.
I narrowed the search to recipes for rectangular cakes. I made a white wine cake
but decided it was too expensive to make for 100 people. I made a cake using crushed pineapple and no butter. My friends raved about it, but I just couldn't see having a wedding cake without butter. I tried a mocha sheet cake, decorated it with jelly beans, and took it to an Easter gathering.
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| White wine cake |
Delicious! Great texture! Encouraged, I tested its durability by moving large pieces around with spatulas, as though to make a ring. Success! They held together well. Furthermore, I wouldn't have to adjust this recipe for 100 people. I would simply bake a double recipe five times and cut, miter, and assemble the resulting cakes—like paper—into a two-layered ring. Delicately pink strawberry-cloud cream frosting would hover over the cake; strawberry purée would lie hidden between the layers, and real flowers would decorate the whole ring. I thought I could do it.
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| Me with the cake, 1999 |
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| Rick Faist, Joan Peterson, Tracy Lamblin |
Next week: "Wedding Cake II: Performance"
Recipes from this post
Hazelnut Linzertorte cake
Chocolate génoise
Yellow butter cake
White wine cake
Butterless pineapple cake
HAZELNUT LINZERTORTE CAKE
serves 14-16
from Bon Appétit
Cake
Ingredients
1 cup hazelnuts
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/4 cups whole milk
5 large egg whites, room temperature
Preparation
Set out butter to soften. Preheat the over to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 15x10x1-inch jellyroll pan. Separate the eggs.
To make
Toast the hazelnuts over medium heat in a small frying pan, shaking them often to prevent burning. Cool the nuts, then rub them in your hands or in a clean dishtowel to rub off the brown skins. Chop them fine. Mix nuts thoroughly with the flour; then mix in the baking powder, spices, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar till well blended. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Add extracts. Beginning and ending with the dry ingredients, add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the egg mixture, beating after each addition only until blended. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the batter. Then fold in the remaining whites. Transfer batter to prepared pan. Bake about 25 minutes, until done. Cool on a rack for half an hour, then turn the cake onto a foil-lined rack and continue to let it cool.
Frosting
Ingredients
6 ounces good quality white chocolate
3 8-ounce packages cream cheese
9 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract.
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
To make
Put white chocolate in the top of double boiler and stir it over simmering water till it is melted. Set it aside to cool. Beat the cream cheese with the butter till neither yellow nor white lumps continue to show. When the white chocolate is barely lukewarm, beat it into the cream cheese-butter mixture. Beat in the sugar and extracts.
Assemblage
Ingredients
1 hazelnut linzertorte cake
White chocolate frosting
1 cup raspberry preserves
1 1/2 cups toasted hazelnuts
Preparation
Toast and chop the hazelnuts as for the cake, above, but not too finely.
To assemble
Slice the cake into thirds, making three smaller cakes, each 5x10 inches. Put one cake on a serving platter and spread 3/4 cup frosting over it. Spread 1/4 cup raspberry preserves over the frosting. Place the second 5"x10" cake over the frosted layer and repeat with 3/4 cup frosting and 1/4 cup preserves. Place the third cake on top of the frosted other two. Set aside 1 1/4 cups frosting, then spread the rest of the frosting over the top and sides of the entire cake. Spread 1/4 cup preserves over the top of the cake, making it entirely red. Keep the cake in as cool a place as possible to help the frosting firm up. Twenty minutes in a refrigerator would do nicely, or an hour or more on the back porch, depending on the weather.
To finish
Fill a pastry bag with the 1 1/4 cup unused frosting. Using a star tip, decorate the top of the cake with diagonal lines, making a nice lattice of white over the red. Press finely chopped toasted hazelnuts into the sides of the cake. Pipe more frosting around the top of the cake where the nuts and preserves meet.
CHOCOLATE GENOISE
from The Cake Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum
one 9" pan
The cake
Ingredients
3 tablespoons clarified butter
1/3 cup unsweetened Dutch processed cocoa
1/4 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup sifted cake flour
Preparation
Clarify the butter by heating it till it just begins to brown and turn clear, and then skim or strain off the foam. Preheat the oven to 350º. Using a 9"x2" pan—round, rectangular, or heart-shaped—or a 9" springform pan, grease the bottom, then line the bottom with parchment paper or waxed paper and grease and flour the paper.
To make
Warm the butter till it is almost hot. Keep it warm while you whisk together the cocoa and boiling water till the cocoa is thoroughly dissolved. Stir in the vanilla. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it aside.
Place a large mixing bowl over simmering water and mix in the eggs and sugar, stirring constantly, until the mixture is lukewarm. Using the whisk beater of a food processor, whisk this mixture on high speed till it triples in volume, or, with a hand whisk or egg beater, beat hard for about ten minutes. Remove 2 cups of this mixture and beat it into the cocoa mixture till everything is perfectly. smooth. Stir the flour into the remaining egg mixture. Fold in the cocoa mixture till it is thoroughly incorporated. Fold in the butter mixture in 2 batches. Pour the batter immediately into the prepared pans and bake at 350º or until the cake starts to shrink from the sides of the pan. Don't open the oven door to check for doneness until the baking time is almost done or else the cake will fall—and don't remove the cake until you see it starting to shrink from the sides of the pan. Loosen the sides of the cake from the pan and turn it immediately onto a greased rack. Reinvert it to cool.
To finish
The syrup
Ingredients
1/4 cup + 1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons liqueur, any kind
Whipping cream
To make
Bring the sugar and water to a rolling boil in a small saucepan, stirring constantly. Cover the pan immediately and remove from the heat. When the syrup is completely cool, transfer it to a glass measuring cup and add the liqueur. Add water if necessary to make 3/4 cup syrup.
Finishing
Trim the bottom and top crust of the cake. Sprinkle—don't brush—the syrup over the cake on both sides. (A medical syringe works well. A brush collects crumbs.) The finished height of the cake is 1 1/2 inches. Serve with vanilla whipped cream.
YELLOW BUTTER CAKE
taken from the downy butter cake in The Cake Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum
Recipes from this post
Hazelnut Linzertorte cake
Chocolate génoise
Yellow butter cake
White wine cake
Butterless pineapple cake
HAZELNUT LINZERTORTE CAKE
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| A winner at my 75th birthday at my house, July, 20190 |
serves 14-16
from Bon Appétit
Cake
Ingredients
1 cup hazelnuts
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/4 cups whole milk
5 large egg whites, room temperature
Preparation
Set out butter to soften. Preheat the over to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 15x10x1-inch jellyroll pan. Separate the eggs.
To make
Toast the hazelnuts over medium heat in a small frying pan, shaking them often to prevent burning. Cool the nuts, then rub them in your hands or in a clean dishtowel to rub off the brown skins. Chop them fine. Mix nuts thoroughly with the flour; then mix in the baking powder, spices, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar till well blended. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Add extracts. Beginning and ending with the dry ingredients, add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to the egg mixture, beating after each addition only until blended. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the batter. Then fold in the remaining whites. Transfer batter to prepared pan. Bake about 25 minutes, until done. Cool on a rack for half an hour, then turn the cake onto a foil-lined rack and continue to let it cool.
Frosting
Ingredients
6 ounces good quality white chocolate
3 8-ounce packages cream cheese
9 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract.
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
To make
Put white chocolate in the top of double boiler and stir it over simmering water till it is melted. Set it aside to cool. Beat the cream cheese with the butter till neither yellow nor white lumps continue to show. When the white chocolate is barely lukewarm, beat it into the cream cheese-butter mixture. Beat in the sugar and extracts.
Assemblage
Ingredients
1 hazelnut linzertorte cake
White chocolate frosting
1 cup raspberry preserves
1 1/2 cups toasted hazelnuts
Preparation
Toast and chop the hazelnuts as for the cake, above, but not too finely.
To assemble
Slice the cake into thirds, making three smaller cakes, each 5x10 inches. Put one cake on a serving platter and spread 3/4 cup frosting over it. Spread 1/4 cup raspberry preserves over the frosting. Place the second 5"x10" cake over the frosted layer and repeat with 3/4 cup frosting and 1/4 cup preserves. Place the third cake on top of the frosted other two. Set aside 1 1/4 cups frosting, then spread the rest of the frosting over the top and sides of the entire cake. Spread 1/4 cup preserves over the top of the cake, making it entirely red. Keep the cake in as cool a place as possible to help the frosting firm up. Twenty minutes in a refrigerator would do nicely, or an hour or more on the back porch, depending on the weather.
To finish
Fill a pastry bag with the 1 1/4 cup unused frosting. Using a star tip, decorate the top of the cake with diagonal lines, making a nice lattice of white over the red. Press finely chopped toasted hazelnuts into the sides of the cake. Pipe more frosting around the top of the cake where the nuts and preserves meet.
CHOCOLATE GENOISE
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| For Mike Kohn birthday's, 2016 |
one 9" pan
The cake
Ingredients
3 tablespoons clarified butter
1/3 cup unsweetened Dutch processed cocoa
1/4 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup sifted cake flour
Preparation
Clarify the butter by heating it till it just begins to brown and turn clear, and then skim or strain off the foam. Preheat the oven to 350º. Using a 9"x2" pan—round, rectangular, or heart-shaped—or a 9" springform pan, grease the bottom, then line the bottom with parchment paper or waxed paper and grease and flour the paper.
To make
Warm the butter till it is almost hot. Keep it warm while you whisk together the cocoa and boiling water till the cocoa is thoroughly dissolved. Stir in the vanilla. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set it aside.
Place a large mixing bowl over simmering water and mix in the eggs and sugar, stirring constantly, until the mixture is lukewarm. Using the whisk beater of a food processor, whisk this mixture on high speed till it triples in volume, or, with a hand whisk or egg beater, beat hard for about ten minutes. Remove 2 cups of this mixture and beat it into the cocoa mixture till everything is perfectly. smooth. Stir the flour into the remaining egg mixture. Fold in the cocoa mixture till it is thoroughly incorporated. Fold in the butter mixture in 2 batches. Pour the batter immediately into the prepared pans and bake at 350º or until the cake starts to shrink from the sides of the pan. Don't open the oven door to check for doneness until the baking time is almost done or else the cake will fall—and don't remove the cake until you see it starting to shrink from the sides of the pan. Loosen the sides of the cake from the pan and turn it immediately onto a greased rack. Reinvert it to cool.
To finish
The syrup
Ingredients
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons liqueur, any kind
Whipping cream
To make
Bring the sugar and water to a rolling boil in a small saucepan, stirring constantly. Cover the pan immediately and remove from the heat. When the syrup is completely cool, transfer it to a glass measuring cup and add the liqueur. Add water if necessary to make 3/4 cup syrup.
Finishing
Trim the bottom and top crust of the cake. Sprinkle—don't brush—the syrup over the cake on both sides. (A medical syringe works well. A brush collects crumbs.) The finished height of the cake is 1 1/2 inches. Serve with vanilla whipped cream.
YELLOW BUTTER CAKE
taken from the downy butter cake in The Cake Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum
1 layered 9" cake
Ingredients
6 large egg yolks
1 cup milk
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
Preparation
Leave the butter out to soften. Grease the bottoms of two 9" x 1 1/2" cake pans. Line the bottoms with parchment or waxed paper and grease and flour the paper. Preheat the oven to 350º.
To make
Lightly combine the eggs, vanilla, and 1/4 cup of the milk in a medium bowl. Blend the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then add the softened butter and the remaining 3/4 cup milk. Mix slowly till the dry ingredients are all moistened, then mix faster, either by hand or with a food processor (1 1/2 minutes in the latter case) until the batter is well aerated. Scrape down the sides and gradually add the egg mixture, in three batches, beating 20 seconds after each addition. Scrape the batter into the pans and smooth the surface with a spatula. The pans should be about half full. Bake the cakes for 25-35 minutes or until a tester inserted into their centers comes out clean and the cake springs back when it is lightly pressed. The cake should shrink from the sides of the pans only after it is taken from the oven. Cool the cakes in their pans on racks for 10 minutes, then loosen the sides and invert the cakes onto greased wire racks. Reinvert them to cool completely. Wrap the cakes tightly in plastic wrap. Frost and decorate as you please. [This cake was delicious—not dry— when I made it in 2019.]
WHITE WINE CAKE
2 9-inch layers for one cake
Ingredients
3 cups dry white wine
1 egg
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 vanilla bean
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 egg whites
Preparation
Reduce the wine to one cup by heating it gently over low heat. (This takes quite a while.) Set aside to cool. Split the vanilla bean and remove the seeds. Grease and flour 2 9-inch cake pans. Preheat the oven to 350º.
To make
While the wine is cooling, cream the egg, sugar, and oil in a large bowl. Beat until smooth. Stir in the cooled wine. Add the dry ingredients and vanilla (seeds and extract) and blend well, but don't overbeat. (This usually isn't a problem if you're beating by hand.) Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, then fold them carefully into the batter. Spoon the batter into the pans in equal proportions. Bake at 350º for 20-25 minutes or until a tester stuck into the center of the cakes comes out clean. Cool completely before icing with the icing of your choice. Decorate prettily.
WHITE WINE CAKE
2 9-inch layers for one cake
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| White wine cake for my 75th birthday party, July, 2019 |
Ingredients
3 cups dry white wine
1 egg
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 vanilla bean
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 egg whites
Preparation
Reduce the wine to one cup by heating it gently over low heat. (This takes quite a while.) Set aside to cool. Split the vanilla bean and remove the seeds. Grease and flour 2 9-inch cake pans. Preheat the oven to 350º.
To make
While the wine is cooling, cream the egg, sugar, and oil in a large bowl. Beat until smooth. Stir in the cooled wine. Add the dry ingredients and vanilla (seeds and extract) and blend well, but don't overbeat. (This usually isn't a problem if you're beating by hand.) Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, then fold them carefully into the batter. Spoon the batter into the pans in equal proportions. Bake at 350º for 20-25 minutes or until a tester stuck into the center of the cakes comes out clean. Cool completely before icing with the icing of your choice. Decorate prettily.
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| White wine cake on the deck of my house, July 20, 2019 |
BUTTERLESS PINEAPPLE CAKE
20-24 servings
The cake
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 20-ounce can crushed pineapple, with juice
2 large eggs
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 325º. Grease and flour a 13x9x2-inch pan. Beat eggs just to blend.
To make
Combine the dry ingredients till well blended. Pour the pineapple and its juices into the flour along with the slightly beaten eggs. Mix the batter till it is just blended—don't beat it. Pour it into the prepared pan and bake at 325º about 30 minutes. The cake should test done and be golden brown on top.
The frosting
Ingredients
1 8-ounce package cream cheese (preferably not Neufchatel)
6 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
To make
Beat the cream cheese with the softened butter till smooth. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and blend well. Frost the cake while it is still warm. Cool it on a rack.
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