Contemporary Wedding Cakes
Looking at ‘Contemporary Wedding Cakes’ makes me realize how much wedding cake design has changed in the last two decades. This book was very useful when I started (it was the first book about wedding cakes that I bought), but now I look at it and think…did I get anything useful from it? hmmmmm…..
This book was published when the trend in wedding cakes started to change; most cooks used fruitcake or other heavy, stable base cake with buttercream icing and sugar flowers. There are some good techniques in here, and some practical information – stencils, how to measure things, and so on – but only ideas that work with solid foundation – fruitcake, carrot cake, layer cake. And some of the designs are a bit goofy, IMHO…
what's grey and sings? elephantzgerald
However – nowadays mousse cake is most popular, giving a wedding cake lighter weight, with a wide range of possible flavors and features. As mousse is unstable (compared to fruitcake!), I can only work an hour or so at a time, before popping the cake back into the fridge. Modern cakes may take longer, but yield more delicate, flavorful, interesting results.
I learned how to make snowdrops from this book, and I still use their Royal Icing recipe. Otherwise this book is mainly an artifact from an earlier era in wedding cake design, and shouldn’t be mistaken for a current resource.