Contemporary Wedding Cakes
April 2, 2009
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.