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As with most every other food we work with, my enthusiasm for wedding cakes has grown the more I've learned, and the more I've realized how much difference there is from mass market offerings to what we make here at the Bakehouse. the cake crew at the Bakehouse is doing such amazing things to craft beautiful and delicious cakes that I feel good about what we're doing, and confident that we can deliver something really special to anyone who's in the market for a cake that's both terrifically well-made and excellent to eat.

Cake + Emotion = A Very Nice C'motion?

I think what's gotten me most excited of late is seeing the energy in the eyes of our CAKE specialist, Kim Vannatter. Every time I see Kim talk about her cakes, her eyes open wide and there's a warmth and a glow that goes with something you might see only on a first date.

The other thing that gets me excited in the world of Zingerman's wedding cakes is that I know that our cakes actually taste good. Because we've spent 25 years working to offer ever more flavorful food, I can't really even imagine people doing all the work to plan, design and bake a really great looking cake and then have guests go home leaving seventy percent of it on their plates because the flavor doesn't live up to the look.

We want looks, we want fun, we want elegance, and we want it to taste good too. And thanks to Kim and the rest of the CAKE gals, I think that's what we do!

A Slice of Wedding Cake History

The cake - still not exactly as we know it but at least moderately related - has been part of the marriage ceremony ever since medieval times. Grain has always been used as a symbol of fertility, which was, of course, a big part of what the marriage was all about. It's interesting that we should have built such a strong and solid tradition atop what was once a small but symbolic utility of ceremony.

The earliest examples of the architectural brilliance we've come to expect from wedding cakes today seem to be small breads or cakes stacked on a table in front of the bride and groom. It's said the couple was challenged to kiss over the cake pile, perhaps signifying the way a successful relationship has to reach over and above the challenges that life puts in its way. This rather random piling of little cakes apparently messed with the more structured mindset of an unknown French chef who started to create more coherent, straight-sided cake constructions.

These early layered wedding cakes were actually iced in lard which was scraped off just before the cake was served. As sugar became more affordable, it was blended with the lard to make it more palatable, and the icing could be left on when the cake was served.

Sugar, Sugar

Only in the 19th century did sugar became more affordable in Europe and by no coincidence, later in that century, its use with wedding cakes became so common. The whole wonderment of the white cake was driven mostly by the purity and virgin state that white stuff always symbolizes, but iced wedding cakes were iced for practical reasons as well. The most refined sugar was the most highly valued and it was also the whitest, so you showed off your wealth by getting the whitest of white icings.

When bakers started to stack cake layers, the icing had to be very solid in order to hold the cake together and keep it from collapsing in an era when there was no refrigeration or air conditioning to help fight off the heat. The particularly prestigious Royal Icing is a mix of confectioner's sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice that sets very hard that was highly prized (hence the name), but required hours of beating time.

Big Building/Layers

The era of big wedding cakes that continues today seems to date to the middle of 19th century Europe. In 1840, Queen Victoria's cake weighed 300 pounds. It was nine feet wide and 14 inches deep. Bakers were assigned to make hundreds of backup cakes that were later given out to friends of the royal family.

The modern, classically marvelous three layered wedding cakes that we are all familiar with, dates to the marriage of one of Queen Victoria's daughters in 1859. Originally, only the base was a baked cake - the top layers were made of sugar and stacked like hatboxes one atop another. In 1882, at the wedding of Prince Leopold, bakers put together a multi-layered affair that was entirely edible. And it was around the turn of the 20th century that the now-normal pillars were put in place between the layers.

Who Cuts the Cake?

Centuries ago, the English tradition had the bride cut the cake. Later, the groom was assigned to help her. In the Dutch tradition, the groom cut for bride, then the bride for her family. As the size of weddings grew, it got harder for the bride and groom to distribute the cake among the guests in the 18th century and the cake handing became mostly considered servant's work in upper class settings.

In the 19th century, thick sugar icings came into use and cakes became rather difficult to cut. More strength was needed to the job and the grooms became more involved. In more modern times, the couple feeds each other a piece of the first slice. To make this easier, one early 20th century Scottish bakery actually offered to precut and gift wrap the first slice so the couple didn't have to.

Other Kinds of Wedding Cakes

There are many wedding cake alternatives out there. The traditional English wedding cake remains roughly equivalent to Christmas fruit cake. Lynn Yates, who does such an amazing job managing our community giving work at Zingerman's, is married to an Englishman. "When I got married to David," she told me, "my soon-to-be mother-in-law smuggled in a traditional English wedding cake, i.e., a fruit cake. David had saved a big piece of it for our first year anniversary. It held up remarkably well."

You might also consider the bride's pie. Unlike the modern wedding cake, the bride's pie was actually a main course. In the 17th century, the pie was akin to what we know now as mincemeat. Included in it was a glass ring and whoever found the ring was said to be next to be married. The bride's pies were especially prominent at less affluent weddings, assuming that the practical need for nourishment made it a feature rather than a more decorative, sugar iced sweet.

One couple years ago bought about fifteen of our Sour Cream Coffee Cakes and arranged them decoratively into one very special and very delicious cake for their wedding brunch.

Groom's Cakes

Groom's cakes seem to be a big Southern thing, and one that's recently getting more common here in this part of the country. Historically, the first ones were apparently reserved for wedding guests to carry back as keepsakes. Modern day groom's cakes can be anything one would want. I checked in with Kim Vannatter to see what folks were ordering. "Most often," she said, "the requests I get are college oriented - a block M, Michigan Stadium, the Yale Y with oars crossed behind it - but sometimes it's something like an X-box. One bride told me that she wouldn't let her husband get one (an X-box) so she was getting him a cake shaped like one." She added, "I think the Groom's Cake is a cool tradition. The day is usually all about the bride." The future of groom's cakes? "They're not quite as common as they are in the South, but I think they're really gaining in popularity."

Why Celebrate Only Once?

The more I've worked on this wedding cake stuff, the more I start to think that we ought to build in a lot more cake celebrating into our routines. I mean, you get a birthday cake every year, don't you? So why not small replicas of - or different takeoffs on - your wedding cake at your anniversary each year? Lynn Yates got me thinking about this even more when she wrote that, "In a way, happy anniversaries are more important than weddings, and so if we had a way for people to celebrate them more, then maybe we can create and keep lifelong customers with a tradition of Zingerman's cakes."