Bridal Guide

by Bonnie W. Mason

Out with the ordinary. In with the innovative. Todays wedding cakes are masterpieces of collaboration between cake virtuosos and bridal clients who want their cakes to represent who they are. Individuality is huge right now, says Anne Walsh, marketing director and manager of Fredericks Pastries in North Andover. She credits the trend to social media websites such as Pinterest where a future bride and groom can view wedding cakes from around the world and wedding planning sites such as The Knot and WeddingWire, and television shows such as TLCs Cake Boss and Food Networks Ace of Cakes where extravagant, one-of-a-kind cakes are the norm. The secret of local cake aces? Its not work (or so they say). Its play. We do lots of fun stuff here, says Erin Erler, owner of Cakes by Erin in Haverhill. A self-taught cake artist, her whimsical, nut-free cakes have appeared on Food Network. She smiles as she describes a grooms cake she is creating for a couple who both adore Portal, the online video game. The brides goal, says Erler, is to be able to look through the grooms cake which is 16-inches square and 2 feet high and see around the corner, periscope style. Anything goes as long as it makes sense to bride and groom. If they enjoy riding Harley-Davidsons, a dark

every cake tells a story:

custom wedding cakes are as unique as the couples that create them

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chocolate motorcycle-themed grooms cake surrounded with sugary resemblances of Harley-Davidson toys and enveloped in black, orange and white icing, is sure to please. On the other hand, if bridesmaids are wearing black dresses with red accents, think ebony-colored buttercream frosting with rose fondant accents covering layers of red velvet, German chocolate and vanilla cake. If bride and groom are sailing to a tropical paradise, envision mango and Mediterranean blue Anthuriums (Calla-Lily like flowers) climbing to greet the bride who has been put on a pedestal by her groom. A navy ribbon encircles layers of French vanilla cake with pineapple filling. And featureless faces may represent the universality of love. For our wedding, says Maria (Maya) Medalla, of Cambridge, my husband (Andre Ochoa) and I wanted to embody our fun and youthful personalities and merge our geeky interests. We had designed caricatures of ourselves in Japanese cartoon and comic art style and were hoping to incorporate this into our wedding cake. Enter cake wizard Rowena Sy-Santos, owner of Kyks in Chelmsford, who welcomed the challenge. She re-created their caricatures and a logo they had made of their names together (Mayandre for Maya and Andre) which she integrated into the cyan blue icing covering the layers of chocolate and carrot cake. She then topped the cake was a thick ribbon of chocolate which highlighted the orange, blue and brown color scheme. Importantly, adds Medalla, We also wanted a sprinkling of white daisies in the design around the second layer to remind us of a (humorous) story about the first and last time my husband gave me flowers.
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Bridal Guide

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Fredericks Pastries North Andover, Mass. (978) 208-7806 Pastry.net Cakes by Erin Haverhill, Mass. (978) 469-9136 CakesByErin.com Kkys Chelmsford, Mass. (617) 855-KEYK KeykGirl.com Cakes by Design North Andover, Mass. (978) 975-8877 CakesByDesignEdibleArt.com

Every cake tells a different story, of course. And sometimes the bride or groom fashions it. One local groom, for example, envisioned a cake topper of two hikers with backpacks to symbolize his active outdoor life with his future wife. With the helpful encouragement of cake artisan, Lina Hunter of Cakes by Design in North Andover, he sculpted the hikers out of modeling clay and painted them with food coloring. Then Hunter decorated the smooth white three-layer cake with lavender-colored wild flowers and spring-green vines. Inside were three flavors: chocolate ganache, marble with heath bars, and plain-vanilla, all united with a strawberry filling. (Yum!) He is not the only groom to get involved with cake design, of course. When Cammi Valdez met her future husband, Clayton Mathews, both of Boston, on Match.com in 2010, she was a graduate student at Harvard working on a Ph.D. in Biological and Biomedical Sciences and he was a professional violinist.
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Soon they were dancing to the lyrics of Elvis Presleys Cant Help Falling in Love with You. And fall in love, they did. It became our song, says Valdez. Were complete opposites, says Valdez, and the contrast is refreshing. So when they decided to marry, they wanted the cake to celebrate who they were as a couple. To do this, they commissioned Kyks for two cakes, one 4-foot long cake in the shape of an H for Harvard, and a grooms cake, a carrot cake, with cheesecake filling, in the shape of a violin -- which ended up looking real enough to play with edible sheet music. Clayton made sheet music with lyrics and notes on his computer and sent it to Rowena to copy, explains Valdez. The music was the first dance song at their wedding. And theyve been dancing to it ever since. Valdez says, Sometimes we just sing the song aloud to each other in our living room l mvm and we dance to it.
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