Tiers of Joy 

Fantasy wedding cakes rise from sweet dreams. 

By Maria C. Hunt
The San Diego Union-Tribune 

April 21, 1999

For most couples, a wedding cake is as integral a part of the day they exchange marriage vows as the rings or the white gown. Just like tossing the bouquet, cutting the cake is an expected part of the festivities. The cake fits the bill as long as it is big and white, maybe with some frosting flowers and little bride and groom figurines on top. 

But some brides are opting for fantasy cakes that embody their hopes and dreams for their wedding day and married life. Rather than traditional wedding icons, these cakes are personal symbols that reflect the lifestyles and personalities of the people they're created for. 

Would your dream cake be snowy smooth with a cascade of white chocolate roses, or would it match exactly the French lace and seed pearl pattern in the wedding dress? How about a 4-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower made from crocquembouche, or a beach-themed cake covered with iridescent shells? 

Confronted with requests like these, a commercial baker might laugh or quote a price that would cause tears. But a handful of specialty pastry chefs and cake designers use forms of sugar like gum paste, fondant icing or pastiallage to make these cakes. Their skill is allowing San Diego brides to have the kind of cakes commonly seen at high-end weddings in New York or San Francisco. Often, these cake artists create their works entirely from scratch, so the cakes taste as good as they look. 

"Brides seek us out because the mainstream bakeries aren't providing what they want," said Loree Luther, pastry chef and owner of All in Good Taste in Pacific Beach. "I hear, 'I want my cake to be different. I don't want it to be like every other cake.' " 

A personal statement 

Josephine Piraino knew she had to have an extraordinary cake on the day she wed Steve Chavez earlier this month. As a cake decorator for a Lucky's grocery store, Piraino felt her cake would reflect on her both personally and professionally. 

"The details were so important to me," said Piraino, 25. "I just had a vision in my mind and went from there. I wanted mine (my cake) to be different and reflect me." 

She found what she was looking for in a magazine, sort of. The cake created for Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick was a five-tiered blue, purple and green affair accented by iridescent pearl trim and bright gold swags, star bursts and flowers on the icing. 

Piraino loved the ornate design, but not the colors. She hired Fernando Viveros of Crumbs of Paris in El Cajon to create a similar cake in her wedding colors of white and gold. She chose him because she loved the taste of his cakes, and the prices were the most reasonable she could find. His prices per serving start at $1.75 and can climb to $25, depending on how elaborate the cake is and whether it uses lots of gold. A cake like Piraino's would cost $2,500 to $3,000. 

Viveros, whose experience includes architectural school and culinary classes in London and at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, said the cake wasn't easy. Rather than make an exact replica of the one in the magazine, he borrowed some elements and created a whole new cake. 

He used rolled fondant icing brushed with iridescent edible powders to give the cake a satin finish. He created swags from gum paste painted with edible 24-karat gold and made raised curlicues with royal icing. The whole thing was topped with cream, peach and lavender roses. The cake inside was white chocolate truffle with white chocolate mousse and chocolate chips. 

If a bride doesn't have an idea, Viveros does a detailed interview to help figure out what kind of cake to create. He often starts by asking where the wedding is and what the dress looks like. "Women are always so happy to describe their dress, and they give me all those details," Viveros said. "It's really great because they not only have a nice cake, but they have something that shows somehow who they are." 

More typical styles for Viveros include oval Victorian cakes with lace-patterned trims, or elaborate all-white cakes adorned with tiny clusters of fruit and flowers or covered with tiny squiggles called Cornelli lace. 

His artistry has brought him interesting requests, such as for a lighthouse wedding cake, a Flintstones cake that was an embarrassing surprise for the bride's mother at a La Jolla Women's Club wedding, and one from a Rancho Santa Fe man who wanted a medieval castle, complete with turrets, his family crest and candy stained-glass windows. 

"He said, 'I'm a very wealthy man, and I want my cake to reflect that,' " Viveros said. 

A different approach 

Karen Krasne of Extraordinary Desserts in Hillcrest takes a much different approach with her fantasy wedding cakes. Rather than creating flowers or shells from sugar, Krasne incorporates actual natural elements into her designs. She might adorn a cake with a carefully selected palette of flowers, an unusual lace trim imported from Europe, or real seashells. 

"We are extremely concerned with not only flavor, but presentation," she said. "We try to make the fantasy elements out of what it sits on or how the tiers are separated or what's on top of the cake." 

She just created a suite of nine new cakes for spring and summer. Among them are a seashell cake in which the layers are covered with thin cylinders of white chocolate and the cake is capped with a pouf of iridescent shells. Another features white chocolate leaves angled around the edge of each layer, accented by real green leaves on top. A popular design from last season is a white cake accented by edible red rose petals on top, affixed to the middle layer and scattered around the base. 

Krasne's wedding cakes range from $4.95 to $5.95 per serving, plus delivery and floral charges from Botanica. 

Emphasis on elegance 

Luther, a graduate of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, specializes in simply elegant designs. Her cakes often feature draped bows, ribbons or flowers like calla lilies or roses made of white modeling chocolate. 

"Every bride is different, and we have so many different edible materials to work
with nowadays," said Luther. "They're being a little bit more adventurous these days." 

Candace Flynn, a swimwear sales representative who lives in Del Mar Heights, still has a lot of decisions to make for her Sept. 18 wedding to Graham McDaniel. She hasn't chosen her dress yet, but she's already working with Luther to plan a cake. 

"When I was younger, I would have gone with whatever," said Flynn, 32. "When
you're older, you know what you want. Our wedding is ... simple and elegant, with lots of flowers." 

When Luther goes on cake consultations, she takes a large binder filled with lots of pictures. Flipping through the pages, Flynn liked the pale blue seashell cake with iridescent white shells, starfish and pearls because her fiancé loves the beach. But she was also drawn to a smooth four-layer buttercream-frosted cake with rows and rows of roses separating the layers. 

Flynn had lots of questions: what pastel colors are popular? What flavors do people like best? 

Luther patiently answered them all, even offering advice on the importance of choosing a photographer that the bride would feel comfortable spending the day with.  

Luther's cakes start at $2.50 a serving for a buttercream frosting and $4 for rolled fondant. Prices can range up to $7 per serving. Working out of a commercial kitchen instead of a retail shop allows Luther to keep her overhead low. 

Luther also prides herself in making everything she uses on the cakes -- from the lemon curd to the chocolate mousse filling to the fondant icing -- from scratch. She also offers unusual flavors, like banana cake with a bittersweet Belgian chocolate truffle, a Swedish princess cake with vanilla pastry cream and fresh raspberry preserves, or a spice cake, which is popular in the fall. 

Melissa Camara and Dane Wilkins liked the personal attention they get from a designer like Luther and the fact that they could sit down with the person making their cake. Both the price and the taste of the cake were the deciding factors. 

"A couple places had really good cake at the Bridal Bazaar, and then you'd go to taste and they had gross cake," Camara, 19, said. "One place we had to wait for it to defrost." 

The couple, both UCSD students, belong to a large church and have lots of friends and family coming to Encinitas for their July 25 wedding, so they will have two receptions. The cake for the first will be Luther's swags and bows cake adorned with flowers. At the smaller dinner reception, each of the 70 guests will get an individual cake covered with white chocolate ruffles and candied violets. 

Expensive tastes 

Even though San Diego specialty cake designers charge much less than New York or San Francisco bakers, elaborate cakes can be costly. 

Jacques Auber, a native of France, was pastry chef at Le Meridien in Coronado for seven years before opening two bakeries of his own, in Escondido and Rancho Bernardo. Auber said he made many elaborate cakes for affluent guests while working at the resort. 

"I can make anything people ask me for," said Auber, who worked at LeNotre in Paris. "I don't have any problem with chocolate sugar or pastry. This kind of work, if they are ready to pay, I can make anything." 

Judging by his many photo albums, Auber doesn't exaggerate about his skill. When a San Diego symphony violinist wed a banker, Auber made a cascading seven-tiered cake with replicas of a violin, a grand piano and a realistic dollar bill that drew on his skills as a painter. 

A French couple ordered a crocquembouche, a traditional cake made of cream puffs fused together with caramel, in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. Another couple requested a cake that looked like a basket with an explosion of realistic candy roses, alstromeria, dendrobium orchids, daffodils and daisies on top. For the wedding of a Auber made a dramatic art deco-style cake, with angular lines and curves in black and turquoise for the wedding of a warehouse store pioneer's son. His cakes average $3 per serving. 

Auber is also adept at creating gleaming flowers and figurines from hot sugar that he hand pulls into shape. He recently used the technique to make glistening, transparent pearls to adorn a simple wedding cake. 

"You have to love this kind of work to make it," he said. "If you don't, you're not going to make it because it's an expression of yourself. I like elegance."  []

back to top