The first time I made a wedding cake I was as naïve about baking as the bride and groom were about marriage.

Fortunately, they were a bohemian pair and I sensed that the weirder the cake, the better they would like it, so I blithely volunteered.  The day of the wedding (no, I had not started the week before) I woke up to a friend knocking on the window of my basement apartment to tell me a sorry tale of infidelity.  After sharing comfort and outrage, I sent her to pack her things and went to the house of the bride where the facts and the shock of the case were the only topic of conversation.  It was all I could do to make room in the kitchen and to convince someone to take me to the market to buy flowers – my secret weapon to hide all flaws.

I cannot remember what flavour it was. Maybe chocolate. It was to have raspberry filling and white chocolate frosting swooning down the sides. I had decided that the bottom tier should be a large oval with a smaller round layer on top so that there would be graceful shoulders on both sides covered in flowers.  I like the idea to this day.  Where to get an oval pan to make that layer?  I decided on a tin-foil turkey-roasting pan from the supermarket.  How much cake would be required to fill that pan?  Quite a bit, I reasoned.  How much was quite a bit?  I had no idea.  As the day progressed it became clear that this cake would be bohemian enough for a Yippie wedding in 1972.  The frosting I had planned refused to mount and was replaced by chocolate ganache. Getting the cake out of the pan with its slanted sides proved difficult, and putting the whole thing together was like building a sandcastle in a rising tide.

It must not have been a total disaster.  I had time to go home and change my clothes:  a thrift shop white tuxedo jacket with an orange and red Indian shawl.  At dinner we laughed and ate, I flirted with the man sitting next to me. What the cake was like, I can’t remember and no photo has survived.  But the flowers were lovely, the bride and groom were happy and against all evidence my reputation as a baker was made.  Although I relished the moment, I knew that I had over-sold my skills and had been lucky to float on a tide of collective good will and delusion.

Every night for months on end I conjured an ethereal dream-cake into being in my head.

The next time I volunteered to make a wedding cake it was as an obsessional diversion from my first year as a new professor.  I begged my friends to let me do it with a feverish enthusiasm that barely disguised a desperate need for distraction.  How better to soothe the stress of grant proposals, class preparation and being called “Ma’am” than reading about genoise, buttercream and schemes for decoration.  Every night for months on end I conjured an ethereal dream-cake into being in my head.  I baked it, frosted it and placed the flowers, vividly experiencing every moment in a self-induced hypnotic trance. 

When the time came to actually begin baking, I felt liberated.  It was a relief to feel so responsible for a cake that I was allowed to focus my entire attention on something that was not my job.  And, my efforts would produce something tangible: transforming words on a page to a golden mirage, and from that vision to tender crumb and yielding cream.  Even better, it would be eaten, served with champagne on the night of the wedding and taken home in boxes to be nibbled with coffee or shared with children.  Giving pleasure is a quiet reward.  Sharing pleasure in celebration is more resonant, a dialog of gift and gratitude, offering and response that make the exchange of vows and friendship real.