Making wedding cakes is more than baking and frosting cakes -- it is art that tells a story. When I design a wedding cake, I take ideas, colors, impressions, style, taste, and even beliefs from my brides and grooms to individualize their wedding celebration in cake. Of course, some grooms love to see their alma mater, a tractor, a hobby such as chess, or even a favorite hat made from cake.
People often ask me how long I've been making cakes. I smile and say, "almost as long as I can remember." When I was four years old, my big brother Ciro married his high school sweetheart. They both went to a vocational high school in Massachusetts. My wonderful sister-in-law, Harriet, graduated from the bakery department with amazing skills at both baking and decorating cakes. She was then, and still is now, more to me than a sister-in-law -- she became my teacher, and she'll always be my dear friend. I remember clearly when I was about five years old, Harriet putting a pastry bag filled with frosting in my hand and showing me how to make a border on a birthday cake. With her patience and kind tutelage, I piped icing borders, flowers, leaves and all kinds of beautiful, detailed decorations onto a multiplicity of cakes. Hari . . . I owe you! I won my first art award in Kindergarten for a drawing of a horse fleeing a mountaintop fire. My drawing took a real story and brought it to life on paper. Isn't that what art should do -- imitate life? Whether the cake looks like a garden of summer blossoms, so life-like that you want to breath in their fragrance, or whether the cake is adorned with flowers that do not exactly exist in nature, but are impressionistic, the cake should exemplify beauty of life in nature. Even when geometric shapes embellish the cake, the symmetry or asymmetry should be splendid. When I was nine years old, I was awarded an art scholarship for drawing and painting to the Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts. I learned things about color and light that I've taken with me through the rest of my life. And throughout my formative years, art played a dynamic part. Just as important as the artistic impression of the cake is flavor. Not only should your guests be "WOWed" by the presentation of the cake, but they should also sigh with pleasure when they take their first bite. I am committed to the freshest, most high-quality ingredients for both my cakes and icings.