Why Is This Stuff So Expensive?

by: Christine Boulton

It’s just a cake, how could it possibly be worth $1000.!!! You can bake a cake at home for a few dollars. What’s the difference? Scale and degree of difficulty are part of it. Work on a well crafted wedding cake can begin weeks in advance. If you are using sugar paste flowers, they are intricately hand crafted, one petal at a time. A highly skilled sugar artist will take great pains to mix colors to reflect the true beauty of nature. Ingredients are scaled and mixed, lots and lots of ingredients. Pounds of sugar, pounds of soft wheat cake flour, many pounds of butter and dozens of fresh eggs. Care must be taken to insure the structural integrity of each layer that it may support not only its own weight, but also the weight of the tiers above it. Special formulas are necessary for the chemistry to work on larger layers. A knowledge of food safety is required. Remember if fresh eggs and dairy products are handled improperly, you run a risk of food poisoning. This requires your baker to have invested in a large amount of refrigeration. At home, you bake and frost one cake. For a wedding cake many tiers must be iced with precision, with special pains taken to insure that each is finished in harmony with the others. Every scallop must be identical, swags must be precisely measured to insure proper placement. All icings must be flawlessly smooth. Your baker also has a basic understanding of structural engineering. 4‘ tall wedding cakes that feed 300 people are not magically held aloft be good intentions. They are built using the same principals as skyscrapers. In building, it is called bearing pile construction. In a cake, it is represented by the wood or plastic stakes in your cake. Your baker knows where to place these "bearing piles" and how many are needed to evenly distribute the weight above. At home, you place your cake on a pretty platter, but what would you do with an 18" cake. Custom cake boards must be either acquired or created. Getting your cake to the reception site is also a process. It must be timed so that it is set up in advance of your guests’ arrival, but not so far in advance that it sits out too long. The delivery person must be equipped to repair any possible mishap that might occur in transit. Once on site, the professional will check the table for stability and level, and be prepared to fix any problem with the table. A true professional has great confidence in their skills, but also remembers that while it may be one of many cakes to them it is an incredibly special, once in a lifetime cake for the bride.