Julie recently spilled the beans (or perhaps the frosting) on how much the Southern Accents staff loves cake. We find just about any excuse we can to celebrate with food, and heaven knows we all need a little reason to celebrate more than ever in these times. For the most part our cakefests are fairly ordinary affairs–a grocery store cake here, a bakery special there–as we're a fairly easy group to please. We do, however, get picky pretty quickly when it comes to choosing the cakes that occasionally appear in the magazine. Let's just say these I've gathered are a bit more fancy than the ones we have in the office.
photo by Becky Stayner; styling by Lydia DeGaris-Pursell
photo by Becky Stayner; styling by Rebecca Hawkinsphoto by Becky Stayner; styling by Lydia DeGaris-Pursell
Patty B. Driscoll created this cake for a bridesmaids' luncheon and patterned it after the bride's china. Every bit of decoration is made of sugar, from the glazed fruit to the cast platter the cake sits upon. There's really no need for a floral centerpiece when you have a dessert this beautiful. It's hard to imagine cutting into a work of art like this, isn't it? That I know the cake took Patty almost a month to make and decorate makes it even harder.
And here's the china pattern that inspired her cake: "Duke of Gloucester" by Mottahedeh.
There's a similar story going on here on a smaller scale. For a birthday party, Angels Cake & Confections crafted individual cakes inspired by the china ("Cornucopia" by Herend) and wrapped up like a special gift at each guest's place setting. Note that they double as place cards. I must confess my friends and I usually celebrate our birthdays pretty casually (margaritas and queso being a frequent theme), but perhaps I'll consider something a tad more formal and "ladies who lunch" the next time one of us is celebrating one that ends in a zero.
photo by Ellen Silverman
A few years ago we commissioned the queen of cakes, Sylvia Weinstock, to create the above confection for Entrée, our custom publication for Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. It turned out so beautifully that we immediately knew we had our cover image for the Summer issue. Weinstock is famous for exquisite and exact detail, right down to the botanically-correct pastillage flowers she crafted for the top. I remember a few phone calls we got from readers who just couldn't believe this was actually a cake. I promise it was!
photo by Liz Banfield
Here's the fabulous cake baked by Jim Smeal for Tara Guérard's baby shower, that we featured in the March 2008 issue of SA. I know images of Tara's event have since taken quite a spin around the blogosphere, but I think this one bears repeating here. Tara didn't want anything too sweet or precious for the look of her baby shower and her colleagues came through with fun and sophisticated style. A palette of yellow and blue and a graphic polka dot design dotted everything from invitations to favors, and the theme culminated perfectly at the end of the meal. I'm betting this is one kind of sweet Tara didn't mind.
photo courtesy of tramp-art.com
Finally, the above example didn't actually run in our magazine and I can't attest to whether it truly was the world's tallest cake at the time. But according to the photograph, it contained an astounding 3000 eggs, 200 lbs of butter, 200 lbs of shortening, 250 lbs of milk, a gallon of vanilla, 600 lbs of sugar, and 500 lbs of flour, among other things. Pardon the inevitable bad pun, but I can't help it: This one definitely takes the cake!
| Permalink | Comments 11 | TrackBack 0
