A Cake of His Own

We do a lot of wedding cakes. And that's just how we like it. But every once in a while, I realize that the estrogen level at the shop is getting a bit high. Every time we make a fabulous gum paste flower or frosting bow, it edges a little higher. By mid July, the bakery reaches female DEFCON 1, practically glowing pink with femininity, and I feel the desperate need to do something, anything, that isn't girly.

Thankfully, that's when Michelle showed up. Don't get me wrong, Michelle is plenty feminine. She's strikingly beautiful, and, might I add, she rocked her Maggie Sottero wedding gown. But, she didn't come to me for herself. She came to me for a surprise groom's cake for her fiance Tristen.

Imagine my joy, when she described him as a "man's man". Hallelujah! Even better, he's an officer in the Army...loves baseball, especially the Twins, and has a thing for Sam Adam's beer.

Michelle had a pair of Twin's tickets that she planned to give him as a wedding gift, so we decided to focus on baseball as a theme for the cake. Before we knew it, we had designed a cake that was all about peanuts and crackerjack rather than silk and chiffon. We added a pair of frosting dog tags in lieu of a frosting brooch, and, to honor their first date on the 4th of July, a few frosting firecrackers...can't shake a well-manicured finger at that, can you?

So we traded out our Katy Perry and Regina Spektor CDs for some Beck, and Sublime, and commenced a week of purely masculine cake decorating (no, that's NOT an oxymoron). There's nothing like molding a solid chocolate bottle of beer and baseball to cure whatever ails you! We even added a frosting scoreboard, with their wedding date as the score, a frosting baseball cap, and a pair of frosting hot dogs(with his and her favorite toppings). And with each stroke of the pastry bag, the threat of an all out Gateaux cat-fight-meltdown was diminished.

Michelle reported back that Tristen loved his cake (once he actually realized it was a cake) and it was the hit of the reception, especially with the guys. Thanks Michelle, we needed that....no, we really, really needed that.

Thanks to Michelle and Tristen's Photographer Kate Botwinski for capturing this cake in all of it's manly glory!