It took a lot of sunken, ugly cakes before Kelly McGeehan perfected her recipe for white cake.
Cutting back on the batter’s leavening agent, by “quite a bit,” turned out to be the key.
“Now they rise, and they’re beautiful. It only took eight years,” McGeehan said with a laugh.
The assistant pastry chef and cake artist at McGeehan bakes all the at the dessert-focused restaurant in RiNo. Her wedding cakes are works of art, encrusted in multilayered fondant designs, textured buttercream, airbrushing, crystals, fresh flowers, ombre, metallics.
“With custom cakes, it allows for so many different styles,” McGeehan said. “Every single bride or groom or whoever sits down with me — everybody is so different. Some people sit down and say, ‘We’re definitely traditional. We want white-on-white.’ Other people are like, ‘Screw that, we want fuchsia and we want black.'”
When it comes to wedding cakes, the sky is the limit. Well, the sky and your budget, local pastry chefs said.
In an industry where it’s not unusual to be charged by the slice, the most expense comes not from the cake itself, they say, but what adorns the outside. Depending on the design, a tiered wedding cake for 100 people can cost $300-$500 or more, up into the thousands.
Buttercream is less costly than fondant, traditional scrolled piping less time-consuming than hand-painted peacock feathers from top to bottom. A sheet cake is easier than a five-tier cake.
Adorned in $$
“When you want something square and it’s covered in fondant and it has quilting and it has pearls and it has flowers, you’re paying for the hours that it takes to do all that detail work,” McGeehan said.
Assembling a wedding cake is a multiday process.
At , a South Broadway bakery that specializes in custom cakes and Peruvian sweets, customers ask all the time if their wedding cakes will be baked the day of the event, owner Marjorie Silva said. The answer is an emphatic no.
“If someone is telling you they’re doing that, either your cake will fall apart or they’re lying to you,” Silva said.
A cake needs time to cool after it comes out of the oven — Silva wraps and refrigerates her cakes overnight before filling them. (Cream-based fillings and warm cake do not get along.)
Once filled, the cake also needs some time to set before it’s decorated, unless you like your cake “wobbly,” she said.
McGeehan, who worked at Gateaux and D Bar before joining Sugarmill, said just like many breads, cake needs to cool to fully develop. Two of her most popular flavors are chocolate sea salt caramel and almond cake with lavender honey.
“Yeah, cake right out of the oven, it’s delicious, but you can’t cut that and you can’t stack that,” she said. “And you certainly would not want to stack multiple tiers on top of each other.”
During the wedding season, it’s not just one cake assembled at a time, either — it’s dozens.
Working out of a restaurant, McGeehan runs a smaller operation than most full-time cake shops — she averages two to three weddings every weekend during the season.
At , a family-owned and -operated bakery in Arvada celebrating 33 years in the business, they average 24-36 cakes every weekend, owner Dennis Meyer said.
Batters are made from scratch, scaled up or down based on the number of tiers of each flavor needed, and in what sizes, for the weekend’s orders, he said. Once baked and cooled, the tiers are then mixed and matched and assembled according to couples’ specifications.
Most bakeries cap how many wedding cakes they do — that’s why it’s so important to order early, Silva said.
“Everyone wants (their wedding cake) on Saturday between 3 and 5 p.m. — that’s the problem,” Silva said.
Wobbly proposition
Delivering a four-tier cake in a van — or in McGeehan’s case a standard SUV — is one of the joys unique to the business.
“There are so many things that could go wrong,” McGeehan said. “I-70 could be closed or there’s a huge accident on I-25 or you hit a pothole or you forgot your spatula. … Or you can’t find the venue — that’s happened — or you get to where you think the venue is and all of a sudden it turns to dirt roads.”
To minimize the chance of catastrophe, tiered cakes traveling long distances or up into the mountains aren’t stacked until they arrive at the venue, McGeehan said. The same goes for cakes on really hot days, Silva said.
“You see a bump coming, and you ease into it,” Meyer said. “You’re one with the product — I’m not trying to say some Jedi stuff here, but you’re one with the product. It’s a lot of responsibility from start to finish to setup.”
None of it matters, though, if the cake doesn’t also taste good, Meyer said.
At Das Meyer’s Saturday tastings, some 12-15 different kinds of cake are offered for couples to try — flavors run the gamut from staples like red velvet and carrot cake to more unusual creations, such as “Moo Crunch,” made with chocolate milk, chocolate custard and English butter toffee; and key lime, with lime zest and key lime mousse.
“Taste is everything,” Meyer said. “You can have the best sugar artist in the world but if the stuff inside doesn’t have taste, what’s the purpose?”
When it comes to picking a flavor, Silva said she encourages her couples to create a “cake buffet,” with each tier a different kind of cake. Azucar is known for traditional Peruvian cake, a yellow cake with dulce de leche filling; other popular flavors include a chocolate chip cake with chocolate ganache that won honors at the Colorado Chocolate Festival.
And after the wedding, just forget about freezing the top tier.
Many bakeries — Das Meyer and Azucar included —now offer their couples a free, fresh anniversary cake one year after the wedding.
Emilie Rusch: 303-954-2457, erusch@denverpost.com or twitter.com/emilierusch
Cake trends
What’s hot in wedding cake decor? Kelly McGeehan at Sugarmill, Marjorie Silva at Azucar Bakery and Dennis Meyer of Das Meyer Fine Pastry Chalet offer their top picks:
