Who's on Top?
When it comes to the ultimate wedding cake, there's lots of competition for the
top tier.
Loretta’s Washington Post cake
By Walter Nicholls
Wednesday, January 28, 2004; Page F01
After eight years on the top tier, Andrea Webster notified a select group of wedding planners and caterers that she was closing her business. No further orders would be accepted for her avant-garde, soft-hued, hand-painted wedding cakes.
The last week in December she moved to
Lavish cakes, for the moment, are not part of her plan.
"I'm going to downshift. I'm burned out," Webster said on one of
her final days in
There are more than 1,000 sources -- bakeries, caterers, hotels and supermarkets -- for wedding cakes in the area. For example, the busy Silver Spring-based Creative Cakes bakery, during the high season (April to November), makes 25 to 40 wedding cakes per week. The average price is $4 per serving.
But individual specialty bakers, such as Webster, create the most coveted cakes and are a rare breed. These leading bakers go all out to give clients individual attention, from the initial, exploratory meeting where one-of-a-kind designs are discussed to the defining moment -- the personal delivery of the finished cake.
The majority of wedding cakes sold are iced with rich buttercream frosting. But specialty bakers, for the most part, cover cakes with rolled fondant -- a sweet, chewy sugar paste that gives the surface an exceptionally smooth finish. Fondant work is labor intensive.
"It's five times more difficult than buttercream," says Fran
Wheat, owner of Fran's Cake & Candy Supplies in
But that's only one of the many demanding tasks for the specialty pastry chef.
Brides also custom-order fine, sugar handwork such as Victorian-style lace pieces, painted portraits, molded pearls and piped embroidery. Depending on the undertaking, custom bakers spend hours and even days delicately painting the cake and attaching the hand-crafted sugar flowers that perfectly match, in every detail, the bridal bouquet or the lace on the bodice of a bridal gown.
"It's a time-consuming production process where each petal is applied in sections with gum glue, over and over again," says Wheat. A full-blown, hand-molded rose can have seven rows of petals and take 45 minutes to complete. "And if you need 50, you have to make 100 because they will break," she says.
The brides work with the baker to choose special combinations of cake flavors (passion fruit or winter spice) and fillings (kirsch mousseline or dulce de leche). Hours are spent standing, bent over a project. The work is so demanding that these bakers can complete only one to four cakes per week. That's why such cakes can cost four to five times as much as standard cakes, as much as $18 per serving.
"I had no life. When you get to the top, your clients call you
constantly. You have to hold their hand. These brides are so focused on one day
that they expect you to jump through hoops for them," says pastry chef
Jill Light who closed her well-respected Alexandria-based Jilly's Cake Studio
last January. (Light moved to
Leaving a Void
Light's and Webster's departures are significant: They left behind only a select few pastry chefs in the area who create exceptional cakes.
Wedding consultants were caught off guard.
"There was no reason to go anywhere else," says Bethesda-based event planner Bonnie Schwartz. "Andrea's work had a refinement that just got better and better, year after year."
"Her work is like porcelain, like an artist. And she is a really good
woman, so easy to work with," says Bambi Jenkins, co-owner of Foxglove
Design in
Still, not everyone is saddened by Webster's departure. For some fellow
pastry chefs her move to
Leslie Goldman-Poyourow of
"When I heard [Webster] was leaving, I thought, 'Good, first Jilly. Now another cake person out of the way,' " says Goldman-Poyourow. "When Andrea was here, [wedding planners] didn't look at anyone else."
Amernick has wowed
"Andrea was known as the doyenne of wedding cakes," Amernick says now. "Well, I did that when there was no one else."
Webster moved to
Says Webster: "I didn't expect it to take off. I thought it would be little by little."
Well, take off it did. In one year she became the key cakemaker in town.
"People were eager to try someone new. They liked my soft colors, the homemade flavors of the cake itself," she says. "And my sugar flowers were less fussy and more edible-looking than the ones that Ann was doing. People liked my look and liked dealing with me."
She will not miss the late nights, the anxiety or the occasional "bossy, barking, rude people who treat you like a servant." As well as "some painful mothers of brides who call and call changing some minor detail of the cake design. People think it's just butter, sugar, eggs and milk," says Webster. "They don't realize they're paying for my precious time."
In the end, the most fulfilling aspect of Andrea Webster Cakes was delivering the finished product to the wedding site. "I'd finally get some acknowledgement for being shut up in a little kitchen. People would go 'ooh and ahh.' "
Filling a Void
Webster continues to receive cake inquiries from caterers and brides-to-be.
She directs perspective clients to Narcisa Vieira-Castillo, whose
"I think Narcisa is very talented and has a lot of promise. As a newcomer, she is much better than I was at the same stage, much more professional," says Webster. "She just needs to loosen up, come up with her own style and acknowledge that she is an artist as well as a bloody good baker."
Vieira-Castillo met Webster two years ago.
"I was working as a pastry chef at the Ritz-Carlton downtown when I
called her out of the blue. I knew she was the best and I wanted to work for
her," says Vieira-Castillo, who was born in
But instead of hiring her as an assistant, Webster sent Vieira-Castillo the clients she did not have time for. "We clicked," says Vieira-Castillo. Webster also allowed her protege to reproduce her most sought-after cake designs. A pastry star was born.
"I do think Narcisa is the next Andrea," says Beth Hughes, owner
of Dish Caterers in
Still, there are other contenders ready to replace Webster. Event planners and caterers each have a favorite.
Some say that pastry chef Patty Collette, noted for her drop-dead, true-to-life sugar gum paste flowers, may get the nod and move skyward. Collette's stunning cakes sell for as much as $18 per serving. She calls her Annandale-based business Patty Cakes.
"Patty does fabulous and imaginative work with sugar. For the top of one cake, she did a mini-set of Vuitton luggage," says Terri Bergman, an event coordinator for Silver Spring-based Distinctive Events by Susan B. Katz.
Wedding planner Gigi Lantz of Weddings by Gigi in
"Leslie is as close to Andrea as you can get. She's very talented and goes along with what a client wants. That's so important," says Lantz, who has worked in the business for 20 years.
Wedding
planner Jodi Moraru of
"She is
phenomenal, a well-kept secret with a great eye for detail," says Moraru,
who has pointed clients to Webster for the past six years. "
Caterer Bill Homan, co-owner of Design Cuisine in
Susan Gage, owner of Susan Gage Caterers in Oxon Hill, agrees with Homan
that Mueller's Terra Cocoa cake and chocolate studio in
"She is a brilliant baker who understands the chemistry of baking. Her product is really fresh and she can do any style of cake. I don't think she has an equal, except Ann [Amernick]. But Marilyn is more creative," says Gage.
(Both Amernick and Mueller have worked at the White House, Amernick as an assistant pastry chef and Mueller as a research assistant on domestic affairs .)
For her part, Amernick says she would like to reclaim the crown and have a bigger slice of the cake business.
"Wedding cakes keep my bakery going," says Amernick, who is also known for terrific, melt-in-the-mouth caramels topped with a smidgen of gold leaf.
She understands Webster's burnout.
"Just the lifting of a cake breaks your back," she says.
She has no idea who will leap forward from the pack.
"I don't keep my finger on the pulse. I'm out of the loop," says
Amernick. "Let's put it this way: I'm swimming and I don't have time to
look around and see what everybody else is doing. I'm just trying to stay
afloat."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
