Gag Me & Lace Me
August 3, 2012 [So I was trying to make today's post title a "Cagney & Lacey" pun, but I think I just ended up attracting a whole new demographic to the CW readership. Er. Hi, guys! Welcome! Perhaps the last cake in this post might interest you?]
Loyal wrecky henchperson Amy O. ordered this lovely lace-covered cake from a reputable, "established" bakery for her wedding:
And believe it or not, that lace is actually edible. The ribbons, too. Yep, Ron Ben-Israel is JUST THAT GOOD.
I did a little digging, and the general consensus is that Ron may have used a product called Sugarveil, which pipes like icing but dries flexible, like a net. (John and I got to play with Sugarveil at a cake show once, and it's pretty surreal to pipe something you can then pick up and drape a moment later.)
Anyway, it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how you might go about recreating a similarly lacy look. But hey, I'm not a pro!
As it turns out, the "established" "pros" can figure it out in under 30 seconds:
...right after a quick trip to the fabric store.
Now, if you're wondering how much of what you're seeing is edible, the answer is: well, none of it.
There could be towels stuffed in there for all we know. C'mon, at least the empty cardboard box had icing on it!
So to get to this cake, you'd first have to untie the ribbons and then peel off the lace from each tier - which were all buttercream? Is that right?
Except it looks like the lace goes under each layer, too, which would require you to disrobe the cake, as it were, from the top down as you serve each tier. Sweet Cagney, this cake's harder to undress than a gal in Victorian underwear*!
Ok, Amy, there's just one last thing I've GOT to know: what did you guys do for the cutting ceremony? Get a pair of scissors?
*I got my first Victorian corset last week, so that's the voice of experience talking. In a high-pitched, gasping-for-air whisper.
UPDATE: Inspired by today's post, John and I decided to do a little "decorating" of our own:
I wish I could say we were bored and had nothing better to do at the time, but the truth is we stopped far more important things to do this. So in an attempt to justify the last giggle-filled half hour, let's have a contest: Make your own ridiculous fabric cake, post a photo of it on the Cake Wrecks' Facebook page, and I'll send my favorite(s) a free signed copy of Cake Wrecks. Aaaand...GO.
Reader Comments (61)
@Sharyn bahahahaha again, how do you do it :D
@BADkarma oh, that was freakin' great!!
@mel are you running out of places to tattoo how awesome you are yet???
@Sharyn yea for a double song post
off to FB to see the submissions!
Omg! I haven't heard myself gasp so loud in a long time!!! what were they thinking???
The first cake? Amazing and gorgeous. The attempted imitation? I'd demand at least part of my money back (after I finished sobbing over how they'd totally @*!$# it up).
Ron Ben-Israel deserves a Sunday Sweets entirely devoted to his gorgeous work. Looking at his site, I'm in awe of how gorgeous and artful each design is. I have no doubt you could pay for an entire wedding for what one of his cakes would cost, but in light of what today's bride went through? It might be better to just pay and know you'll get what you want.
You know when you've been watching Cake Wrecks for a while when all you have to do is look at the example cake and automatically think "Oh, no..."
In my copious free time, one of these days, I'm going to knit a cake.
Then I'm going to make a real cake version of it...
To be honest, the original cake is just on this side of my personal line of acceptability; it is simple enough that they wouldn't have had to spend more time picking off the theoretically edible sugar ornaments than they did cutting the cake. Many of the cakes you feature here are gorgeous, but too covered with little sugar dadoes or gargoyles or whatever to seem like acceptable party food.
Then there's the thing that actually arrived.
How many circuits have to be loose in your brain for you to think that actual cloth and ribbon are acceptable substitutes for sugarpaste? Or was this "reputable, established bakery" blowing hot air? And if so, why didn't somebody Google, oh, edible sugar cake lace like I just did and get Sugarveil TWO LINKS DOWN???
Hi Jen and John, love your site and would love to enter your competition but am, like many others, a consciencious objector to Facebook. Are there any alternatives to entry?
Thanking you in advance wreckiness,
Cate
Hey, that's the exact same lace I got for really cheap to test the wedding dress I'm sewing. Which I'm not planning on using in the final dress. If I don't want to wear it, the cake shouldn't have to either.
Amy, so sorry.... I hope the rest of your day was stellar!
Hey guys! I'm Amy's husband. Believe it or not, the cake WAS edible. Even though it wasn't very pleasing to the eye. The cake tasted pretty good though...which helped the situation. I should know. She shoved it in my face and all up my nose. I smelled buttercream for a week.
We didn't let the sorry looking cake ruin our night though. It was the most memorable moment of my life thus far. It's been almost a year since the wedding, and I know I'm killer blessed to have Amy. Thanks for posting the cake on the site. I know that Amy got a kick out of it. You made her day! Thanks!
I am the mom n law of the bride. LOL it was definately a day to remember!! I remember the cupcakes were not much better looking. (red velvet cupcakes with a "C" logo for Cincinnati Reds sitting on a wrinkled, plastic tablecloth in the shape of a baseball diamond)...the decoration on those looked like a 3yr old decorated them. and the sugar cookies she gave as favors were so hard they could have killed someone! lol
We weren't very happy about that on the wedding day, but today, looking back, we all know that "something" has to go wrong on a wedding day....and this was it...everything else couldn't have been any more perfect. This is just one hilarious memory to tell the future grandkids!! haha!!
I can admit that I have one amazing daughter in law....er....DAUGHTER!!!!! She's so much prettier than the cake, by the way!!! :)
WOW!!