POLISH KIWI WEDDING

This cake was booked in almost a year ahead—and I truly left it until the last couple of weeks before designing it. The same really goes for most of what I do. Can’t force the design and can’t force the creativity.

Mostly I have learned to trust myself on this, but it is harder and more stressful when there are customers involved. Lucky for me I have some incredible customers who say those words: ‘We are happy to give you freedom with the design’. Don’t mind if I do, thanks!

Martyna is one of our long-standing regulars at Magnolia Kitchen, and she asked me to make her wedding cake at a book-signing for my first book. Y’all know how long ago that happened. The only real must-haves for the cake were: vegan, made by me, and of course the wedding date, a Saturday in January 2020.

While I’d thought about the details Martyna gave me about herself, her fiancé Daniel and their wedding, it wasn’t until she sent through a picture of the traditional Polish floral headband she was going to wear that the creativity I had been waiting for began to spark. I now knew exactly how I wanted to represent the couple in the design and create something I knew they would both love.

The main details I wanted to focus on were the gold design on their wedding invite and the traditional Polish flowers. I got to work researching Polish weddings and some of the traditions, as it was obvious to me that Martyna had specifically wanted to represent her home in her wedding. This is where the inspiration really hit. Online, I found all these beautiful pictures of Polish wedding dresses . . . just so stunning . . . all in white with brightly painted and embroidered floral designs. A lot of the brides wore flower crowns in bright, wild colours similar to the one Martyna had shown me.

Digging around some more, I found a picture of a Polish folk-art floral design, and this is what I used as the inspiration for the final design. Here’s what I sent to Martyna and Daniel for final approval:

Whitened ganache covering on all cakes, with hand-painted Polish floral wreath design over all three tiers (as seen on wedding dresses). Accented with gold-dipped gypsophila and fresh florals around the painting to give a 3D effect, and additional gold dots in among the painted florals.

All the cakes were vegan, and there were some awesome flavours:

  1. Chocolate cherry cake layered with cherry amaretto compote and vegan dark chocolate ganache
  2. Strawberry vanilla bean cake layered with strawberry compote and vegan white chocolate ganache
  3. Passionfruit cake layered with vegan white chocolate ganache

Hopefully you can picture in your imagination and see from the mood board what I planned. Now swipe to reveal the sketch and then finally the finished creation.

DESIGN DEBRIEF

For this cake there isn’t much to debrief—it really went very much in the direction I had intended for it. The only thing that didn’t work as I had imagined in my design description was the gold-dipped gypsophila. It just didn’t work and so I abandoned it, and I must say the finished cake is better for that decision.