One of the UK’s top bridal magazines wanted me for a SHOWSTOPPING wedding cakes feature. Obviously, I said yes before even thinking. Who wouldn’t?!
After some brain storming and sketching we came up with the Deliciously Stella Gold edition design - taking one of our best sellers and glamming it up for a wedding. It was five tiers of gold-drenched, wedding-worthy magnificence. A true superstar. Until it wasn’t.
As it happened, I had delegated it to a member of staff who made it out of real cake, not the dummies we had which are meant for display cakes - first rookie error. It did however look spectacular, all glamorous and glistening with 23 carat gold leaf. This superstar was going to outshine at its photo shoot the next day with some of the other top cake makers in the country.
Sadly, staff also forgot to dowel each tier. The moment we picked it up, it began its slow, inevitable collapse - like a drunken sloth after a wild night out. Wobbly. Unstable. Going down fast.
My heart was sinking as fast as the cake - there is no way to dowel and support a cake after decorating, especially 5 tiers of it weighing over 15kg. In a desperate attempt to at least get the cake in a reasonable state to be transported, we hacked into the back with some dowels hoisting it up. The cake looked like a cross between Two-Face and the Leaning tower of Pisa but it might just make the journey.
What's done is done, and we still loaded the leaning cake carefully into the boot of the car and drove it to the studio. Then came the pothole. A single, traitorous pothole. The moment we hit it, the cake lurched like a doomed ship in a storm - smashing full-force into the boot door. The sound alone could have shattered my soul.
Opening the boot felt like peeling back the crime scene tape. Cake guts everywhere. Other bakers, mid-unloading, stopped to watch the slow-motion horror unfold. It was silent. Too silent. No one enjoys another baker’s pain, but my cake had become public tragedy.
Armed with nothing but my bare hands and misplaced optimism, I tried a last-minute fix. A warm spoon, a desperate prayer, and sheer willpower. The cake was having none of it. If anything, I made it worse.
I explained the mishaps to the photographer and crew and they were very sympathetic and I left feeling dejected and worse having seen the other beautiful and immaculate cakes, all dummies of course, waiting for their shots but simultaneously hoping and praying something would come out of my fallen star...
I emailed my apologies to the editor, with still a small flicker of hope that at least one photo was salvaged. So when the feature came out last week and I saw our collapsed cake didn't make the cut I was not surprised in any way, but was devastated and very sad.
We have a pipeline of new products based on our signature style but I was too heart broken to work on the "same-but-different". Sulk? Hide in shame? Maybe. But then I saw the magazine spread, page after page of immaculate cakes - and felt a lion’s roar of pride and fury. We were meant to be there. We were good enough. Time to prove it.
I've seen some croquembouches about - macaron, profiterole, eclair and meringue versions and sure they're nice, but they're done, and not particularly memorable either. Also, I'm put off by having a styrofoam or cardboard cone as the structure of the tower - what's the point other than for display? Once all the good stuff is pulled off you're left with a prickly piece of polystyrene and the party's over.
We can do this better. We can make it all CAKE. So we sculpted a cone out of chocolate and vanilla sponges, and using the ever important DOWELS we hoisted it on top of another layer cake, frosted in pretty ethereal colours. We also made all the various elements for the decoration - the eclairs, profiteroles, macarons, popcorn, doughnuts etc.
Glazing the entire thing almost felt like a religious ritual - pouring precious Belgian chocolate over our precious cake sculpture. We had no idea if this would be a masterpiece or a towering, phallic disaster. Either way, we were committed.
We started decorating it, and as we kept going we kept falling more and more in love with it.
It looked more magical as we kept building it up with sprinkle glazed profiteroles and eclairs, colourful macarons, pretty pastel baked doughnuts, piped buttercream flowers, chocolate pearls, Ferrero rocher cones, "soft serve" buttercream cones and candied popcorn. And WOW. Just look at it!
We ran a little giveaway on Instagram and Facebook using a really rubbish photo taken in silly hours and awful lighting that really doesn't do this beauty any justice, hence I was so surprised by the response. So many participants!
I then posted another photo in the morning posing with my new baby and did not quite expect this response either - the most likes and comments EVER.
There's me showing off our all new "Horn of the Unicorn 🦄" cake tower - ALL 4.84 kgs of it! Thank you to everyone who guessed the weight in the previous post - the response has been amazinggg!! We do have one FrEaKISHLY close guess of 4.85 by @bohemiannaboo who is our giveaway winner! @bohemiannaboo please email us at hello@angesdesucre.com with your London delivery address for this beast to make its way to you tomorrow 💋 I'll be blogging about all the incredible work that goes into our latest creation soon. 🦄🦄🦄🦄
While I'm still hurt about the fallen 5-tiered Golden Stella cake, I now feel it wasn't as worthy. Not compared to this blindingly beautiful Horn of the Unicorn Croquembouche cake. That fallen cake? It deserved to fall. Because this - this Croquembouche masterpiece - was meant to rise instead. Humble pie has never tasted so good.
Lots of love and dowels,
Reshmi xoxo
Jo
June 22, 2017
It sounds ridiculous but I am really touched by this post. I have recently started making wedding cakes and whilst my cakes genrally always looked nice one of them in particular tasted awful and I tried to drive it stacked ending in a tower of pisa lean! I, like you, was so embarrassed. I got really drunk at the wedding and tried to pretend I didn’t make it! I then really nearly gave up. I guess what I am trying to say is I really appreciate your honesty. I think your cakes are awesome and everyone gets something wrong sometimes in life. You just used it to make the next thing extra brilliant. This is inspirational to me. I am gonna try and make something like your croquembouche today. I think it is fab and thanks for sharing this story. Lots of love from Norwich. And if you ever need a hand I would be more than willing! Xx