Happy Anniversary

Katie and Porter just celebrated their one year wedding anniversary. I can't believe it's been a year since they got married. In a way, this year has positively flown by, and yet their wedding day seems like a lifetime ago. It was a wonderful day, though, on which I also made my first wedding cake.


Being the first anniversary, the bride and groom got to eat the traditionally saved top tier of the cake. Rose Levy Beranbaum of The Cake Bible says freezing butter cakes with buttercream frosting for the first anniversary is a tradition that needs to go away. I agree with her. Like so many other typical wedding practices, this is a ridiculous one. What a waste of good cake. The tradition of saving wedding cakes for a year must hearken back to the days when people served fruitcakes at weddings. Fruitcakes have the consistency of a rock to begin with, so keeping one around for a year doesn't really lessen its glory. Perhaps a better tradition would be hunting down the baker who made your wedding cake to order a fresh one for the anniversary.

It reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Elaine steals the piece of cake from the 1937 wedding of King Edward VIII that her boss bought at auction for $29,000. "It was the most romantic thing I've ever eaten," she exclaimed. "How was it?," Jerry asked. "A little stale." This cake was a little stale, too. Not to deliberately gross anyone out, but the frosting had developed a few tiny green specks in it. The chocolate ganache filling was still good, though the toffee bits lost any crunch they once had.


I think everyone in the family had a small slice, but we threw half the cake away. Wendy ate the ganache off the plastic pillar that was in the center supporting the cake topper. Cake on the cob, someone called it.


I'm celebrating an anniversary of my own. I just marked four years since I bought my house. Another anniversary that I can't believe is here, yet so much has happened in those four years. Half of my house still isn't decorated, and the other half probably isn't decorated well. I've given up daydreaming about Prince Charming and prefer to daydream about kitchen remodeling and upgrades. I don't find that home maintenance costs and keeping up a lawn are always personally rewarding, but I love this house. I decided to commemorate this anniversary by purchasing a new bedroom set.



Maybe when it gets here I'll have that housewarming party -