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 Let them eat cake! You may leave the color theme and table favors to your bride, but for heaven’s sake help choose the cake!
“For many men, the cake might be the only aspect of the wedding they care about or are allowed to have a say in,” says cake designer Erica O’Brien; 90% of her Long Beach, Calif.-based business is wedding cakes. “A lot of grooms get really excited about the cake, and many grooms take an active role in the process.”
Can you imagine your fiancé allowing you to have complete control over one (major) aspect of your wedding? It can happen. O’Brien tells GroomsOnline, “I recently worked with a groom who designed the entire cake.”
And the traditional “cake-tasting” (in which the bakery’s best are sampled) is still attended, O’Brien says, by both the bride and groom. “. It’s really nice to watch them experience the cake tasting together,” she says. It’s also probably the groom’s favorite excursion of wedding planning. Yum!
With celeb-friendly bakeries like Sprinkles, Doughboys, Buttercake,  Bluebird, Hot Cakes, Magnolia, Susina and Hummingbird making a name for themselves, on (almost just) their red-velvet cupcakes, it doesn’t surprise us that O’Brien says that red-velvet wedding cakes are “very trendy right now.”
Outside of south, most people may reluctantly admit that the first time they heard of a “groom’s cake” was the (red velvet!) armadillo groom’s cake designed and baked by the groom’s aunt in the 1989 blockbuster, the wedding-centric Steel Magnolias.
She may have recently worked with just the groom on a cake, but she says, “It’s always fun to work with both the bride and the groom. I always ask how they met.” Their stories, she says, are invariably so fun and fascinating, that O’Brien hopes “one day to write a book with some of the best stories.”
A couple may save this “fun” part of the planning (frankly, the most fun) to the latter part of the wedding activities, and by then, are familiar with each other and know how they make decisions. O’Brien says, “I work collaboratively with my clients on the design process, and getting to know them as a couple helps me to envision the mood they are trying to establish through their cake. I definitely prefer that they both be there.”
She also believes that the cake—such an iconic element of the wedding – should be chosen by both bride and groom. “ Let the cake reflect who you are as a couple,” O’Brien says. “The design doesn’t have to match the theme of the wedding. It can be anything: fun, elegant,  formal, whimsical, sporty, etc.”
And most cake designers, and certainly O’Brien herself, she has to rely on her own innate creativity. “I've designed cakes inspired by everything from the couple's china pattern to the grooms favorite Hawaiian print shirt Just make sure it tastes good!”
About O’Brien:
O’Brien’s creations are always make from (when the items are called for) Plugra butter, fresh cream, Callebaut chocolate, and seasonal fresh fruit. And the possibilities are endless. She offers 11 different kinds of cake, with 40 different variations on filling. No artificial flavorings or preservatives are ever used. Cake fillings and flavors range from the traditional, such as yellow cake with fresh raspberry cream, to the adventurous (think lavender-scented chocolate cake with Callebaut white chocolate chai mousse).
Erica O’Brien is a freelance pastry designer in Long Beach, California. She lived and worked in New York City where she trained at the Institute for Culinary Education and taught cake-decorating classes. Erica relocated to Long Beach in 2005. She has been dazzling her California clients with her cakes ever since.
Erica O’Brien Cake Design (562) 434-5533
www.ericaobrien.com
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