THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406090092
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Mary Flachsenhaar
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: Long
``Probably 20 times in 1993 alone,'' she estimated.
{REST} It's not the trip down the aisle that sets her heart racing. It's the journey to the reception site.
When she backs her red 1992 Tempo out of her Chesapeake driveway, Battoia worries about potholes, traffic jams, thunderstorms.
``No matter where the wedding is, I won't drive on the interstate,'' she said. ``And I definitely don't do tunnels.''
The cargo she transports is as precious to her as the bride's ring is to the nervous groom. In the trunk, wrapped and cushioned as though it were a gift of Wedgwoodcq china, is the wedding cake, sometimes as many as seven fragile double layers, all made and decorated by Battoia.
With love. With patience. With pride.
For 15 years, Battoia has made wedding cakes for relatives, friends and friends of friends. Although a cake may be three days in the making in her small kitchen, she has never accepted money for her labor.
``Usually the cake is my gift to the bride and groom,'' said Battoia, whose face glows like a bride's as she shows pictures of her cakes in the photo album she keeps.
``It is a labor of love. My reward comes when I see how much the bride likes it and when I overhear one of the guests asking, `Who made that beautiful cake?' ''
In addition to something borrowed and something blue, many Hampton Roads weddings boast something homemade - a cake baked by a friend or relative of the bride, like Battoia, or in some cases, baked by the bride herself.
Sometimes saving money is the motive. But most often the ingredient a homemade cake adds to a wedding is a sentimental touch.
``We see a lot of people who volunteer to do the cake as a gift,'' said AnnaBelle Eversol, owner of Wine and Cake Hobbies, the Norfolk shop where she teaches cake decorating and sells paraphernalia for making wedding cakes at home.
``If you're doing a wedding cake for the first time and have to buy the pans, chances are you won't be saving money,'' she said. ``But you can get a look of simple elegance and of course a good homemade taste when you do it yourself.''
By the time the reception is over, even one of Battoia's towering, triple-tiered creations, surrounded by smaller satellite cakes, no doubt has been reduced to crumbs. The guests clamor for the ``good homemade taste'' of her from-scratch yellow, butternut and chocolate poundcakes, which she usually combines in a wedding cake, according to the bride's request.
Her yellow cake recipe was the one used in the Chesapeake recreation department cake-decorating course that first whetted Battoia's appetite for her hobby 15 years ago. From that recipe she developed her butternut cake. The chocolate poundcake she adapted years ago from a recipe in Southern Living magazine.
Poundcake has many advantages over other cake types, according to Battoia.
``Because it's firm, it stacks better and frosts easier,'' she said. ``It's richer than other cakes so you can get more servings. And if you wrap it tight, poundcake actually improves in flavor, so you can bake it several days before you need it.''
Unofficially designated the mistress of cake ceremonies at the weddings where her cakes are served, Battoia almost always wears a corsage presented to her by the bride. And she is in charge of cutting the cake.
Occasionally, this is as easy as converting a simple sheet cake into serving-size squares. But more often, Battoia must dismantle the multiple tiers she erected just hours earlier and remove the plastic staircases or bridges that connect the main cake with the satellite cakes necessary to feed a large crowd.
Bouquets of fresh or silk flowers often adorn the cakes. Or the tiers may be crowned with a more traditional ornament, such as a ceramic statue of a bride and groom that Battoia embellishes with lace and pearls.
The challenge of the more spectacular cakes appeals to Battoia, a widow and mother of three grown sons.
``I am so proud that I've taught myself to do all this,'' she said. She is just as proud that she is able to chauffeur the cake to the wedding - she got her driver's license just four years ago.
While many wedding-cake bakers rely solely on ready-made garnishes such as fabric or candy flowers, Battoia prefers to garnish the old-fashioned way, by piping delicate pastel icing flowers onto the cake with a pastry tube. She is a perfectionist, intolerant of a flower that looks more like a cabbage than a rose.
Fearful that a rose will be smashed during the drive to the wedding site, Battoia always carries icing, pastry tubes and spatulas. But in 15 years, she can't remember losing a single rose petal.
And in 15 years, she can't remember a bride and groom who didn't fall head over heels in love with the cake she baked for them.
``When I see how happy they are, it's all worth it.''
Doing it all
Kay Cline was remarkably calm as she put the finishing touches on the stunning four-layer wedding cake. She didn't even flinch when she noticed that the cake was listing to one side.
``I just grabbed three chocolate chip cookies from a pack I found in the kitchen, wedged them under one layer and patched the spot with more icing,'' said Cline, a secretary who lives in Portsmouth with her husband and two teenage daughters.
Friends and relatives were amazed at how calm Cline seemed, considering she also had done the flowers for the wedding and sewed the bride's dress.
She was unbelievably laid-back, considering she also was the bride.
As she showed a picture of the cake to a visitor one recent morning, Cline was modest about her talent.
``If you take away the topper and just divide it all up into layers, it's really just a normal cake,'' she said.
Her chief motive in turning a ``normal cake'' into a wedding cake was to save money, although she also liked the personal touch it added to her special day.
``If I'd gone to the local bakery, the cake would have cost at least $135,'' she said.
Instead Cline bought four wedding cake pans, four plastic pedestals and a plain plastic heart-shaped topper from a cake-decorating store. From the fabric store where she works part time, she bought lace, beads and silk flowers with which she garnished the topper herself.
Two days before her April wedding, she began baking five cake mixes she bought on sale and making several batches of her from-scratch white icing.
``Cake mixes have always worked just fine,'' said Cline. ``The side panel of the Duncan Hines white mix even shows you how to convert it to a wedding cake.''
Before doing her own, Cline had made four wedding cakes from mixes for friends and relatives. Her sixth creation was transported by car to North Carolina on Friday for a Saturday wedding. She makes no money on the cakes but is sometimes reimbursed for ingredients.
``When my sister asked me to do her wedding cake back in 1980, I said to her `You've got to be kidding,' '' said Cline whose creative birthday cakes for her daughters were renowned in her family. ``Sure, I was nervous back then.''
Now, when a friend asks if Cline wants to bake her wedding cake, she is thrilled to say ``I do.''
A piece of cake!
Mary Smith was flattered when a close friend asked her to make her lemon and white chocolate bombe for her wedding.
Smith had successfully used the frozen-dessert recipe, clipped from a 1988 Food and Wine magazine, for a few special occasions but never for a wedding.
In fact, she had never baked a wedding cake of any type.
Made from a lemon-filled jellyroll sponge and a white chocolate mousse, the delicate dessert is not typical wedding fare. But Smith was confident that, with a few technical adjustments, she could produce a photogenic cake that would dazzle the wedding crowd of 70, with its sophisticated taste.
In the end she did, but the road to success was paved with many cracked spongecakes and lots of spilled lemon curd.
Long before the wedding last May, Smith had researched methods of increasing the size of the cake. In its original version, it fills a six-cup bowl and serves only about 15 people.
Finally, she bought two springform pans, a 9-inch and a 6-inch, and a pack of plastic cocktail straws. Her bold plan was to quadruple the recipe and to engineer the bombe into two double-layer cakes.
``Somewhere I had read that if you stick cocktail straws into the bottom layer of the cake, they give greater support to the top layer,'' she explained.
Smith's busy life as a social worker and parent of a 2-year-old kept her from conducting a test-run.
So late Friday afternoon, with the wedding scheduled for 1:30 p.m. the next day, she was in her small Virginia Beach kitchen, surrounded by vats of lemon curd and what looked like miles of spongecakes, each one with a major defect.
``The wax paper wouldn't peel off the back of the spongecakes,'' Smith said. ``I was so hysterical, I called a kitchen shop for help. The woman said, `Use baking parchment, not wax paper. But first, dear, sit down and have a cup of tea.' ''
By 9 p.m. Friday, when enough acceptable spongecakes had been stuffed with lemon curd and tucked safely into the freezer, Smith traded in her tea for a stiff drink, resolving that she would beat this bombe, even if it took till-death-do-us-part.
Saturday morning the relationship between baker and bombe continued to be a rocky one. Patiently, she produced the mountains of white chocolate mousse needed to fill the spongecake-lined springform pans.
``At 6 a.m. I was in the grocery store for more ingredients,'' she said. ``At 12:30 p.m. I was just getting out of the shower.''
But at 1:30 p.m. Smith was at the wedding, calm and composed as she accepted compliments for the unusual cakes.
She wished she could have said, ``Oh, it was nothing.''
by CNB