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Carley Roney: Hi! I'm Carley Roney, Editor and Chief and Co-founder of the Knot and you are watching inside weddings. Now we are going to have some fun talking about wedding cakes. We went to visit with Gail Watson who is an incredible cake designer, what's great about her cakes is that they look beautiful like exquisite and they taste great too. Which is really important, don't sell out for a cake, it doesn't taste great.
And Gail Watson has talked us through all the different things like how much cakes cost, she actually has incredibly creative cakes in her studio because cakes aren't just white wedding cakes anymore; they can different shapes, different colors different sizes. They can even reflect a theme of your wedding. So, we took Miriam to Gail Watson's studio where we look to a lot of the different cake options look through her cake book and became kind of inspired with ideas. So, let's take a look. Miriam, we are under that final moment in the reception, the cake and this is an amazing place to sort of express some of your style and I have brought you to see Gail Watson. Gail Watson this is Miriam.
Gail Watson: Hi! Nice to meet you.
Miriam Longchamp: Hi! Nice to meet you.
Carley Roney: I think we should start out by you describing what if anything you have thought about the cake.
Miriam Longchamp: I would like my cake to have a little bit of color, you know I don't want it be just plane white.
Gail Watson: Often the way we work this, the design is half of you know what your dress is like and the general feel of the place, you know the atmosphere that you are going for the time of day.
Miriam Longchamp: It's going to be an evening wedding. I have a light strapless dress, which is pretty traditional. Its ivory in color it has beading, its ivory in color and the place that we are having it in is basically a ball room that is pretty traditional with lots of mirrors and gold trim.
Gail Watson: When you do things all white, it has a more sophisticated feeling to it and throwing color on in and texture and definitely brings it more into the fine one. This design with the stripes might appeal to you because the stripes have a modern quality to them, but the flowers still get to nice softness and femininity to it, but it's clean. As to as its softness, but it still has you know modernity to it. This cake was designed for a garden country wedding and you know it's very fun and very soft and organic. The cake toper was designed by someone else who was designed Deborah Moreland who is fantastic. We basically worked of it top of it because let's say sensational.
Carley Roney: Yeah, it's really wonderful.
Miriam Longchamp: Wow!
Carley Roney: It's actually a jewel look like a crown.
Miriam Longchamp: And it's the doves of white paradise like something.
Gail Watson: I don't prepare something like cakes that are so cold and hard that they become sculpture they don't become something you actually want to sit down and put your fork into. We primarily do a fondant about a cream, which is a very light delicate about a cream and we think it's more delicious. The other alternative that most people do is a -- which is a sugar dove eye thing, which is aesthetically very pretty, it's rolled out and molded over the cake and it has a very pretty -- in look, but taste wise it is not as delicious to eat. Often time people will choose a fondant over the butter cream also, if you having the garden wedding and out doors and I mean.
Miriam Longchamp: Day-to-day standup batter to temperature.
Gail Watson: Yes. The rule of thumb though is that butter cream, cake holds up just as well as where I do. So, if it's 100 degrees, everybody is melting in the hall. If its 80 degrees, it's warm, but it's fine. Any of the designs can be adjusted to whatever size that you need and we could also do it in whatever color that you want.
Carley Roney: Couple of other ways you can personalize cakes too because this one looks like it has a monograms on it, what's that about?
Gail Watson: Yeah, monograms are very popular thing to do and I think it's a great thing to do because as a first time you are now Mr. and Mrs. and that often times when we do things like this we add elements that are also meaningful to you like you know your favorite colors together or maybe the flowers that we do on the cake represent maybe the first bouquet that you got from him. Even though it's necessarily seasonal we can make it into shorter and we can do anything.
Miriam Longchamp: Since there are all these different layers to people usually have the cakes all one flavor or do they have the different things in different layers.
Gail Watson: That's a very good question. This cake serves a 100 people, the bottom to you is going to serve 65 people and this one is going to serve 35. So, if this one is chocolate and this vanilla you can when you add, which do you want? What I can have a little bit? Alright. You can run out of one of the other.
Carley Roney: It's a guest nightmare.
Gail Watson: Wedding cakes, they definitely have a bad reputation of not tasting very good. Wedding cakes do have to serve certain functions other than we can't make a wedding cake out of anything. It does need to have to sit our for several hours and have enough structure to support, you know itself and the decorations, but that doesn't mean that the cake shouldn't be able to taste delicious.
Miriam Longchamp: How does when I go about to picking the flavors because I'm sure they are about a million?
Gail Watson: Well there are. When it boils stand to it -- I usually recommend that you choose something that you and your fiancée like. You never going to make everybody happy, no matter what you do at least you know you guys are happy and you got something really yummy like you both are. We offer a list of many cake and flavors because there is not one perfect answer and there are different textures and levels of sweetness.
Carley Roney: Each of these flowers you make all those by hand, right? Tell her about that.
Gail Watson: With this type of technique, we can replicate the type's flowers that you have going on in your center pieces and it could be done in any color as well. With the hand molded flowers they are made out of a paste that has a gum in it that makes it elastic and malleable. Pieces are rolled out to a thin layer, and then each petal is cut out, and then they are tooled a little bit to thin out the edge. So, they don't look so cookie kind of cut out the -- and then they are placed in the egg trays, which will allow them to dry and in a curved shape. When they are still little soft and they are trying out to keep this shape. Edible flavors had become a really popular thing to do. These are our hand catch sort of boxes when we make ourselves and they are filled with Jordan almonds and we have a range of other candies that we do. What we try to do also, let me do these as to kind of replicate the general style of your cake as well.
Carley Roney: I love edible flavors and I think that makes a difference.
Gail Watson: The other thing that we do is very popular as a boxed groom's cake, which is a box and this is a tradition that is going to be very popular.
Carley Roney: Very popular right now.
Gail Watson: So, I think the things that are important about when you start to work with the cake baker is that you have someone who understands your sense of aesthetic that you are like a person's style, hand and you know how they go back to doing things. You want someone who has a good reputation who has been around for perhaps reliable who knows, we can do consistently good work. So, this is my basic portfolio and in here are some examples of cakes that I've done in the past. When we sit down and look at this book you can either choose something or say this is it, this is perfect. But mostly it's used as a reference point where you can get a sense of general style and handling you know general feels of things, and then we can take a little bit of these and little bit of that and whatever make sense for you.
Carley Roney: You make any flower, any style, and any color?
Gail Watson: Yes, absolutely. We put some of these out because these are probably reminiscent of the color as that you are going to do and just to show you that sugar really does have a latitude from not just the pale blushy, tones you can actually get into these deep more fine colors.
Carley Roney: But its not just flowers that you can have on there, I mean you could personalize with that, but you could have anything else like this a tray of amazing other elements that you are seeing here. What's going, tell us what's in there?
Gail Watson: These are some of the elements from our cake kits, but what are most popular kit is the sea shells and these are made out of sugar, these are cast shell and most of these are made from most that we make ourselves that from actual wheel shell. So, they have that real quality too.
Miriam Longchamp: What is a cake kit and how do people use these things?
Gail Watson: The cake kits were designed for people who live across the country or having a destination wedding. And there are four people who can cavikate made in ice and are not necessarily skilled in making all these sugar work themselves. So we ship the flowers as well as the sea shells.
Carley Roney: We picked a cake from what we decided on together, you know we know what we want. What happens next?
Gail Watson: You want to get on the production schedule with us three to four months before your actual date. We like to be having completed all your decision making process a month before at the latest.
Carley Roney: At that point and time, as there is a discussion of budget as well.
Gail Watson: Absolutely, the way we charge is we charge by the serving you know per slice.
Miriam Longchamp: I heard that one does not need to order as many servings of cake as one has guessed because not everybody eats the cake. Would you recommend that or you would you not? Let's you say you have a 100 guests. Would you say get a cake that feeds 80 i.e., it has 80 slice or would say get a cake that has a 100 slices?
Gail Watson: It would depend. If the cake is the main dessert and you are having a set down dinner and everybody is going to be served a piece of cake, and then you need to have cake for everybody. In this scope of the budget and everything else that you are paying fro the cake is a little bit of least expensive things that you are doing and it's the last thing that the people get in the restaurant business, which I grew up in the creator was the first in the people to eat and the last things that people eat are the things that you remember the most.
Carley Roney: Yeah, let's search upon budget for a second because there are a number of different factors that can influence the range of per slice cost.
Gail Watson: Our range starts at $6 per serving and the most expensive cake that we do is $18.
Carley Roney: And what the difference there.
Gail Watson: The thing - right. With the average for most people running around $9 to $10 per serving. The thing that drives the price is the design, the quantity of the sugar flowers on the cake. A cake can have anywhere from seven flowers to 100s of flowers, you know it would really depend on the design, you know the more flowers there on cake, the more time you know men hours it takes the more expensive it is.
Carley Roney: It's the hand labor click as into these and assembling the cake.
Gail Watson: The Monday, before we do a final confirmation to go over how large the cake is going to be. We will reiterate top to toe what we are going, so that you are 100% positive that you are getting what you think you are getting and any last minute changes like you found that you rather have the chocolate mousse rather than the raspberry filling any of that, you know its done at that point.
Carley Roney: What are the most popular combinations that people have?
Gail Watson: That's an impossible question to answer. It should be a cake that everybody really wants to eat, I mean choosing the plain like cake with the plain white filling -- to me; I would make the calories. I think it should be fantastic and there are a lot of things to choose from these days that are really quite wonderful.
Carley Roney: We don't have to serve another dessert at your wedding like these are incredible cakes they taste good, I mean I think people with those other desserts in there because they figure people willing to go over a little chocolate mousse on the side, but it shouldn't really have to.
Gail Watson: I think having the cake is absolutely you know can be the main thing, but I think serving berries or something on the side to compliment it is a nice way of finishing at all. I mean everything else is kind of done to the end and I think you should learn that often.
Carley Roney: Right. That's true It's almost a more to décor element, you have 400 people and you can exactly have enough of those flowers you accommodate a cake for 400 people cake in the back.
Gail Watson: Cake in the back. Well, in the case of 400 people it's also the thing has cake in the back because it just expedites the cutting and serving and it helps.
Miriam Longchamp: I have two questions that are kind of related, one has to do with these beautiful decorations that you put on the cake. Are they actually edible or are they more just fresh out?
Gail Watson: Well, they are all made out of sugar, so you can eat them, are they delicious? I mean you wouldn't want to sit down to a bowl necessary, but, you know, yes, it can nibble on that. They actually --
Carley Roney: The kids will eat.
Miriam Longchamp: My other question was about using, I guess the sugar flowers versus real flowers or do you ever mix them together I just don't know what you do?
Gail Watson: That's a good question. Well, we do not mix sugar and fresh flowers they are just apples and oranges. My personal opinion is that a confection is confection, which you keep it all sugar though, if you are having a wedding that's very floral, very gardening, fresh flowers are great answer. Fresh flowers are also, if you want to keep that's got tons of flowers definitely less expensive to do it in terms of sugar flowers.
Carley Roney: Okay. Can we eat some cake now?
Gail Watson: Sure. Always.
Carley Roney: Look at these. Aren't these beautiful? These are so adorable these, it could be though little flavors or --
Gail Watson: These are like what we do in the groom's cake boxes. These are a little petty.
Carley Roney: I'm not shy.
Gail Watson: Good.
Carley Roney: What kind of flavor are they?
Gail Watson: You are biting into chocolate cake with the raspberry and this is white with an apricot. And what we recommend, I mean this will give you a sense of, you know what our cake style is like and you know the quality of our cake.
Carley Roney: It's so delicious.
Miriam Longchamp: It is very good.
Gail Watson: Ultimately, if you wanted do is that, you know if you are choosing a combination that's a little unusual that cakes flavor that you have not a custom to having, you would place an order with us and we put together a sample for you. Yeah, we custom bake everything, we don't bake and we don't have everything on hand. But we put together a sample for you, so you could see what that's really right.
Carley Roney: So, you would sit down and taste your cakes in your combination and your flavor?
Gail Watson: Right. We give you a little cake to take home, so you can sit down with your fiancée and your mom and whoever, you know have a good chance of sit over a meal and see what it really means like.
Carley Roney: Although delicious.
Gail Watson: --
Carley Roney: Thank you so much Gail.
Miriam Longchamp: Thank you so much.
Gail Watson: This was so helpful.
Carley Roney: Yummy, I want one of those two.
Now, everyone loves to take home the top cheer of their wedding cake and freeze it to eat on their first year anniversary, but you know let's face it. One-year-old wedding cake doesn't taste that good, so I see eat it on your one month anniversary, and then hire your bake, it'll make you a little mini wedding cake on your year anniversary. It's a fun way to celebrate.
There are also very many, you know, creative flavor ideas, people love to get wedding flavors that they can eat, so you can be inspired by the season whether it's the fall or you give candy coated apples, if it is the summer you could give jars of honey, I mean there is a million ideas to choose from. You can also give something super practical, which everyone loves because it doesn't enter up in the back of their car under the seat like a pair of candle sticks that they can burn when they get home. Make sure to make them personal though, just put your name and your wedding date on them, so that people remember what wedding they got them from. They are nice touch, a good memento and guess like to walk away with little something.
So, thank you for watching inside weddings. I'm Carley Roney from the Knot. For more flavor ideas and cake ideas and to get pictures log on to theknot.com. For more information on this another MagRack programs, please log on magrack.com.
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