At Lavonne, we make cakes for a variety of occasions, and our custom cake specialist, Chef Joonie Tan, creates multiple creative and unique cakes that span a various themes. In this section, she talks about her pick of the month and takes us through the creative process that goes into making them.
For the month of September, it’s a very special cake she created for the wedding of our co-founder, Mr. Lijo Eapen.
This cake was very special for me. I know a lot of cakes I have done in the past have been special, because of how challenging they were, but this one had sentimental significance because it was for Lijo (co-founder of Lavonne) and Ritu’s wedding. Since it was one of the owner’s wedding cake, it had to be special.
To design this cake, I had the rare opportunity of enjoying 100% creative freedom to do whatever I wanted. With weddings, brides and grooms are usually very particular about the cake, and even when they are not, they usually want it to match the theme or decor. This time, I was given a totally free reign to let my creativity take over. And I had to make it count!
I wanted the cake to be fitting as one of the owner’s wedding cakes, and that’s why I ended up making a six-tier cake, out of which one of the tiers was a double-barrell. This was easily one of the tallest cakes to ever have been made at Lavonne.
For me, Lijo is akin to being Lavonne royalty, and the cake also reflects that. To get the royal feeling going, I used a lot of heavy gold borders and trimmings, against the red, so that the grandness would stand out. Additionally, I kept the colour a deep red, so that it would stand out against the wedding backdrop theme colours, which were orange and yellow. The cake also carries our signature sugar flowers, to add that extra burst of colour.
The big difference with this cake was that while most people want the cake to match the backdrop, this was a direct contrast, in terms of colour. A very out-of-the-box approach when considering wedding cake trends. I had initially wanted it to be a black and gold combination, but because it was a wedding, I decided to not use black and go with a more auspicious and traditional red colour instead.
The flavour of the cake was a classic vanilla, keeping the taste simple while the cake’s appearance was quite grand. It was all about achieving the right balance for me. It was also the first time I was using that much gold trimming and decorating on one of my cakes. So the aim was to make it grand, while ensuring the look stayed sophisticated and elegant.
Making the cake itself was a fairly easy process, but since it was a six-tier cake, assembling it was the challenging part. We managed quite easily however, and when I finally saw the cake next to the happy couple on stage, that was possibly the most rewarding experience.