The wedding cake. A symbol of love with an integral structure held together by sugar, flour, and undisclosed amounts of frosting. Some people love the dress or the venue but say there’s a wedding, and my only concern is the cake. While we now have social media to scroll through present-day cakes, those aren’t cakes of the past with yesteryear’s flavors. Even though we might not have records of every cake, the White House has archived a wedding cake made in the White House’s actual kitchen. Even though it’s been a while since 1971, things haven’t changed too much. Because like every modern wedding cake, this retro cake may have come with some pre-wedding disasters.
Only three presidents married (or remarried) while in office, and not all recipes had much press. The National Archives wedding cake recipe of Trisha Nixon (daughter of Richard Nixon) comes with an intriguing story. This wedding held the White House’s first outdoor ceremony wedding. What’s even better was that the event highlighted a sizable cake to accommodate its 400 attending guests. For display purposes, the press stated that the topmost cakes were dummy, non-edible layers meant only for appearance. Even with the illusion, the cake adorned with gum-paste flowers, sugar birds, and blown sugar decorations made for a sight.
The lemon-infused old-fashioned pound cake had a very, dare I say, weird methodology. You don’t have to be a baker to know something was a little off. Steps of the recipe goes as follows. A paste of flour, sugar, and butter is creamed together in a blender. Upon hearing blender, one has to wonder, do they mean a blender, or is it another way to talk about a hand mixer?
Eleven egg whites are mixed into this paste. Next, more dry ingredients (flour and baking powder) are mixed into the paste. Seven more egg whites and whipped with sugar and folded into the mixture.
Upon the White House releasing the recipe at a press conference, magazines and newspapers tried to bale up the cake. A press article had a New York Times home economist recreate the recipe only to fail. “There are just too many egg whites,” she stated, writing how the cake became burnt on the edges and soupy in the middle (and this is after adjusting the cooking time).
Looking at the weird proportions, one has to wonder, is there something off? Many surmised that the press-released recipe might have been scaled down without the proper adjustments. The writer of the article ends his story hoping that the White House ovens “don’t look like the end of a pillow fight,” and doesn’t envy the couple having to cut the possibly disastrous cake in front of White House guests.
Do you think this recipe works? Or do there have to be some adjustments?