We have included some fun, tasty tidbits for your entertainment and possible education.

The world’s most expensive cake may look tasty, but was it? If this glitzy wedding cake’s creators are to be believed, no one ever knew.

Unveiled in 2006 at the Luxury Bridal Show on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, the expensive cake was created by cake designers Nahid La Patisserie Artistique along with jewelers Mimi So. That’s right—it’s decked with jewels both exclusive and priceless.

The cake wasn’t meant to be eaten—or even touched. During the show, it was surrounded by a team of uniformed guards. I’d really like to know what they did with it when the show was over, though.

So how much was the most expensive wedding cake in the world? The diamond-studded masterpiece was said to be worth $20 million at the time.

I did not say it was pretty, just the most expensive in the world!

Dallas bakery labeled the Diamond wedding cake US$ 1.300.000. The diamond wedding cake can serve up to 320 invitees but they have to pay US$3,125 afterwards. The extravagant wedding cake is designed for Royals wedding, sons of billionaires, and Hollywood celebrities. Diamond bakery recruited Dallas Gold and Silver Exchange to blink and beautify the 160 pounds wedding cake with silver ‘sheen’ dust icing and 1,200 karats of Diamonds. Unlike other wedding cake, the diamond wedding cake rode an armored vehicle and the baker secured the cake with full alert security guards.

Dallas Bakery showed the Diamond wedding cake for the first time at the hall of the Dallas Bridal Show.

Check out the world’s largest wedding cake! Built for the Mohegan Sun casino, the vanilla cake is about triple the size of the previous world record-holding wedding cake.

 

Today, at the New England Bridal Showcase, Mohegan Sun unveiled what it hopes will be the world’s largest wedding cake. Measuring 17-feet tall and weighing 15,032 pounds, the seven-tiered cake is almost three-times the weight of the current record in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s largest wedding cake.

The Mohegan Sun wedding cake is vanilla flavored and decorated with bows and hearts. Ingredients include: 10,000 pounds of pound cake batter and 4,810 pounds of creamy frosting with a taste of vanilla and almond. Comparatively speaking, the cake weighs more than five Volkswagen Beetles and can feed up to 59,000 people.

Chef Lynn Mansel, Mohegan Sun’s Executive Pastry Chef and resident “Michelangelo of batters and buttercream,” began creating the cake on Sunday, February 1st in the Uncas Ballroom. Along with his team of 57 chefs and pastry artisans, Chef Mansel baked 700, 18×24 inch vanilla sheet cakes. Then, using frosting as cement, they created 200, five- and six-layered bricks, which were put together to form the tiers of the wedding cake. Steel discs were used as cake separators and two fork-lifts helped raise each tier as the wedding cake took shape.

Ask any summer bride: her wedding cake, wreathed in hand-crafted sugar roses and sometimes worth more than her bridal dress, is the ultimate vehicle for self-expression. Princess Diana’s five-foot tall cake, adorned with marzipan Windsor coats of arms, was so vital to the royal union that two copies were made, the extra serving as a stunt double in case of accidents. Modern cake designs can range from the fussily subtle (icing patterns that echo the embroidery on the bride’s dress, for instance) to the downright outrageous: cakes resembling favorite cycling paths, log cabins, iPods, snow plows, or Hawaiian volcanoes (that actually spew smoke). One recent bride opted for a full-size edible replica of herself; another, the town square from “Back to the Future.” And if the happy couple doesn’t have the heart to devour the masterpiece—well, these days they might not have to. To cut costs, elaborate cakes are sometimes crafted out of Styrofoam, with a single real slice built in for the sake of the cutting ceremony. Guests are served a simple sheet cake carved discreetly in the kitchen.

The history of the nuptial pastry, though, is even stranger than these modern rituals suggests.  In ancient Rome, marriages were sealed when the groom smashed a barley cake over the bride’s head. (Luckily, tiaras were not fashionable then.) In medieval England, newlyweds smooched over a pile of buns, supposedly ensuring a prosperous future. Unmarried guests sometimes took home a little piece of cake to tuck under their pillow.

Perhaps this was preferable to eating it. One early British recipe for “Bride’s Pye” mixed cockscombs, lamb testicles, sweetbreads, oysters and (mercifully) plenty of spices. Another version called for boiled calf’s feet.

By the mid sixteenth century, though, sugar was becoming plentiful in England. The more refined the sugar, the whiter it was. Pure white icing soon became a wedding cake staple. Not only did the color allude to the bride’s virginity, as Carol Wilson points out in her Gastronomica article “Wedding Cake: A Slice of History,” but the whiteness was “a status symbol, a display of the family’s wealth.” Later, tiered cakes, with their cement-like supports of decorative dried icing, also advertised affluence. Formal wedding cakes became bigger and more elaborate through the Victorian age. In 1947, when Queen Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth) wed Prince Philip, the cake weighed 500 pounds.

It’s just dessert, right? It disappears with the guests. But today’s Bridezilla might be able to justify her towering concoction, because the most famous cakes become immortal. Pieces of Queen Victoria’s 167-year-old wedding cake are on display at Windsor Castle this year, for instance. And a slice of the 1871 wedding cake of her daughter, Princess Louise, was recently auctioned off at an antiques fair for $215.  It was a scandalous wedding, because Louise married “a commoner,” but there was nothing common about the cake, which took three months to create.  Wrapped in parchment paper, the slice was stashed in a “cabinet of curiosity” for all these years. Its texture has been described as “firm.”

—by Abigail Tucker

The 'World's Largest Birthday Cake' at Cashman Center in Las Vegas, Nevada May 15, 2005. The 130,000-pound cake, made as part of the City of Las Vegas' Centennial celebration, was 102-feet long, 52-feet wide and 20 inches tall, and took 500 volunteers 14 hours to construct and decorate. A Sara Lee Foods facility in Tarboro, North Carolina baked the 30,240- half-sheet cakes needed for the project.

This guide shows how to cut popular shaped wedding tiers into pieces approximately 1 in. x 2 in. by two layers high (about 4 in.). Even if a larger serving size is desired, the order of cutting is still the same. The first step in cutting is to remove the top tier, and then begin the cutting with the 2nd tier followed by the 3rd, 4th and so on. The top tier is usually saved for the first anniversary, so it is not calculated into the serving amount.

Round Tiers:
Move in two inches from the tier's outer edge; cut a circle and then slice 1 in. pieces within the circle. Now move in another 2 in., cut another circle, slice 1 in. pieces and so on until the tier is completely cut. The center core of each tier and the small top tier can be cut into 3rds, 4ths, and 6ths, depending on size.

Square Tiers:
Move in 2 in. from the outer edge and cut across. Then slice 1 in. pieces of cake. Now move in another 2 in. and slice again until the entire tier is cut.

 

A Birthday is the most special occasion for a child and he or she looks forward to it for months in advance. Hence the preparation for such an occasion should be special too. Nowadays kids prefer theme parties and the maximum thought goes into a birthday cake. The sky is the limit when it comes to opting for a themed birthday cake with a never-ending selection of different styles available.

The tradition of placing candles on Birthday cakes is attributed to the early Greeks, who placed lit candles on cakes to make them glow like the moon. They believed the smoke of the candle carried their wishes and prayers to Gods. Some say the modern day use of Birthday candles originated in Germany where people used to place a large candle in the center of the cake to symbolize ‘the light of life’.

Today people place candles on Birthday cakes and make a silent wish before blowing them out. It is believed that blowing out all the candles in one breath means the wish will come true and the person will enjoy good luck in the coming year.

Nowadays birthday candles come in innovative and imaginative designs and styles. The range of candles available in the market is immense for children.

Today, the Guinness Book of World Records recognizes ‘Happy Birthday to You’ as one of the three most popular songs in English language. The other two being ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.’ The Birthday Song is popular all over the world and has been translated into dozens of languages. The English version of the song is more popular and is sung even where English is not a primary language.

Happy Birthday song is considered to be the joint work of two American sisters, Mildred Hill, a schoolteacher in Louisville Kentucky Kindergarten and Dr Patty Hill who was a Principal in the same school.

After Mildred Hill died in 1916, Dr Patty Hill took Coleman to court over the copyright issue of the song. It was proved in court that Mildred and Patty owned the melody. Therefore the family became the legal owners of the song and were entitled to royalties whenever it was sung for commercial purpose. Ownership of the song swapped hands in a multi-million dollar deal in 1989. The current copyright of the song is owned by Warner Communications. They purchased the copyright for more than $28 million dollars. The copyright of the song has been extended several times and is now not due to expire until at least 2030.It therefore follows that one cannot use the "Happy Birthday to You" lyrics for profit without paying royalties. In other words unauthorized public performances of the song are technically illegal. It means that every time you hear the song sung on TV or radio it means the royalties are being paid to the Warner Communications.