My eldest godchild got married three weeks ago. Zelly likes to insist that she is my only godchild, no matter how her siblings might feel regarding the matter or what they choose to call me. I can’t argue this point, because she’s the only person—alive or dead—on whose behalf I have officially rejected Satan. She’s also an Ivy League law graduate, which means arguing with her takes more skill than I possess and more energy than I am currently able to muster.
There’s very little I would not do for the kid, so when her mother—my oldest friend in the world—sent me a text less than 48 hours before The Big Day asking how would I feel about making Zelly’s wedding cake, I couldn’t say no.
But more on that in a minute.
The wedding was beautiful. Probably too beautiful. Both brides were gorgeous. Zelly slayed in a dark blue Saville Row suit, and her now-wife Eli caused several stifled-but-clearly-audible gasps as she made her way down the aisle in one of the most gorgeously understated gowns I’ve ever laid eyes on.
The ceremony took place in the ballroom of the Filoli mansion, where Joe Biden and Xi Jinping chatted about the perils of AI and fentanyl not so long ago; the cocktail hour was enjoyed in the formal gardens overlooking the reflecting pool where the two Mrs. Carringtons, Crystal and Alexis, once staged the most famous (and wettest) catfight in nighttime soap opera history; and the dinner was so uniformly delicious that nobody seemed to care that meat was missing from the menu.
And dessert? Freshly made little doughnuts balls with crunchy caramel tops, which brought to mind a kind of deconstructed croquembouche. Everyone (including myself) was so pleased to replace the traditional wedding cake with these tumescent puffs of fried batter served with exotic fruit dipping sauces, that it was decided to order a small one from Whole Foods to cut ceremonially, but apparently they no longer do special orders, even when planned well in advance. Because, if you didn’t know already, Jeff Bezos is a dick.
Which is why I got a text from my friend Shannon at 8:17pm on the Thursday night before the Saturday afternoon wedding. The one I said “yes” to, even though I had sworn I would never make another wedding cake for anyone ever again, because I still have PTSD from the last one I made more than twenty years ago.
But that, Dear Reader, is a story for another time.
It wasn’t as though I had to make a wedding cake big enough to feed one hundred and fifty people. Shannon had clearly stated it would just be a tiny little cake for Zelly and Eli to slice at the reception, but the thought of making it still felt like rusty bolt to the chest. I am not a keen baker. I’m not that into cake. I live alone. Could I even remember the last time I’d baked one?
Yes, I could.
It was for Zelly’s 13th birthday. A Frankenstein’s monster of a gâteau conceived in the fevered brain of a freshly-minted teenager. Instead of red velvet cake, which was a thing at that time, she wanted purple velvet cake. But not just any purple velvet cake—a purple velvet ice cream cake with cream cheese frosting, stuffed with neon green pistachio ice cream, and topped with cake pops, which were unfortunately also a thing among the trendy Tween Set of of the mid-Obama era. It was a cake for which not enough room was made in the freezer, which resulted in its mutilation when trying to close the door.
And so I found myself on a train from San Francisco with my youngest (not religiously sanctioned) godchild, returning to the scene of that birthday cake crime, to bake for another one of Zelly’s milestones in life.
I find baking in my own kitchen challenging enough. Baking in someone else’s kitchen amid the likely chaos of a house full of people getting ready for a wedding requires a level of concentration I typically lack. But Shannon had a handle on everything. Zelly and Eli were wisely set up in a hotel, which moved most of the frenetic activity away from the house. She had also sent me links to the exact recipes for both the vanilla sheet cake and butter cream frosting that Zelly favored, and had all of the ingredients ready for me to use. In fact, Mary Pat (Shannon’s mother) and I had the entire house to ourselves for a couple of quiet hours while everybody else was at the wedding rehearsal, allowing me just enough time to catch up on the family gossip, bake the cake, let it cool, and hide it in the garage from my middle (unofficial) godchild, who possesses many fine qualities, but also happens to be a carb-seeking missile on legs from whom no baked good is safe when left unattended or unconcealed.
The evening was spent at the rehearsal dinner, where cochinita pibil and mescal were consumed in healthy doses to assuage my cake-related anxiety.
The morning of the wedding, I was once again pleasantly surprised by the calmness of the house and unfettered access to the kitchen. I whipped up a batch of vanilla buttercream while I sipped my coffee, and created lemon curd out of fruit picked from a nearby tree, which felt like a rather wedding-cakey thing to do, and I knew that Zelly liked it. I was also informed that she enjoyed an Amarena cherry or two, so I blotted the syrup from several of them, tossed them in sugar, and set them aside. By eleven o’clock, I’d managed to cut two (even) circles from the sheet cake, bond them together with buttercream and lemon curd, apply a fairly neat crumb coat of frosting, and get the thing into the garage refrigerator to chill for an hour.
We didn’t have to leave for the wedding until much later in the afternoon, so I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. I was proud of myself for having gotten most of the work out of the way. I poured myself second cup of coffee and set about cleaning up as I thought about how to decorate the cake.
Modest-but-tasteful was the plan.
But you know what they say about plans. If you don’t, you should probably look it up.
I don’t recall the exact time Shannon asked me for the cake. All I remember is that it felt like hours before I thought it would be needed. When it was explained to me that she had to drive it over to Filoli sooner than later, I engaged in what I can only describe as “panic piping”. There was no time for a tidy second coat of frosting or scrolling or writing or anything pretty. It was just me, hastily squeezing swirls of buttercream unevenly on top of the crumb coat, and dropping sugared cherries in the middle of each before I had to put it in a box and say my goodbyes.
I was very embarrassed by how it looked, which sent me into a free fall of worry. What if it was too ugly to serve? It probably tasted horrible. What if it was so dry the newlyweds choked to death in front of their guests? I could practically hear Piper Laurie warning that everyone would laugh at me because I was a terrible baker who was about ruin his goddaughter’s wedding.
I was convinced it was the worst thing I had ever baked in my life, even though Zelly’s father Craig could have pointed out that the actual worst thing I’d ever baked was a spinach roulade which, after slicing, had been referred to as my “spirals of shame.”
As a food writer who takes pains to test his recipes and make certain they’re worth making, I have a terrible fear of putting forth anything I’m not wholly satisfied with. A couple of James Beard nominations only intensified that fear. It may be pointless or stupid or both, but it’s real and it prompted me to say to Shannon as I handed her the box, “Don’t tell anyone I made this.”
I think the entire wedding party already knew I’d made the cake, so it was a pointless slice of drama no one needed, especially the mother of the bride, who had about a hundred other things to deal with.
With the fate of the cake now literally out of my hands and into someone else’s, I knew I’d been an overanxious ass who should have just kept his mouth shut. Fortunately, Shannon’s been more or less overlooking my Ängstlichkeit since the 1970s.
Thankfully, I was too busy enjoying the beautiful scenery, trying not to get overly emotional/feel old witnessing my goddaughter enter into the holy bonds of matrimony, drinking cocktails, and catching up with old friends to think too much about how my contribution might be the one imperfect thing at an otherwise perfect wedding. In fact, I managed to forget about it entirely until the DJ announced it was time to watch the brides cut the wedding cake.
I’d been hiding near the middle of the outdoor dance floor, but Zelly spotted me and pulled me to the front by my forearm so I could witness them do it without an obstructed view. They held the knife together, made two downward slices, then fed each other, exactly like newlyweds do. People applauded. It was a small moment, but a lovely one.
No one pointed at the cake and screamed. Neither of the brides choked to death. I was not escorted from the premises or publicly shunned.
As the DJ restarted the music and guests resumed their dancing, Zelly gave me a hug and said something very much like, “Thanks, Godfather Michael! Everything about the cake was great, except for the part where I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone who made it.”
I was suddenly glad I was able to contribute something of value to the occasion. It made me happy to know that she was happy. And when she left to go back to the festivities, I found myself saying quietly, but out loud and to myself:
“I am suuuuuuch a dick.”
Because I had made the cake about me.
The next morning was spent recovering from the night before and preparing for another party later that afternoon. Just the family and a few close friends. Catered Mediterranean food in the dining room, Shannon’s usual offerings on the kitchen counter: tortilla chips, salsa, and lots of homemade guacamole, and a cheeseboard with various fancy crackers. We drank wine and beer and mingled and, at some point, Shannon pulled out the wedding cake and put it on the counter, along with the unused bits of cake, buttercream, and lemon curd.
“Have you even tried the cake?” she asked me. I had not, so I cut a small slice.
“Not bad at all!” I said, a bit surprised. “It tastes just like a wedding cake.” It was an intentionally neutral comment, neither praising nor condemning my own work. It did, in fact, taste exactly like a wedding cake. I wasted too much energy worrying about whether or not it would be good enough, when that probably wasn’t even the point.
A cake was needed and I made it. Shannon asked for help and I gave it. It’s what friends do. I should not have thrown my baking anxieties into the cake mix. We’re all called upon to do things we may not want to do because we feel unprepared or unready to meet the moment. But we do them anyway because we love the people we do these things for and to not do them would be terrible.
The point is to show up. And, in my case, maybe shut up.
The cake disappeared in minutes. So did the scraps. The lemon curd had migrated just south of the cheese board.
“Hey Godfather Michael, you have got to try this,” my youngest godson Joe said with a small about of urgency. He handed me a cracker with goat cheese spread upon it and a small dollop of lemon curd.
“Shit, that’s really good,” I said, a bit surprised. A few more people tried it and agreed.
Shannon’s Auntie Frankie took a small spoonful of curd from the container and tried it on its own. “This might be the best lemon curd I’ve ever tasted,” she said, which I considered high praise coming from a woman who was both Canadian and the first person to legally offer me a drink.
I was very pleased.
“Maybe I’m not so shit at this cooking thing, after all,” I thought.
And then I loaded up another cracker with goat cheese and lemon curd, and poured myself another glass of wine.
*I have recently discovered that the reflecting pool at Filoli was not the one used in the famous Dynasty catfight. Rather, it was rebuilt and modified on a Hollywood set and made to look like it.
Beat eggs, not yourself.
it was the best cake we could’ve asked for :)