The Family Cake

I love cake. I love to make cakes. I love to look through recipe books at cakes. I do cake well.

In particular, Battenburg, Fruit, Victoria Sponge, Madeira, Chocolate, Lemon drizzle, Cherry and Almond, Caffe and Walnut and don't get me started on eccles cakes. I would struggle to choose my favourite.

This became a slight problem when choosing 'the' wedding cake, I hit a wall of, well, Cake. It would have been easy if we had had a favourite but we didn't. I was struggling to narrow down my list from all favourites to just one. In the process becoming ever so slightly irrational in my devotion to entire recipe books. In the end I decided to go with tradition which led me uncompromisingly in the direction of the fruitcake. A proud mix traditionally seeped in hours of love and care, but not Norwegian, which was the other ingredient in our cultural bowl. 

In the meantime happy to find a non edible distraction, I set to work on the topper. I had found a wonderful shop selling solid wooden peg dolls called Goose Grease, on Etsy, and decided to buy some to immortaise our family for the top of the cake. Within a week, and for a very decent price, two wooden families arrived in Denmark ready to be painted. Being me I didn't follow the instructions and jumped straight in to painting. There followed one of my favourite projects from the whole summer ( although I think next time I would not paint the faces which is what they recommended anyway on Goose Grease)

The new family needed something to sit on and we still hadn't decided on a cake. In the end, we compromised. We would indeed have a traditional fruit cake but it would be a small one, iced in white with our wooden family a top. Alongside the fruitcake we would have a tower of cupcakes, vanilla and lemon, iced with buttercream to resemble the hydrangea that were in my bouquet.

Which is where the master, Carolyn Rafferty Stewart of Stewarts Cakes came in to save the day. Carolyn works tirelessly within the ex-pat community here in Copenhagen to create countless beautiful cakes to suit all tastes and all ages. For our wedding she produced a glorious tower of cupcakes that tasted as good as they looked, as well as our beautifully elegant, white iced family fruitcake. They were to us the perfect cake's.

I do still love all cake, but there are now two that stand out all on their own due to the memories that fill their every crumb. 

My new favourites.

Thank you Carolyn.

Winter Wedding; Norway

Eleven years ago I took a trip to Vancouver for a bit of sightseeing and soul searching, just a week but long enough to have insightful conversations and forget the complications of lost loves in the company of two very wonderful people. As I took my seat on the flight home, a nine hour red eye to Heathrow, I introduced myself to the young man in the seat next to me and settled in for the flight. It turns out he had sat in the wrong seat but as fate would have it, he stayed put and we talked for the entire flight home. Many twists and turns and countries later we still share our lives together but now with the added company of our three children.

Last weekend we got to witness the culmination of another decade long relationship in a beautiful marriage ceremony on the edges of Oslo. The location was an intricately carved church nestled in the hills next to the famous ski jump at Holmekollen. In the coldest of settings on the clearest of days we entered the church and immediately felt all the warmth that came from both the wooden building as well as the happy congregation.

It is always a special moment when the bride enters the church to take her final few steps as a single woman and this was no different, she looked stunning in her dress. Preceded by her adorable little daughter the bride walked to the front of the church led by her exceedingly proud father. The vicar was funny and thoughtful and soon pronounced the happy couple to be man and wife, he followed the grand moment up with a rendition of Amazing Grace on his saxophone which was definitely a first for me.

The tradition for weddings in Norway is for a long sit down dinner which is interspersed with any speeches by those closest to the couple. A toastmaster leads the evening and welcomes guests to the reception, on this occasion it was the brides brother. Leading the celebrations the bride's father gave a heartwarming speech and magnificent song that had us laughing and wiping a tear, sometimes simultaneously. Best girlfriends had written a song that they performed, the best man made a speech and I think dinner lasted for at least four hours as we sat and laughed and shared fond moments of the couple in question. Dinner led to dancing and cakes which in turn late into the night led to hot dogs being served.

We awoke in the morning and took a stroll through the city to the Vigeland Sculpture Park. The work of Gustav Vigeland the sculpture park contains 212 statues cast in bronze, Human Condition is their title hence the proliferation of naked characters lining the walk way.

My favourite was the fountain near the top of the hill which was formed by giant men holding aloft a large bowl that would be flowing with water were it not quite so freezing cold. The centerpiece of the park is the monolith, fourteen years in the making and displaying a hundred and twenty one bodies all intertwined, the monolith reaches for the skies. I have to say I was very impressed by the crowds of tourists already at the park on a Sunday morning in the cold. By then my feet were no longer pliable and needing to head to the airport we returned to the hotel to collect our belongings.

These days the person I sit next to on an aeroplane is still the same man I met by chance so many years ago in Vancouver. Actually that isn't always true, normally we sandwich between us three wriggly bored children needing entertainment and frequent trips to the toilet so it was nice for a change to be able to sit together!

Dave and Hilde we both wish you a lifetime of happiness.