fbpx

Baker Whips Up Cakes for the Kosher

Vicki Hulbert wants to change kosher weddings: She would like people to start thinking about wedding cakes a little more seriously.
[additional-authors]
July 8, 2004

Vicki Hulbert wants to change kosher weddings: She would like people to start thinking about wedding cakes a little more seriously.

Wedding cakes — the real, one-of-a-kind, no-holds-barred, bedecked in sugar flowers, encircled with candy ribbons, multitiered, frosted extravaganzas — have rarely been a must-have-item at kosher weddings. They are very expensive, starting at $4 or $5 a slice. Kosher consumers were just as happy with no cake or a faux wedding cake — plastic tiers for display but sliced sheet cake to eat.

Hulbert wants to change all that.

Her wedding cake company, Bridal Sweets Cakes, recently acquired kosher certification. While most of Hulbert’s business is dairy cakes, frosted with buttercream made of real butter and filled with ganaches made of real cream, she recently branched out into pareve (neither meat nor dairy) cakes that can be served at a kosher wedding with a meat meal.

“You have the same problem that you have in the kosher market that you have in the secular market: That wedding cakes taste bad, and pareve cakes taste worse,” said Hulbert, who was a graphic designer before she started baking professionally. “So for the pareve recipes, I did a lot of product development and a lot of experimenting, because I didn’t want someone to have a slice of pareve cake and say, ‘This is pareve cake.’ It has to taste like a regular product.”

To accomplish this, Hulbert made adjustments to her cake, filling and frosting recipes to make up for the fact that even the best margarine will never be butter, and the best pareve whip will never be cream. Her pareve Italian meringue buttercream has the addition of cocoa butter, which adds more body to the frosting, her pareve devil’s food cake substitutes nondairy creamer and vinegar for buttermilk and instead of cream in the ganache filling, Hulbert uses Mocha Mix.

“If you use a really good chocolate, then you can’t tell the difference,” she said.

Hulbert prides herself on using only the best quality, most natural ingredients, which is why she won’t use fake whipped cream and will only use fresh, seasonal fruit to decorate cakes. Unlike other wedding cake maestros, like Sylvia Weinstock in New York, who make cakes for people all over the country, Hulbert only works for Southern California clients, because she wants to keep her cakes as fresh as possible.

But even with such gastronomic pleasures as pareve dark-chocolate cake with dulce de leche filling and raspberry ganache or lemon cake with wild-strawberry filling, all covered with rolled fondant and decorated to look like they belong in Martha Stewart Weddings, Hulbert still finds that the kosher community is slow to warm up to the idea.

“I don’t think the Orthodox community is quite in the frame of mind yet that having a nice cake or good cake is something they expect,” Hulbert said “There is a little bit of re-education that has to go on. But there is no reason that a kosher client can’t have a fabulous cake and the whole presentation.”

For more information on Bridal Sweets Cakes go to www.bridalsweetscakes.comor call (310) 373-1185.

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Print Issue: Got College? | Mar 29, 2024

With the alarming rise in antisemitism across many college campuses, choosing where to apply has become more complicated for Jewish high school seniors. Some are even looking at Israel.

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.