Buttons are fastened tightly on the back, smooth white pleats descend down the front, and lace lines the bodice of the wedding dress. All wedding dresses are special, but this one is quite different—it is also a heavenly-tasting cake. The cake is a bust that stands about two feet tall and rests on a silver plate for display at Preston’s Candy Shop in Burlingame. The traditional cake decorations of ribbons and roses for Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, and other celebrations are now being replaced with creative, unique, and sometimes outrageous styles designed especially for the person receiving the cake.

Diane Rinella, a petite, bouncy woman with cornflower-blue streaks in her long dark hair, talks passionately about her cake business, Bewitching Elegance, and being a professional cake decorator. The creator of the extravagant wedding dress-cake describes her blessed situation—working out of the candy store baking cakes that support the dreams and imagination of her customers.

Her next big project is to make a wedding cake for a couple in the shape of a Star Wars destroyer.

“I have blocked out a whole week to work on it,” says Rinella. “Carving the cake, shaping the fondant, and adding the tiny details will take quite some time.” But Rinella is ready for the challenge. “I am determined to get this!” she exclaims enthusiastically.

Recent reality shows like the Food Network’s Wedding Cake Challenge and Ace of Cakes have brought the crazy, extreme, and incredibly skillful world of cake decorating to the masses. For example, on Ace of Cakes, Duff Goldman, owner of Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, is dubbed the bad boy of cake decorating. He and his crew have created exact models of the mask of King Tut, a gumball machine, a Campbell’s tomato soup can, and have used everything from power tools to blow torches to make the perfect cake.
But the funny man with the cackling laugh was not the first baker to go crazy on a cake.

Colette Peters is an international star when it comes to designing wedding cakes. Peters has baked for Whoopi Goldberg, Sting, Al Pacino, Prince Pavlos of Greece, and many other celebrities. She has done traditional wedding cakes with huge tiers and flowers and cakes adorned with less conventional decorations such as snowmen. There is also the Topsy Turvy cake, named for the way it leans and tilts to one side.

“To me, that cake she created started a revolution,” says Rinella, who studied with Peters during a two-week class at the Wilton School in Illinois. “It made people look at things differently and go ‘I don’t need tradition.’ Here’s a three tier traditional cake, but there’s nothing traditional about it at all.” While Peters explained that she can’t take credit for inventing the Topsy Turvy cake, Rinella hadn’t seen one before the class.

The history of wedding cakes and their evolution has no exact origin. Some sources say that the wedding cake originated in ancient Rome where it was customary for the groom to break a loaf of bread over the bride’s head as a symbol of fertility. In the seventeenth century the tradition changed and the groom would be presented with a fruitcake. Fruitcake was originally used for weddings until the invention of more efficient ovens and the use of fine white flour and baking powder instead of yeast. Centuries later, wedding cakes are adorned with white frosting, lemon filling, lace decorations with handmade flowers, and even silver paper to add flare.

It is these types of cakes that Rinella watched her mom make when she was growing up.

“At the time, that was something fancy, whereas nowadays people say ‘that’s so cheesy, where did you get that, I am never going there again,’ ” says Rinella about the cakes from the 1940s. “Perception has changed. Cakes and styles have changed.”

Today, weddings are a huge industry. The Wedding Report estimates that in 2008, 2.3 million couples will marry and spend an average of $14 thousand. That is almost $35 billion. The average price of a wedding cake is $546. Although the cakes are extremely beautiful, some people have a hard time spending that kind of money. After all, it’s just a cake, right?

“Sometimes people just need to think outside the box and not be so afraid of the price tag,” says Rinella.

With her, it’s really about creating that perfect cake. “I got the bag in my hand. It may take me an extra ten minutes to add something that’s really pretty that is going to change the entire look of the cake and not cost you anymore.” Extravagant changes or additions like hand painted flowers might be extra, but Rinella prides herself on letting her customers know every step of the way what the price will look like. “I think people are used to vendors going, ‘ok we can do this or that,’ and getting the bill in the end and getting shocked.”

Time is also a factor in a wedding cake price tag. Even with a store bought box, a simple cake can take up to an hour to make, and that doesn’t include any major decorating. For Rinella and other bakers, cakes can take anywhere from six to ten hours just for decorating alone.

“People don’t realize that it is a process,” says Caprice DeAngelis, who is studying to become a wedding planner. “They are usually made the day before, but ordered months in advance.”

Rinella feels that there is a misconception that wedding cakes are a cheap commodity.

“Your brain automatically goes to when they made a cake or when their mom made a cake. They went to the store, bought a box of Betty Crocker for a dollar on sale. They add a couple of eggs, threw it together, grabbed a can of frosting off the shelf for another dollar and then went on. You’re looking at three dollars to make a cake, but you’re using boxes of ingredients with chemicals and they don’t taste good.”

For professional cakes, Rinella buys high quality flour and sugar and makes everything from scratch. For her gluten-free cakes, she will go so far as to not eat bread the day she is baking the cake so as not to get the littlest speck of wheat in the mix.

For Rinella, the most rewarding cakes are the ones that are extensions of her clients. For instance, one customer came into Bewitching Elegance to discuss a cake design for her daughter who was turning sixteen. The daughter loved sewing and making corsets, so Rinella designed a corset cake made of all the girl’s favorite colors and added small details like a spool and thread and even a tomato pincushion.
“The more people come in and tell me about themselves and show me what they like, the better their cake is going to be,” says Rinella. “My best work comes from when people tell me ‘this is what I like, make something that works for me.’”

It’s hard to imagine between the Topsy Turvy cakes, gumball machine cakes, and Star Wars-themed cakes what professional cake decorators will think up next.

“I don’t think we are going back to the traditional ones, that’s for sure,” laughs Rinella, referring to the cakes from her mother’s generation. “I think we are going to see more shapes and more craziness!”