Creation of a Country Cupboard Wedding Cake

Go behind the scenes at Long Lake’s Country Cupboard Cake + Café as a wedding cake springs to life from initial sketches to finished product.

By: Molly Kentala Broman | From the issue: February 2012

Photo: Emily J. Davis

The Country Cupboard Cake + Café is always humming with activity, but none more so than when there are wedding cakes to be made. Owner April Wysocki and her two-woman baking team of daughter-in-law Jessica Wysocki and Michelle Donovan are the masterminds behind each and every cake the Long Lake bakery produces. While April meets with the couples to determine their confectionary concept, all three have a hand in every step of the process.

April has been a baker for 25 years, and she opened the Country Cupboard in 1996. Jessica came on board 13 years ago and Donovan has been part of the team for nearly two years. (She has a baking certificate from Minneapolis Community & Technical College.) Despite their different backgrounds, the three women have an easy camaraderie between them. When they’re all in the kitchen together, “it’s usually pretty loud in here,” laughs Donovan.

Baking steps:

1. Using an industrial mixer, Donovan adds almond extract to the batter. Depending on what type of cake she’s trying to create, the ratio of butter to eggs is what changes. For a white cake, she uses egg whites while a yellow cake contains the whole egg and more butter.

2. Before the batter hits the pans, each is coated liberally with shortening and flour to prevent any batter from sticking to the sides. Of all of the ingredients the Country Cupboard goes through, April says they use the most of the eggs, butter and powdered sugar.

3. For this cake, the batter is poured into 6”, 10” and 14” round pans. A cake of this size yields 110 servings, which includes eating the top tier. Save the top for your first anniversary and you’d get 100 servings.

4. Jessica fires up the oven—typically set around 325 degrees—and places the cake pans inside. A three-tiered cake such as this one takes up to 60 minutes to fully bake all of the tiers, then 60–90+ minutes for the layers to cool completely, both in and out of the pans.

Jessica Wysocki fires up the oven