Crack-free Marzipan

I think by this point we’ve all see the jaw-dropping videos of the cake picnic tour. This year’s Super Bowl-sized San Francisco cake picnic broke the internet IMO (or at least the baking side of the internet, but isn’t that all that matters).

November of last year I had the honor and the privilege to attend New York’s first cake picnic. For reminders, I supersized my “stolen” funfetti cake into a towering, titanic 3-tier behemoth, adorned with chrysanthemums, sprinkle cookies, and—of course—toasted Swiss meringue. That was actually the first time I had ever made a tiered cake of any sort(!). With a man’s sense of confidence that all would go well, I placed my three tiers on cake rounds, hammered in some dowels, teetered the tiers on top of one another, hopped in an uber with the cake, and scurried off to Soho for the event.

I had no idea what to expect. I don’t think human brains have evolved to picture what 150 cakes lined up side-by-side actually looks like. It was jaw-dropping to say the least. And the event was a blur. My adrenaline I don’t think has ever been higher (especially after the traumatic uber ride with my cake). I barely remember even eating the cakes, let alone talking to anyone.

So when the founder of cake picnic Elisa | saltedrye (a hero in my eyes) said she was coming to New York in early June, my friend Christine and I scrambled together our cake-artist friends to put together the apartment cafè: cake picnic. Elisa became our guest of honor, a guest of honor we forced to fly with a homemade cake across the country (she lives in SF). No cake, no entry. Her rule, not mine.

We had 8 incredible cakes (recipe below):

• me - matcha mango princess cake
• Elisa | saltedrye - mulberry cake with vanilla pastry cream filling (flown in from San Francisco!)
• Christine - sourdough cinnamon roll tiered cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting
• Dana King - 20 layer peach russian honey cake
• Maya (@dolcetta.baking) - black and white cookie tiered cake
• Erika - strawberry battenberg cake
• Deepika (@thedeeperlivingeats) - chocolate cake with pistachio tiramisu filling and white chocoalte frosting
• Lauren (@atinykitchennyc) - stone fruit olive oil cake

Seeing all the cakes lined up on my counter made my month. Beforehand we had barely coordinated flavors or aesthetics. So I was shook to see such an evenly distributed array of colors: 2 green, 1 blue, 1 orange, 2 pink, 1 black & white, 1 brown. It looked like a buffet of Lucky Charms marshmallows blown up in scale.

The dedication was unreal, too. Dana aligned what looked like 1000 perfectly cut nectarine slices into a rosette for the top of her Russian honey cake. Erika created a circular Battenberg cake, a checkerboard pattern revealed upon slicing into her strawberry-scented cake layers. Lauren brought out her spray gun. Christine proofed her sourdough cinnamon rolls for 8 hours. And of course, the biggest honor to Elisa for flying a layer cake (filled with pastry cream!) across the entire contiguous United States.

If I were to hand out my top three cakes it would probably be:

1. Maya’s black and white cookie cake
2. Deepika’s chocolate pistachio tiramisu cake
3. Christine’s sourdough cinnamon roll cake

But if you asked any other attendee, I think they would have a completely different ranking. All the cakes were fantastic. Interesting, too, upon eating my cake leftovers over several days, I noticed most of the cakes developing in flavor and richness, especially my cake and the honey cake. If you’d like to create my matcha mango Swedish princess cake, the recipe is below, along with all the recipe components.

Cheers to cake,

Ryan