Amish Wedding Cake Revisited

Wedding season is ramping up in Amish settlements about now. The weather is turning nice and you see a huge spike in the number of weddings taking place in northern Amish settlements beginning in May and peaking in June.  In some of the more southern Amish settlements wedding season is later, after the harvest and heat of summer.  Back in January I posted a photo of a wedding cake made by Miriam Miller, an Amish woman in Fredonia, Pennsylvania.  I was able to obtain a much sharper photo of that same cake that I wanted to share with you all.  This photo is really is able to capture the cake in all its beauty.  Like most things Amish, you'll see variations from place to place.  Fredonia is not the most conservative Amish community so this cake is a little splashier in color and form than just a plain-frosted cake that you might find in other settlements.  But the cake still is one that I'd consider very traditional.

I'll re-run some of the additional info from my January post here as context:  Fredonia was one of the many Amish settlements we visited in writing Amish Cooks Across America (to be released late 2012 or early 2013) and Miriam and her mother were so hospitable, warm, and friendly.  They were just a delight. I write more about Miriam in our book, but she’s an accomplished painter, school-teacher, gardener, baker, and one of her other sought-after skills: wedding cakes.    Lots of labor goes into such a cake.  This would be the main wedding cake , but here would also be “side cakes” served around the main cake so all guests and helpers could have a piece.  Note the intricate frosting designs?  I couldn’t make a cake like this, but I could sure eat one:)  

I'll post some more stuff about Amish weddings in the days ahead.