Royal cake takes the biscuit...
Secrecy and security surrounding the alternative wedding cake is, discovers Iain Hollingshead
On Monday it was revealed that, in addition to an official fruitcake created by Fiona Cairns, McVitie’s has been commissioned to make a chocolate fridge cake from Rich Tea biscuits. A childhood favourite of the Prince’s, this “groom cake” – a Victorian tradition now almost obsolete here but still popular in America – will contain nearly 40lb of chocolate and 1,700 biscuits: more than enough to feed 600 guests at the canapé reception, especially now that John Prescott is no longer deputy prime minister.
So far, so open. But a visit to McVitie’s factory reveals the lengths to which it is going to protect its cake – and recipe.
Paul Courtney, a jovial, genial 46-year-old from West Yorkshire, has the enviable job title of “cake design and development head chef”. A former pastry chef, who trained at the Savoy and worked in a number of restaurants before marrying (he had a more traditional fruit cake at his wedding), starting a family and looking for a less hectic career, he is honoured, and a little bit nervous. But trying to tease information about his cake is harder than getting an interview with Thomas Pynchon.
What will it look like? Can’t tell you. How big will it be? Can’t tell you. Where does the chocolate come from? Can’t tell you. Will it be possible to eat it with a fork? Probably. Where will it be made? Can’t tell you: it’s a security risk. Will it be tiered? Maybe. Maybe not.
Courtney received the phone call from a director of McVitie’s one Friday evening in January. “You’ll never guess what…” he started. Courtney, however, already had an inkling. In 2007 he’d helped with the baking of the official cake (fruitcake and marzipan) for the diamond wedding anniversary of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. McVitie’s also baked the cake for the marriage of George V to Queen Mary back in 1893, and for the Queen’s wedding in 1947 (it was 9ft tall and 4ft in diameter).
That January phone-call led to two visits to Buckingham Palace, and one to Clarence House, where Courtney met the royal pastry chef and the royal head chef. “For a member of Joe Public like me, it was very exciting,” he says.
The brief was fairly broad – the dark chocolate could come from anywhere – but it specified that they had to use Rich Tea biscuits (somewhat to Courtney’s surprise, as this sort of cake is more often made with digestives, HobNobs or even, according to a letter to The Daily Telegraph this week, with stale Red Cross biscuits sent to PoWs during the Second World War).
“Rich Tea are perhaps not the most glamorous biscuits in the world,” says Courtney. “And now they are taking a starring role in the royal wedding. But they’re quite crisp compared to a digestive, and so they’ll contrast well with the softness of the chocolate.”
Courtney produced a shortlist of four or five different recipes (“Okay,” he relents, “I can tell you that the chocolate we considered came from Ghana, the Ivory Coast, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Madagascar, but I won’t tell you which one they went for” – perhaps in case it causes a diplomatic incident and William Hague has to expel some more people).
Courtney is not sure if the couple themselves tasted the samples (although one imagines that if, as reported this week, Kate wants to put on weight to fill out her dress, this would have been as good a way as any). The Palace duly chose their favourite (“not the one I expected”) and let McVitie’s know.
The real fun, however, starts now with the security measures around the cake(s). Courtney is actually making “at least two” in case something goes wrong. “You can’t just say, sorry, we don’t have it if, God forbid, there is a accident en route to London,” he says.
So there will be two cakes? “There will be at least two,” he says. Three cakes, then? “At least two,” he repeats, resolutely on message. And then he gives the game away slightly by saying that the one which isn’t used will probably end up displayed in head office.
Ten people from McVitie’s will be involved, although Courtney promises to be “standing at the front, doing as much as I can, blocking out the light”. There has been no shortage of offers from others on the factory floor to help with the tasting. While in reception, the security guard amuses himself putting off less intrepid journalists by telling them he hasn’t heard of any royal wedding.
After the first stage of the cakes is finished they will be sent away to a laboratory to be analysed and tested for yeast or mould (or, presumably, poison, in case an anarchist has snuck into the factory).
“If someone nicked the cakes, that would be a tragedy,” says Courtney, displaying his culinary skills in a room which may, or may not, be used for making the cakes. “They will be locked away under several keys in any case. But if someone did something to them after they’ve been tested, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. At that stage, the cakes might have bodyguards. Or maybe just me, sleeping next to them.”
You certainly wouldn’t want to mess with Courtney. Or get between him and his cakes. Yet despite his confidence in being able to deliver what the couple wants, he admits, rather like the groom himself, to a few sleepless nights of late. “If you’d told me 12 years ago when I started here that I’d be doing this, I would never have believed you. It’s a whirlwind. My five minutes of fame.”
The cake, however, isn’t technically difficult to make, especially compared to a fruit cake, as there’s no baking involved – just some time in the fridge. And he’s confident of being able to deliver what they want.
They will be made about a week before (“You want it to be as fresh as possible, without the biscuits having a chance to soften”) and then taken down to London by a man in a van – although one hopes that they’ve thought of sending out a few decoys as well. Courtney will accompany them, “never letting them out of my sight”.
Once there he’ll decorate one with “contemporary, modern and elegant chocolate display work” and return home to watch the wedding on television, with a glass of something and maybe, he admits with a smile, a cheeky slice of history he’s kept back for himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment