Venture into fine wedding cakes results in the perfect union

12:13 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 23, 2004

BY GAIL CIAMPA
Journal Food Editor

Journal photo / Bill Murphy Special touches turn wedding cakes into delicate treasures. This mini cake is one option for brides.

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EAST GREENWICH -- Scrumptions makes great butter cookies, cheesecakes and fruit tarts for everyday treats and sells cakes for special occasions such as birthdays and baby showers.

While that might sound like basic bakery stuff, this store in the spot locally known as Benny's plaza is a serious pastry shop.

A large corner is set aside for brides. There you'll find a cafe table at which to sit and revel in the 60-plus wedding cakes on display all around. On the wall hang wedding photos, sans cakes, from family and customers alike. The biggest picture, and biggest cake, belong to a former Miss Rhode Island USA, Lynda Michael, from her 1998 wedding to Giulio Diamante.

Scrumptions is so big into the wedding cake business that owner Dana DelBonis has set up a studio in Newport so those planning weddings there won't have far to travel for their cake selections.

Why would anyone travel to East Greenwich from Aquidneck Island for a cake, you ask? Because brides today want their weddings to shine, right down to dessert. And these are some kind of cakes.

It isn't only brides who travel. DelBonis and her husband, Tom, will also deliver, for a price, as far as Vermont, for example, or meet a bridal parent coming from Pennsylvania, say, halfway.

DelBonis's work was featured two years ago in a book by Kate Manchester called The Perfect Wedding Cake (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), and that is what they are. They are reminiscent of those done by wedding-cake diva Sylvia Weinstock of New York, who is has been called "the Leonardo da Vinci of cakes."

"Her cakes are gorgeous, creative and taste good," said Marybeth Hunte, a sales manager and event supervisor at Blackstone Caterers of Newport.

Hunte sees a lot of wedding cakes in her job. She puts Scrumptions in the top tier of pastry chefs, along with Sweet Sophistications of Bristol and Confections of Fall River.

The cakes aren't just decorated with flowers made of frosting. They are designed, embossed, miniaturized, colorized, piped, themed, accented with sugar posies or butterflies, or dotted with decorative droplets.

Some cakes are finished with chocolate ganache -- a blend of heavy cream and melted chocolate that shines -- or the tasty buttercream made with sweet butter.

The most fabulous are finished with rolled fondant, a sugar-paste icing that has the consistency of a dough. It's rolled out with rolling pin and draped over a cake to create a smooth, plasterlike surface for decorating.

They taste as good as they look, and in fact, Del Bonis will always tell you that taste is where it all starts.

"Wedding cakes have literally grown and grown and grown in looks, but they have to taste good, too," she said.

Brides, usually with their mother or groom, come for a sampling of the layer-cake flavors with fillings ranging from lemon curd to hazelnut ganache. Then they look over portfolios to get design ideas. If the wedding has a theme, such as the ocean, it usually falls together quite easily.

Del Bonis was an English teacher in Warwick before she married Tom and stayed home to raise daughters MaryAnn and Elisa.

"I got bored and started reading cookbooks," she said. That's when she started baking wedding cakes in her kitchen.

That led to a job baking for City Lights, a Providence restaurant and caterer. In 1980, she opened a small store in North Kingstown, which grew until she opened at her East Greenwich spot in 1987.

She didn't fear going out on her own. "I always felt if I used good quality ingredients, then I'd do OK," she said.

Journal photo / Bill Murphy A four-tiered cake, decorated with lace and bows, at Scrumptions in East Greenwich.

So she has, with a staff of eight and her husband not only driving wedding cakes to the event but also delivering his share of first-anniversary cakes. Del Bonis doesn't want anyone freezing a cake for a year. She'd rather make them a new one for their special day, and that is her gift that comes with every wedding cake.

While cake prices start at $4.25 a slice, the cost per cake can climb pretty high depending on ingredients and style.

The most expensive wedding cake Del Bonis has done cost $3,000. It was a multi-tiered chocolate cake with raspberry mousse served on a raised silver base and decorated with a cascade of pastillage flowers made of sugar. It served more than 400 guests.

That wasn't the most expensive wedding-cake bill she's had. That would go to the bride who ordered 200 mini wedding cakes at $25 each for her guests. They were multi-tiered, with layers of vanilla cake with chocolate mousse.

Mini cakes generally range from $11 to $20 each. They are still popular but will never surprass the single, dramatic tiered cake, she said.

Scrumptions makes cakes for some 250 weddings a year, but has had years when it did 300.

But a pastry shop still doesn't live by weddings alone. Scrumptions' full line of pastry and cookies (they ship) includes a gluten-free flourless chocolate dessert.

Details: Scrumptions, 5600 Post Rd., East Greenwich, (401) 884-0844, www.scrumptions.com.