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Wedding : A slice of life

Cultures around the world prepare special delicacies for the special day

By Liza Zimmerman

Wedding cakes can be as innocuous as a sliver of dried out yellow stuff topped by a toothache-inducing or as sumptuous as a Martha Stewart creation, complete with real flowers. They're a matter of personal taste and cultural traditions, a fitting piece de resistance on the wedding day that should be as pretty as the bride and taste as good as it looks.

Since melting pot is the Garden State's middle name, New Jersey, with its numerous and vibrant ethnic communities, has many distinctive ways to celebrate with . The fruits of these culinary legacies can be seen in some of the nuptial traditions of five New Jersey ethnic communities. Wedding sweets and rituals - in Newark's Portuguese community, Hoboken's Italian neighborhood, Jersey City's Philippine enclave, Kearny's Scottish highlands and Edison's Indian area - offer a sociological and archaeological glimpse into the gastronomic life and traditions of these communities. Many a culture also prefers to celebrate its festive moments with sweets, those sometimes delectable - sometimes unctuous - goodies such as , rice cakes or teeny-tiny .

Portuguese wedding cakes, for example, tend to be fairly simple. "Pao de lo, a , is the base of most Portuguese wedding cakes," explained Joaquin Santos Jr., a Portuguese-American owner of Newark's Portuguese Pavilion restaurant.

"It's like an , but a lot more yellow and it has got a spongy texture. It's made of eggs, milk and sugar and comes out with a nice brown crust," added Helena Coutinho, a Portuguese-American pharmacist who was married in 1993.

The icing may be a glaze made of egg whites and caramelized sugar, according to Clara Marques Albuquerque, a teacher from Viseu in northern Portugal. This thin layer of icing, made by heating white sugar until it melts, is hard and very sugary, explained Helena Nunes, the Portuguese-American owner of the Casa de Presentes Portuguese gift shop in Newark. It is also so delicate that it can only be made the day before the wedding. Provided the cake survives the night, the decorations are likely to be quite simple, "no ornaments, just flowers," said Santos. "And no fountains."

For Portuguese, however, there are many other ways to celebrate a marriage. "Rice pudding with cinnamon on top is something that is served at every Portuguese wedding, and mine was no exception," said Coutinho. Her mother, Maria, is the owner of Coutinho's in Newark. Another popular version of this pudding, called letria, is "more lemony than rice pudding and is made with angel hair pasta instead of rice," explained Joaquin Santos Jr.

Another uniquely Portuguese passion is ovos moles, roughly translated as egg strings, which are "yolks cooked in sugared water so they come out in strings," explained Albuquerque. This unusual dessert - made from a mix of rice, egg yolks and sugar - is used to make a variety of sweets and fill and decorate wedding cakes. Its flexibility allows it to be made into strings, left as a sheet or served in individual portions.

"We had ovos moles tarts as miniature pastries at our wedding," said Coutinho. The ovos moles strings are also formed into fanciful and unusual shapes. One of the most famous shapes used for ovos moles at weddings and parties is that of a lamprey, an eel-shaped fish considered a delicacy in parts of Portugal. This ornate sculpted fish, rich in details made from ovos moles strings, is "considered a top-of-the-line dessert because you probably need 50 egg yolks and it's very expensive," said Albuquerque. Ovos moles are often shaped like seafood because the northern Portuguese region where they were created has always had abundant seafood.

At Italian weddings in Hoboken, miniature pastries are often the highlight of the dessert table. One of the most popular is the traditional , a shell-shaped with a ridged flaky exterior and cheese filling on the inside, explained Mary Valastro, the owner of Carlo's bakery in Hoboken. And , "a tart filled with vanilla cream or ricotta," is another wedding-banquet essential, added Valastro.

Angelica Cerrone, the Italian-American owner of Ristorante Gerrino in Hoboken, noted that certain nuptial sweets are seasonal, like , a pastry she compared to a French stuffed with vanilla custard or cream, which are served in March in honor of Saint Joseph. "You always have zeppole for good luck if you get married in March," she explained.

Another culinary tradition that has weathered the years and the transatlantic trip is the giving of colorful candy-covered called confetti. Modern-day Italian confetti evolved from larger, more elaborately decorated candies which, according to legend, were showered, much like the ancient grain, by young men on their fiancees to bless with them with fertility. These candies are probably the forerunners of the colorful bits of paper Americans today call confetti. Handfuls of different colored confetti, wrapped in pretty doilies or stuffed in ornate boxes, are exchanged as edible keepsakes to mark life's great occasions, like graduations, births and, of course, weddings. "You have to have confetti, they have to be white and they always have to be given in odd numbers," explained Cerrone, echoing an old wives' tale that an odd number will bring fertility upon the couple. Confetti can be given out at the bridal shower, sent to guests in little boxes before the wedding or even passed out at the event itself to welcome the guests.

"We gave our confetti out in the beginning. We had huge baskets of them fixed up in hand-knit doilies. We greeted the guests and gave them maybe 10 to each couple as a welcome," said Anna DeSario, a trader at Chase Manhattan Bank, who is from Bari, , of her 1990 wedding. The guests take them home as favors and keep the doilies as a keepsake from the wedding. This custom of giving guests sweets to take home dates to the 1800s, according to "The Book's" Dede Wilson, and was seen as a way for the bridal couple to share the celebration with their guests. She added that the tradition of giving gifts in ornate boxes may have come from the Victorians.

"For the wedding cake, Italians like to use liqueurs like rosolio or Galliano to flavor sponge cake with custard, chocolate or ricotta filling," said Valastro. DeSario remembered that hers was "a rum-flavored sponge cake filled with cannoli cream, chocolate and fresh strawberries." Cerrone, who also serves wedding cakes with raspberry filling, had a traditional at her wedding "decorated with so many fresh flowers that you couldn't see the cake."

Cerrone chose to put whipped cream icing under her flowers, while Valastro said she often uses fondant icing for a smooth look. And both confirmed that the trend is towards simple cakes, "with delicate sugar flowers, like they have always had in Italy," said Valastro.

"Tiny homemade rice cakes called puto are very popular at Philippine weddings," said Maria Tanteo, a Manila native and owner of Marra's bakery in Jersey City. "They are made of rice flour, but instead of baking it you steam it and serve it with grated coconut." Alternately, puto can be "wrapped in a banana leaf to aromatize it and served with butter and sugar on top," added Joe Deguzman, the owner of the Manila Sunset restaurant in Jersey City, who is also from Manila.

Another traditional dessert is pastillas de leche, made from fresh caramelized caribou milk, which Tanteo said are famous back home. "Here we modify the recipe by using condensed caramelized milk with egg yolks," she added. The finished pastries are "cut into small pieces and wrapped in fancy white tissue paper, which can be used as a centerpiece," she continued. The beautifully designed tissue paper is usually kept by guests as a memento.

The wedding cake itself is likely to be mocha-flavored at a Philippine wedding. "It's by far the most popular," said Emma Alcantara, an owner of the Eden Philippine restaurant in Jersey City, who is from the town of Batangas near Manila. "I had it at my wedding," added Deguzman. "It's a very light homemade with mocha filling and whipped cream icing," explained Tanteo. It could be decorated with homemade candied flowers, like dainty roses, or flowers made of hard icing, said Alcantara. Other possibilities might include "vanilla or chocolate sponge cake with a macapuno filling, a preserve made of shredded young coconut in sugar syrup," continued Alcantara, who explained that jars of macapuno are often sent from the Philippines.

Another macapuno-filled wedding cake, according to Alcantara, is a bright- purple, food color-tinged sponge cake called the ube, which means purple in Tagalog, the main language of the Philippines. Once the cakes are served, the fun really begins at a Philippine wedding.

"Wedding cakes often have ribbons around their base," said Tanteo. "There are traditionally 24 of them around the cake, each with a fortune tied to the end and tucked under the cake .... Single ladies and gentlemen are invited to pull the ribbons and the one who gets (the ribbon with) the ring (attached) will be the next to get married," explained Tanteo. Alcantara explained that the fortune- telling tradition was supposed to bring good luck.

Some Scottish wedding desserts are even more surprising to behold than a room full of guys in kilts. One old standby, with the curious name of , is an unusual mix of raisins, currants, , cinnamon, black pepper, flour and suet formed into a slab and cut into squares. "The suet holds it together, but you can't taste it when you eat it," promised John Nisbet, the owner of the Argyle Scottish restaurant and Piper's Cove gift shop in Kearny, who is from the little town of Musselburgh, just outside of Edinburgh. "We call it "flies in a cemetery' because it looks like flies, but if you're Scottish it looks appetizing," affirmed Nisbet.

The wedding cakes themselves are no less surprising than the rest of the desserts. "We had a traditional Scottish marzipan wedding cake. It's a sponge cake with a tier of marzipan in the middle and creamy white icing, which I personally don't like," declared Gery McKeown, a Glasgow native who works for the New Jersey Sharing Network for organ transplants. "The Scottish are very fond of marzipan," added Nisbet. "Another big thing is to have a layer of plain marzipan on top of the cake with icing over it," added Ian McAndrew, the owner of Cameron's Market, a Scottish foods store in Kearny, who is from the town of Paisley outside of Glasgow.

The most famous Scottish wedding cake is also one of the most unusual.

"The top of the line, most expensive wedding cake is a heavy, rich with at least two tiers," said McAndrew. "It's a really moist cake, almost like a , packed with sultanas (white raisins) and cherries. The recipe calls for as much weight in fruit as flour. And we use black molasses instead of sugar. The cake is really thick and dark brown and almost looks like a chocolate fruitcake," he continued. There's no chance of serving a Scottish fruitcake at a shotgun wedding since the preparation needs to be underway long before the couple ties the knot. "They bake it and leave it for several months to ferment. It becomes richer from the alcohol produced by the currants and raisins as it ferments," explained Nisbet. "It just picks up more fruit flavor as it ages," added McAndrew.

With all that alcohol, it doesn't need refrigeration. The fruitcake is likely to have hard white icing and may even be riddled with a one-inch layer of marzipan, according to Nisbet. The bottom layer, of what is generally a three- tier cake, is usually served at the wedding. The second is then "cut into little pieces at the wedding and given in boxes to guests to take home. Single women are supposed to put it in a doily under their pillows at night, and (legend has it that) whoever they dream of will be their husband," said Nisbet's wife, Joan. Wilson explained that this tradition gave women the opportunity to bless the couple while taking an active part in the ceremony by dreaming of their husbands to be. The top tier of the cake is then saved to celebrate the christening of the first child, according to Nisbet.

The groom's family may eat as many sweets on the days leading up to the wedding as they do at an Indian wedding itself. "Two or three pounds of barfi, a sweetmeat made from thickened milk with nuts, like pistachios or cashews, and coconut, is given to the boy's family every time the girl goes to visit them before the wedding," explained Pradeep Malhotra, the owner of the Akbar Indian restaurant in Edison and a Bombay native. "It's a gesture of distributing sweetness that shows the relationship will be as sweet as the barfi," explained Phillip Sukhadia, the owner of Sukhadia's bakery in Edison, who is from Cambay in western India.

The week before the wedding the [bride's family] might give them up to 40 or 50 pounds of barfi, and the groom's family gives it to their friends and relatives," explained Malhotra. The barfi giving continues at the wedding itself. Dhanraj Maheshwari, the owner of Sir Speedy Printing, who is from Jaisalmer in northwest India, remembered having some of the cashew and varieties at his son's wedding reception last year. A special dessert called laddu, which is made for religious occasions, according to Sukhadia, is often given to guests at weddings as an offering to god. "It's a ball of deep-fried chickpea flour batter, poured through a screen and mixed with cardamom, almonds, pistachios and saffron. Five to ten of them are given to the guests in a fancy gift box," explained Sukhadia. Laddu can also be served along with the other desserts.

A variety of milk-based sweets, such as a homemade cottage cheese mixed with cardamom and dipped in thickened milk called rasmalai, have an important place at Indian weddings and the cake itself is likely to be a milk- based masterpiece. "Weddings cakes are mainly made from milk that is boiled until it's solid and then formed into a cake shape. The layers have different flavors like rose water, saffron and cardamom and the colors might be orange, green and white like the Indian flag. There's no filling and it's decorated with whole nuts like almonds or pistachios," explained Sukhadia.

"Mine was white and orange and flavored with saffron," he recalled.

A milk-based wedding cake from Sukhadia's Bakery in Edison is layered with flavors such as rose water, saffron and cardamom end of text

Wedding cake Sicilian style-the tiered enveloped in a ricotta cream frosting, from Carlo's in Hoboken

Laddu, a ball of deep-fried chickpea flour mixed with cardamom, almonds, pistachios and saffron, is a sweet treat at Indian weddings

NOTES: 1. A milk-based wedding cake from Sukhadia’s Bakery in Edison is layered with flavors such as rose water, saffron and cardamom. 2. Wedding cake Sicilian style—the tiered cassata enveloped in a ricotta cream frosting, from Carlo’s in Hoboken. 3. Laddu, a ball of deep-fried chickpea flour mixed with cardamom, almonds, pistachios and saffron, is a sweet treat at Indian weddings