advertisement

Dessert designer exhibits at Peabody Essex Museum

A wedding isn't a wedding without a cake, and a cake displayed in the Peabody Essex Museum's "Wedded Bliss" exhibit goes above and beyond any bride's wildest dreams.

Danvers artist Cile Bellefleur Burbidge approached the 3-foot-tall dessert the way an architect might design a building - by creating what she refers to as an architectural drawing.

Burbidge, 81, sketched out the cake down to its smallest details, which were inspired by 19th-century Victorian architecture. The finished work of art stretches skyward like a three-story tower, its balconies crowned by tiny swans. Sugary garlands link the balconies, which are adorned with dozens of roses and daisies made out of white frosting.

"You have to make lots of extras," Burbidge says of the tiny flowers. "They break easily … When I work on a cake, that's my life."

It took Burbidge about five weeks to complete the cake. Museum visitors can get a sneak peak at the action by watching a video of the work in progress. (See related story about the exhibit, by clicking the link at the end of this story.)

At the unveiling of the "Wedded Bliss" exhibit this week, the elegant New Hampshire native was dressed in a long brown cape and matching skirt and blouse designed by her husband John, a retired fashion designer for Priscilla of Boston. The two met when they were both studying fashion at the New England School of Art and Design in Boston in their early 20s.

After graduating Burbidge went on to teach fashion for several years. She and John married and she gave up her job to play the traditional stay-at-home mom role of the 1950s. But Burbidge soon became restless staying home with the kids.

"I got pregnant and waited to be sick just to have something to do," she jokes.

Having always wanted to take a class in cake decorating, she enrolled in a five-week course and was soon baking cakes for her neighbors. She went on to teach the culinary art for 40 years and publish numerous books on the subject.

Burbidge's cakes have been enjoyed all over the world, displayed in shop windows including Priscilla of Boston and Tiffany & Co. in New York City. During the 1980s Burbidge was invited to Nigeria at a student's request to bake a cake for a local chief's initiation ceremony.

"It was a traditional American cake, rectangular with fencing and flowers. They like cake but they don't like frosting," she says of Nigerians.

Although Burbidge is now retired from the cake design business, she still occasionally makes cakes for friends and is enjoying taking part in the Peabody Essex Museum's "Wedded Bliss" exhibit.

Having been married 57 years, she and her husband seem to fit right into the museum exhibit's theme. When asked what their marriage's secret is, Burbidge smiles, "He makes my clothes," she says.

John adds, without skipping a beat, "Frosting is keeping us together."