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White Wedding Cake Recipe

Beautiful Heart Shaped Bride Cake First Baked For A Famous White House Wedding

This white wedding cake recipe from scratch carries with it an illustrious background. Mrs. Betty Lyles Wilson, a noted cake maker of her day, used this vintage white cake recipe to bake a small cake for the White House wedding of President Woodrow Wilson's daughter. Her famous bride cake was baked in the shape of a pink and white heart.

Wedding cakes are traditionally served to wedding guests at a reception to celebrate the wedding or at a wedding breakfast. The typical white color of the cake symbolizes the purity of marriage, and the joint cutting of the cake by the bride and groom symbolizes their first joint task in married life. Their vows of lifelong commitment are symbolized by feeding cake to each other.

White cakes are always popular for weddings, but for something nonwhite and completely different, try a vintage Irish wedding cake that's easy to make and is an excellent fruitcake suitable for any occasion.

Jessie Woodrow Wilson's
White Wedding Cake Recipe From Scratch

This white bride cake recipe was taken from one of Mom's old recipe scrapbooks, circa 1921.

The charming Bride's Cake (above) was baked by Miss Mary Lyles Wilson's mother, Mrs. Betty Lyles Wilson, at the time a noted dietician and cake maker for the White House wedding of Miss Jessie Woodrow Wilson (Mrs. Sayre) in 1913.

Recipe For Wedding Cake:

Cream 1 cup shortening and 2 cups sugar together well. Sift 5 teaspoons baking powder, 4-1/2 cups flour, and 1/4 teaspoon salt together five times; add alternately a little at a time with 1-1/4 cups sweet milk, and beat thoroughly. Add 8 egg whites which have been beaten stiff, and 1 teaspoon almond extract, and 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract last.

Bake in slow oven at 325°F until perfectly firm to the touch, or about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Makes one 9-inch round loaf.

Decorate the wedding cake a traditional white and trim with pink.

Here's another vintage white cake recipe that could be adapted for weddings or other special occasions.

The East Room of the White House as it would likely have looked at the time of the Wilson wedding.

Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre (1887-1933), a Princeton graduate, was the second daughter of President Woodrow Wilson. At age 26, she married Francis Bowes Sayre in the famous East Room of the White House on November 25, 1913.

Enjoy an old fashioned white wedding cake recipe from a White House wedding. This delicious white cake is suitable for serving on any special occasion, and its history makes it a great conversation piece.

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My name is Don and I've dedicated my site to bringing you the best in vintage dessert recipes.

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