Fashions of celebration cakes

[johung]

Hi all,

I remember that when I was growing up as a boy in Hong Kong in the 1980s, all the cakes that people normally bought were for someone's birthday and they tended to be quite richly decorated with cream, fruit, and even fruit jelly. (I'm referring to Western styles of cake. Chinese style cakes are for weddings and some other festive occasions).

For example, I still remember a type of popular cake with a thin layer of sponge cake, filled with mango mousse, topped with thin slices of fresh mango and filled with mango jelly (as in the mango gelatin jelly, not the jam), and decorated with whipped cream and halved strawberries, sold at the likes of pastries chain businesses like Maxim's. Likewise, when you went to starred hotel patisseries or coffee shops and ordered a slice of cheesecake, you would have come across heavily decorated pieces with cream, garnished with almond flakes, strawberries, and often the top consists of some berries and gelatin jelly.

It seems to me whenever I try to go to cakeshops here in New Zealand these days, the cake tend to be very simply decorated. The whipped cream garnishes are often much more sparse than the past, and using berries and jelly to top the cake have become a thing of the past. Pierre Herme seems to be saying this simplification is now the fashion in the DK's Cook book. The only time I still see richly decorated cake these days is from Asian bakeries or when I fly back to HK for visits.

Is it true that richly decorated cake is currently out of fashion in the Western world? Or it is just pelicular to New Zealand, or it depends on what type of establishments the cake is served or bought?

Thanks.