Before the big day, Falynn Koch wanted to do something special for her groom, Tucker Waugh. So, she whipped up a cake for him made out of mac n cheese.
Like, actual macaroni and cheese. “The layers are extremely dense… with a thick roux base that I bake in rounds and need to allow to complete[ly] cool,” she explained in an email, written from her honeymoon in Peru. She placed cheese puffs (the junk food kind) between its layers and then added some more to adorn the whipped cheese frosting on top. Voila. There was the groom’s cake. And to think the armadillo groom’s cake in Steel Magnolias made a splash.
“I know people are busy before weddings, but having this sort of silly handmade thing means something to both of us,” she said in the email.“He’s a carpenter by trade,” Koch, a comic book author and illustrator, wrote of her husband. He “made us a handmade box to collect and keep wedding keepsakes in, so a cake is the least I can do in return.” The Old City couple got hitched at the Franklin Institute this past Saturday. They met at the Savannah College of Art and Design, but knew each other for years before they started really dating. Koch shared a couple images of the dessert(?) on social media earlier this week. The frosting had Velveeta in it. Velveeta commented on Koch’s IG post, “WOW! Looks awesome :)”
The groom’s cake was the second of its kind. The first she made on request a couple months back. Koch used to run a mac and cheese food truck. She’s a member of the Indy Hall community; a colleague there approached her about preparing something for a friend who loves them some mac. That cake had its day at a bar after a burlesque show (the birthday girl was a performer). Waugh’s cake cutting was more low-key; Koch made it, and family joined them at their place.
Their guests didn’t know exactly what to make out of it. “People don’t know if it’s going to taste like traditional cake or if it’s cake with cheese on it, or even if it’s like cheesecake the dessert but with noodles in it because of the way it looks,” she wrote. This recipe is savory. She explained, “It looks like cake dough in photos because when you cut it, the knife leaves a smooth edge and you don’t see the noodle shapes.”
Making one of these bad boys, she shared, is “at least [an] overnight” process. She’s making more, though.
“I’m still figuring out what fillings I can put in there without the density of the Mac and cheese ‘cake’ layers smushing it back out; cheesy poofs are fun, but there’s lots of other flavors I have in mind,” she said in an email. “Jalapeño filling is probably my next attempt.”
“[T]here’s all sorts of little things you learn and need to perfect from doing something new, I’ll have to make about a dozen more before I’m sure It’s the way I like it,” she also wrote. Her husband? He was with it. She noted that he was “by my side” when she won “Most Original” at a vegan mac and cheese competition earlier this year.
The recipe?
A spin on green bean casserole.
