By: Crystal and Jason Melendez
All About Wedding Cakes
Wedding cakes have a rich tradition and history, descending directly from ancient fertility rituals of flinging wheat and rice at the newlyweds, or breaking whole loaves of bread over the bride’s head. Sound unappetizing? Maybe, but no more so than some wedding cakes, built more for looks and style than for flavor. Break away from the dry, tasteless, cardboard-cake stereotype! Nowadays, the yummy factor is making a comeback, and your goal should be a dessert that’s not only beautiful—indeed, a work of art in many cases—but truly delicious as well.
What You Need to Know
Your reception site or caterer may offer to provide your wedding cake, and it may be included in your contract and pricing scheme. While this sounds like an easy out (killing two planning birds with one stone), you really want to consider your alternatives unless you’re totally pressed for time. Independent bakers that specialize in wedding or special event cakes will almost always be able to offer more options and, since cakes are their specialty, a better quality cake. Unfortunately, your reception site or caterer will probably impose a cake-cutting fee for bringing in an outside cake, and the fee could very well be substantial (up to $2 per person or more!)….it’s a call you’ll have to make based on your situation and preferences. If your caterer is including the cost of a cake in your contract, see if they’ll let you bring in an outside cake and waive the cutting fee for the same contract price.
Whether you plan on obtaining the cake from your caterer or from a specialty bakery, don’t settle on anything without first having a tasting session; all bakeries, caterers, and reception sites should offer one. Oftentimes they will have a special day per week set up just for tasting. Bakeries vary wildly in their pricing, taste quality, skill and overall product. Know what you’re buying before you buy it, or be prepared for a dry, flavorless cake that won’t impress you or anyone else. Set up several tasting appointments with different bakeries (including your caterer, if they offer wedding cakes). Take notes and compare, using the worksheets at the end of this chapter for guidance.
Your Options
Bakeries are going to throw all kinds of things to consider your way. Arm yourself by already having an idea of what you want before going in. Magazine clippings or photos printed from web sites that show examples of what you’re interested in are great, so start collecting now. Review the discussion points below for a good starting point.
Size
The size of your wedding cake and the number of tiers (layers) will depend on your guest count and whether or not you’re having an additional dessert served. Today’s cakes should be yummy enough that they can easily be the sole dessert, so providing an additional choice of sweets is not necessary nor will it be expected.
Another consideration when figuring overall cake size is whether or not you’d like to save the top layer to be frozen and later thawed at your first wedding anniversary. This very traditional practice sounds romantic in theory, though the quality of once-frozen wedding cake is not quite going to be on par with fresh. Instead, or in addition, you may want to buy a small cake of the same flavor and recipe from the same bakery for your anniversary.
Shape
What shape cake would you like? Round is traditional, but how about square, heart shaped, or hexagonal layers? Contemporary wedding cakes are shaped in several styles, even multiple ones (alternating circular and hexagonal layers, for example). Consider, too, if you’d like your layers in uneven heights, such as top and bottom layers that are taller than the middle ones. Nowadays, stacked layers—as opposed to columns in between—have the contemporary edge in popularity.
• Round: Traditional and elegant, the round shape is the most familiar and versatile.
• Square: Square tiers, with their hard tines and angles, give a very bold, modern look.
• Off-kilter or Twisted Square: Square tiers where each layer is rotated 45 degrees as though the cake were turning on an axis.
• Hexagonal: Modern like the square, but with an added flair and creativity. The six-sided tiers make a bold statement even without embellishments.
• Petaled or Scalloped: Curvy, flowerlike tiers.
• Tiers: The separate layers of a tiered cake.
• Columns: Variable length pillars used to separate and support the different layers of a tiered cake.
• Scattered: Cake layers that are separated as individual cakes rather than tiers of a single structure. Presented on varying levels (either by pillars or other decorative supports) on the cake table.
• Stacked Tiers: A cake whose tiers are stacked directly on top of each other, without columns or spaces in between. More popular these days than column-separated tiers.
Flavor
Consider your favorite flavors and each baker’s available variety. While tasting, make notes as to what cake flavors, fillings, and frostings you particularly like. Traditional white, yellow, or chocolate flavors are common choices, but how about banana cream or butter pound cake? Mocha fudge? Your taste choice may also be influenced by the season. Some bakers report that many couples opt for tropical combos in the summer, such as key lime and coconut, with richer chocolate or mocha being more popular in the winter. How about asking your baker to customize a flavor for you? Just keep in mind that the farther from the norm you stray, the more likely you will be to wind up with cake flavors that some of your guests will find not to their liking. The two of you may love carrot cake, for example, but you can be sure that someone on your list hates it, or worse, is allergic to carrots.
If you’re set on exotic flavors, consider a multi-flavored cake (a different flavor per layer). You’ll be able to dabble in the interesting while keeping at least your largest layer more traditional. As always, you can also offer other desserts in addition to your cake, ensuring that you’ve got something available for everyone.
Icing
What’s going to be the icing on your wedding cake? There are two big favorites: the first is butter cream frosting, mainly made of butter and similar to the birthday cake frosting you’re used to. Butter cream is tasty and can be used to create very beautiful and elegant designs and patterns. The second finishing favorite is fondant, made with gelatin and corn syrup. Fondant is very smooth and stiff, and can be shaped and styled into a variety of fabric-like effects that are not possible with butter cream frosting. Fondant is also very durable, does not require refrigeration, and stands up well against the heat, where butter cream frosting is far more perishable.
If fondant is so durable and elegant, what’s the catch? Price and taste. Fondant designs tend to be pricier due to the increased time and labor involved, and while it looks cool, most fondants are usually kind of chewy and tasteless. Ask the bakeries you visit to let you taste samples of their fondant and butter cream. Bakeries will often create cakes with a layer of buttercream frosting underneath a styled, protective layer of fondant. This keeps the cake moist and allows your guests to peel off the fondant layer from their slice and still enjoy the tastier butter cream frosting beneath.
• Buttercream: Made mostly of butter, it’s the traditional rich and creamy icing used on most birthday cakes. It’s easy to color, flavor, and shape into various decorations and styles, but doesn’t stand up well in high temperatures.
• Fondant: Composed of gelatin and corn syrup, this icing gives cakes a smooth, shell-like appearance. It can also be folded and twisted into a variety of cool fabric-like styles.
• Ganache: This combination of cream and chocolate can be used as an icing or cake filling. Be careful with humidity or heat; both can cause it to soften and melt.
• Marzipan: A mixture of almonds, egg whites, and sugar that results in a paste to mold flowers, fruits and other decorations. It can also be rolled and shaped into sheets and used as an icing similar to fondant.
• Whipped Cream: Tasty and beautiful, it can’t usually be used as a wedding cake topping simply because it needs to be refrigerated until the last possible moment.
Decoration
Wedding cakes can be decorated with all sorts of things: flowers (fresh or sugar-based), stripes, polka dots, brushes of silver or gold edible paint, and even fresh or sugar-based fruit. Bakers and professional cake designers can do amazing things with pulled sugar and gum paste (a mixture of gelatin, starch, and sugar)….from sculpting fruits and flowers that look dead-on realistic to satiny shapes and woven basket designs that you have to taste to believe they’re actually edible! A popular idea is to bring a photo of your wedding dress pattern and have your baker match it for the cake detail. All these decorations run up a bill of course, so work within your budget, browse online photo galleries and magazine photos, then decide if any of these special effects are worth spending the bucks on.
A word on fresh flowers: remember that you’ll need to coordinate with your florist and baker in order to get the blooms on your cake at the right time. You’ll also want to verify that your flowers are pesticide-free; etiquette rules tend to frown on poisoning your beloved guests.
• Basketweave: Piped decoration that is interwoven with vertical and horizontal bands like a basket.
• Cornelli: Piped decoration in with a lacy finish.
• Dragees: Tiny, hard decorative balls of sugar that are coated in a silver or gold edible paint.
• Gum paste: A sugar, cornstarch, and gelatin paste used to mold long-lasting, extremely lifelike fruits and flowers. Not as tasty as marzipan, but so durable that the flowers and shapes it creates can be kept as keepsakes for years.
• Piping: Decorative paste squeezed out of a pastry bag and formed into different shapes and designs with interchangeable metal tips.
• Pulled Sugar: Sugar and corn syrup that’s boiled in water to form a malleable, glassine paste used to shape all sorts of beautiful decorations from flowers to satiny bows.
• Royal Icing: Milk, egg whites, and confectioner’s sugar combine to form a paste used to create decorative dots and latticework. It’s hard and brittle when dried.
Color
In the past, all-white cakes were all the rage, but these days bright colors are in, from hot pink to moss green. Let the season of your wedding guide your color choice. If you’re going traditional, consider an ivory-colored cake with white detail. You might also want to accent it with pulled-sugar flowers that look satiny and real, in the shade of your wedding colors.
Theme
If you have a wedding theme, you may want to consider adding details from the theme to your cake. A wedding at a winery with a harvest theme might include fresh grapes on the cake (as well as on the centerpieces), or you could add a subtle design pattern of butterflies to the cake if your wedding has a butterfly theme. And, of course, here’s no need to stick to the traditional look at all; if you’re both wanderers and your theme is travel, why not have a cake designed to look like a stack of suitcases?
Final Touches
Today’s trendy wedding cakes are topped with heirloom porcelain figures, sugar-based monograms or flowers, and even jewelry. The old plastic bride-and-groom cake toppers are yesterday’s style, seldom used unless you’re resurrecting your parent’s or grandparents’ historical pieces.
The Groom’s Cake
Something you may hear mentioned is the groom’s cake, an old southern tradition where a smaller, richer cake was displayed alongside the lighter wedding cake. The groom’s cake, traditionally a dark fruitcake, was cut up and boxed for each guest to take home after the wedding. Supposedly, a single girl who slept with a boxed slice of the groom’s cake under her pillow would dream of her future husband.
Due to the added overhead of cutting and serving an extra dessert, this tradition is not a common practice these days. If you decide to revive it, have fun and be creative. Couples often design the groom’s cake after a particular interest or hobby of the groom’s, so it might be shaped like a football or something even wilder. Go all out on flavor, too, as the groom’s cake is usually a richer confectionary than the wedding cake (can you say mocha fudge with extra-rich chocolate mousse filling?) You can box slices of the cake up for guests as it was traditionally done, or just serve it as an alternative to the wedding cake.
Delivery
You’ll want to ask each baker you consult with if they can deliver to your reception location and what their delivery fee is. To save money, you can pick it up yourself (or have a designated person pick it up for you), but if your cake is even slightly elaborate you’d be best leaving this task to a professional. The last thing you want on the morning of your wedding day is four or five expensive layers of collapsed, disassembled wedding cake.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Crystal and Jason Melendez are the authors of e-Plan Your Wedding:
How to Save Time and Money with Today’s Best Online Resources.
For more information, please visit http://www.eplanyourwedding.com
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