Information on Wedding Cakes

Wedding cakes are available in a variety of flavors and styles.

The wedding cake is one of the most important items a bride and groom choose. In addition to deciding how the cake looks, they must choose flavors, filling and frosting. The process usually requires speaking with several bakers and sampling a variety of cakes. Though the decision is important and time-consuming, it is also fun and delicious.

Flavors

Wedding cakes are available in all of the flavors cake normally comes in, but exotic flavors are likely going to cost you more. Traditional options such as devil's food, yellow, white and carrot are the most popular. To create a more flavorful cake, couples sometimes add filling to a traditional cake. Raspberry fruit filling, nut creams such as almond or peanut butter, chocolate cream or lemon curd are popular filling flavors.

Frosting

The frosting of a wedding cake is important because of taste and appearance. Modern cakes are usually covered in fondant, which is a dense sugar covering placed over cake, creating a smooth-as-silk appearance. Fondant cakes have clean lines and elaborate designs, but the flavor of fondant is often too sweet for cake eaters. It can be peeled off and the cake and crumb-layer of frosting tastes the same. Buttercream is another popular option for frosting a wedding cake. Buttercream is a fluffy topping that is easy to spread and delicious to eat with all varieties of cake. It can also be flavored, but is typically served as vanilla or chocolate.

Styles

The appearance of a wedding cake is more important than any other cake a person will order or eat in her life. Though special occasion cakes and birthday cakes should look appetizing, a bride will want her wedding cake to be perfect and fit the theme of her wedding. Styles include traditional, modern, whimsical or themed. An elegant, formal wedding cake might be all white with just a bit of adornment, while a cake for a rambunctious wedding in Las Vegas might feature candy poker chips, playing cards made of fondant and dice made of sugar.

Freezing the Top Layer

Many newlywed couples save the top layer, usually the smallest, of their wedding cake and eat it in celebration of their first anniversary. To keep the cake fresh, it needs to be frozen within a few hours of the wedding. After freezing for a couple of hours, remove the cake from the freezer, wrap it in several layers of plastic and place into a cake box, which should also be wrapped in plastic. The cake should be returned to a frost-free freezer to maintain moisture. After a year, move the cake to the refrigerator for 48 hours and then let it sit at room temperature for two to three hours.

References

• Wed Net; How to Freeze Your Cake by Patty-Cakes; Pat Jacoby
• OChef: What is Fondant?