Flavored cakes in elaborate designs, mod color combinations win favor

By Howard K. Marcus

If plain white wedding cake is one of your favorite wedding foods, you can blame the Internet for its waning popularity. Ed Otto of the Cake Gallery in Omaha says brides’ tastes have changed since the posting of cake designs on bakery Web sites.

“Design is going more and more elaborate, and way, way more costly,” says Otto. Cakes often are filled with cream or mousse and covered with rolled fondant frosting.

Other trends:
• Mini-tier wedding cakes, usually set on each reception table and made of different flavors. Guests then can go from table to table, sampling flavors. Multi-tier cakes with flavor variations also are popular.
• Strawberry cakes filled with fresh-whipped cream and strawberries and topped with whipped cream and whole strawberries.
• Personalized wedding cakes with monograms fashioned from metal or piped with icing. In another trend, mini cakes are inscribed with the first name of every guest at the table.
• Bright icing.“Colors have gone crazy.” Two-tone icing is frequently requested.
• Cupcake cakes. The bridal couple uses a single-tier cake for photos; guests are served cupcakes or bite-sized pieces of cake that resemble petits fours.
• Themes. These cakes are inspired by the location of the ceremony or reception. For example, a cake for a wedding in Hawaii might have a seashell theme; a cake for a ceremony in Vail, Colo., a skiing theme.
• Personality cake, usually based on leisure interests. A couple with horses, for example, might have a horseshoe-shaped cake for good luck. Otto has produced cakes with scuba-diving, Chicago Cubs and New York Giants themes.
• Dress-type cake in which a pattern or detail in the bride’s wedding gown is replicated in frosting. Swiss dots, lacework and braiding are examples.

Your timetable
When should you order your cake? The standard advice is three to six months before the wedding, but Ed Otto of the Cake Gallery in Omaha recommends making a deposit as soon as you decide on the baker. “You can always go back months and months later to fill out the rest of the order.”

As the story goes ...
The groom’s cake originally was sliced and boxed for unmarried female wedding guests. They would take the box home and place it under their pillows that night in hopes of dreaming about the person they would marry. Today the cake, which has it origins in the South, is meant to be a reflection of the groom’s interests. The cake usually is fruit or chocolate, garnished with strawberries.

Spin the color wheel

Cake colors tend to follow bridal dress colors. These are popular:

• Celadon or moss green
• Pink — Pale to hot fuchsia
• Chocolate — Pale brown (ivory) to dark brown

The sweetest part

Wedding cake usually features one of three frosting types:

• Butter cream
• Whipped
• Rolled fondant

A Red, Red Rose
“O my luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my luve’s like a melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.”
Robert Burns’ popular poem speaks to love in its purest form. Red, long associated with passion, works its way into the bridal palette in small and large doses with impressive results.