This year’s wedding cakes — no longer all-white as in yesteryear — have personality, panache and, more than ever before, fantastic flavors.
“The wedding cake today is a real emotional decision,” said Margaret Lastick, owner of Le Royale Icing in Oak Park, Ill., custom supplier of wedding cakes for all of Chicago’s major hotels.
“The two items in a wedding that tell people why they’re at the event are the bride’s dress and the wedding cake,” she added.
When customers ask Lastick to design their wedding cakes, “they want to be different somehow. The cake can be traditional, but they want it to have a personalized twist,” she said.
Maralyn Tabatsky of Have Your Cake in South San Francisco agreed. “People seem to be more sophisticated in their requests for flavors and fillings,” said Tabatsky, who produces custom cakes in a completely kosher facility. “People are looking for something different and don’t feel they don’t have to stick with vanilla cake with white icing and white filling. The old standard is still delicious. But people are not feeling limited to that.”
She said she gets more and more requests today for rolled fondant, which creates either a smooth, matte finish or a draped fabric effect.
A trend Lastick notices today is the return of the cake top — variations on the bride and groom that stand on the highest layer.
“I’m finding that as long as something is very personalized and unique, I’m asked more and more to put a cake top on a wedding cake,” Lastick said.
A recent example she created for one couple was a cake top made of tiny Limoges boxes in the shape of frogs. “They were very cute, and a very elegant look because they were Limoges boxes. Then I handmade flowers out of sugar and a lily umbrella over the frogs. It actually looked absolutely gorgeous,” she said.
She said she’s one of the few bakers in Chicago who still does sugar flowers. “You can eat them, but generally people want to save them. They can bring them back to me and I can make a bouquet and put them in a dome setting they can keep for a lifetime,” said Lastick.
But as for the cake itself, her customers want to eat it.
“Ninety-five percent of my customers want the wedding cake for dessert. It’s very important what it tastes like,” she said. “They want dessert-size slices, not little slivers to put into boxes to take home. They want a good-sized piece of cake with little flowers or sauces or pieces of fruit on a decorated plate.”
Flavor is decidedly the driving force behind Karen Krasne’s Extraordinary Desserts shop in San Diego.
“Our top seller now is a passion fruit ricotta torte. It’s three poundcake layers soaked with passion-fruit juice and layered with passion-fruit whipped cream, kiwifruit, strawberries and bananas,” said Krasne. “It’s a light cake, very fragrant, and I don’t think there’s a person who doesn’t like it.”
Her second-best seller features three layers of very dark bittersweet chocolate cake soaked in coffee and separated with espresso-infused chocolate mousse, caramel and pecan espresso pralines.
Then there’s her white chocolate Linzertorte, a hazelnut-almond cake with white chocolate buttercream, fresh raspberries, raspberry preserves and nut meringue.
Krasne has designed cakes comprising seven layers adorned with real pink anthuriums and tiny white orchids and others whose layers are wrapped entirely in sugared pansies. She has dressed tiers of cake tuxedo-style, with smooth frosting punctuated by real ribbon in a matching color and bright-red rose petals and rosebuds.
“I’m trying to get out of the pillar thing,” said Krasne. “I’m trying to avoid having any plastic pieces on the cakes, trying to keep them very organic.”
And judging by the winners in the 1996 Domaine Carneros Sparkling Wine Wedding Cake Contest in Napa, whimsy can define a wedding cake as well.
Mike McCarey of Amazing Cakes in Redmond, Wash., won the grand prize for his “King Kong & Fay Wray Cake” — a banana caramel creation resembling New York’s Chrysler Building. A chocolate King Kong scales the building while grasping a tiny doll in his paw.
Richard Ruskell of the Phoenician Hotel in Scottsdale, Ariz., won first prize in the celebrity category for his “Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde” entry: four black-and-white oval tiers with a yin-yang pattern, decorated with gum-paste flowers and stencils.
But what about the individualistic couple who doesn’t want a wedding cake at all? Krasne has an idea.
“Some people just don’t want a wedding cake. They could maybe have a cake that says, `This is our wedding day,’ but it isn’t about being a wedding-cake structure,” she said. “They could instead have little petite desserts, extremely beautiful little treats.”