Your Cake: The Icing Of The Wedding

The most expensive dessert you’ll likely ever purchase will be your wedding cake. While taste is always important, this year the look is just as vital. Drip cakes are big in 2018. Just add a delicious drizzle on top of a frosted four-tiered cake surrounded by fresh flowers and fruits to make any cake look more elegant.

For a more modern, sophisticated look, a marble cake is the way to go. It’s an interior-design-inspired cake; just think of a beautiful Italian marble tile gracing the exterior, creating a work of art.

Also trending now are “nearly naked cakes,” which are especially popular for brides seeking a rustic look. With only a minimal amount of icing, the cake is visible to the eye. “Brides usually like these types of designs with either fresh flowers and greenery or fresh fruit,” said Julianne Brown of Cakes & Confections Bakery Café in Severna Park.

Michelle Lowman, owner of Fiona’s by The Cake Faerie in Severna Park, loves the look of a textured cake with fresh flowers that match the centerpieces and bouquets.

Lowman charges $5 a serving, with the average cake cost ranging from $4 to $8 per serving. If couples are looking to shave costs, Lowman suggests buying a small single-tiered cake that feeds up to 10 and then doing cupcakes for guests. The couple can save a portion of the original cake for a first anniversary celebration and cut dessert costs in half with cupcakes costing $2 to $4 each.

Then there are those couples who aren’t necessarily trying to tighten the budget, but they just want to do something different. Brown has recently done pie weddings with multiple flavors offered at the reception. Mini pastries on a tiered dessert stand have also been a hit with mini cannoli, tiny cheesecakes and petite key lime tarts. “We normally will put a small cake on top of the stand that the couple can use for the cake cutting,” Brown said, maintaining some of the wedding cake tradition.

In terms of flavors, Lowman said her customers’ recent top three flavors are chocolate with peanut butter filling, almond cake with almond brittle filling, and spice cake with apple filling and a cinnamon butter cream. Brown notes two winning flavor combos: golden vanilla cake with a fresh strawberry filling and fudge ganache, and marble cake with a salted caramel buttercream filling.

While trends always come and go, both Brown and Lowman unanimously say the classic cake that never goes out of style is a four-tiered vanilla wedding cake with raspberry filling and buttercream frosting.