Wedding Cake Tips
Get the most for your money
Whether you like the tradition of serving wedding cake or just love good cake, here are a few tips from experts to help you get the cake you want—and maybe save a little cash.
Know Your Site’s Vendor Policies
Before you commit to your wedding site, check its policies: Many locations will only let you use bakers from their list of recommended vendors, or they may charge a steep cake-cutting fee if you use someone off-list (about $1 to $2 per serving!). Additionally, Jessica Bartl, owner of Jessica’s Cakes in West St. Paul, Minnesota, cautions that many event sites won’t accept a cake from an unlicensed baker, which means that anything DIY from friends or family will not fly.
Discuss Your Budget and Communicate
Catherine Ruehle, the owner and pastry chef at Sublime Bakery in Fort Worth, Texas, says it’s crucial that clients communicate directly with her and not through their coordinator, to avoid misunderstandings. She also says it’s important to discuss budget at the beginning of the design process.
Ask Questions
Different kinds of cakes have different requirements. If you’re getting a rolled fondant cake, for example, ask about the baker’s timeline for making it: Fondant doesn’t stand up well to refrigeration, so fruit- or cream-filled cakes may not arrive at your wedding as fresh as they should be. Sylvia Weinstock, owner of Sylvia Weinstock Cakes in New York, says she has “seen fondant cakes sitting on trays in hotels for several days not refrigerated.” Also inquire about how decorative flowers compare in price. Jamie Holder, owner of the Créme de la Créme Cake Company in Fort Worth, Texas, says that some flowers, like orchids, are actually cheaper for her to make from gumpaste than to buy fresh. Yet she says fresh roses are cheaper than handmade. If your cake design is going to include flowers, chat with your baker about the difference in price between fresh and hand-molded. Other questions to ask: Do they use cake mix or premade frostings? Do they make their buttercream with real butter or shortening? Does the price include delivery and set-up?
Skip Fondant
“The biggest cost difference [for cakes] is between buttercream and rolled fondant,” says Holder. “[Buttercream] will taste better and save money,” she says, noting that she charges $2 more per serving for a cake with rolled fondant because of the extra labor involved. Buttercream has limitations, though: “If it’s sitting outside in 100-degree heat, it’s going to melt.”
Consider Decorating Yourself
Check with your baker: Sometimes you can get a price break on an undecorated cake and then decorate it yourself. If you go this route, do your homework to ensure you’re only using edible decorations (for example, know your edible flowers).
If You’re Planning on Multiple Flavors, You’ll Need More Cake
If you’ve chosen only one flavor of cake, Holder says not to order more servings than the number of people you are expecting. But if you do both a bride’s and a groom’s cake, or get different flavors on different tiers, she says to order more servings—people like to sample one of each.
Expect to Pay More for Fancier Flavors
“Most cake designers will upcharge on flavors that cost them more to produce,” says Ruehle. “Fresh fruit, white chocolate, pastry cream, and Chambord cream are flavors that we upcharge 25 cents to 75 cents per serving.”
Serve Sheet Cakes
Ellen Bartlett, the chef and owner of Cakes to Remember in Brookline, Massachusetts, says that you can save money at large weddings (more than 175 people) by ordering a smaller decorated cake along with several plain sheet cakes to tuck behind the scenes. “I offer backup cakes that are filled just like the tiered cake so all the guests receive the same delicious flavors while reducing the overall price per slice,” says Bartlett.
Check Out Local Bakeries
Custom wedding cake designers will be able to create your dream design, but you will also pay a premium. A local bakery may be less expensive, but be prepared to accept a simpler design. The upside is you’ll probably already be familiar with the shop’s work.
Put Bakery Cakes on Your Own Stands
If you aren’t attached to the idea of a tiered or stacked cake, you can save some cash by ordering simple cakes from a local bakery and serving them arranged on individual stands. Sarah Truesdell, a member of the site Offbeat Bride Tribe, is taking this approach, and suggests looking for pretty cake stands at thrift and antique stores, or on eBay, Etsy, and Anthroplogie. “They can be expensive if you get sucked into the collector-quality stuff, or anything really old,” she says. “But I’ve seen a lot that I like in the $15 to $40 range.”
Roxanne Webber is an associate editor at CHOW.
Wedding Cake Tips (cont.)
By Roxanne Webber
For some reason, cupcakes are considered a wedding cake alternative, but since they’re made of cake we don’t think they really count. Here are some ideas for “not-cakes” that you or a crafty friend could put together. But first, make sure your site or caterer allows homemade cakes.
Cheese Wheel Cake
Arrange wheels of cheese in graduated sizes to mimic a stacked wedding cake and decorate them with flowers, grapes, and nuts. Sarah Penney-Flynn posted about her “cheese cake” on the forums of the website Offbeat Bride Tribe (you’ll have to join to view the forums, but they are a great resource for creative wedding ideas).
Doughnut Tower
Stack doughnuts on a tiered stand and decorate with things like ribbons, flowers, action figures—whatever fits your wedding. Alison Winston of Frittelli’s Doughnuts & Coffee in Beverly Hills says, “People are tired of the cupcake towers.” At Frittelli’s, they have also created a croquembouche out of doughnut holes, which you can find a nice recipe for on Epicurious. To create a tiered wedding tower like this one by Judy Uson, order doughnuts from your favorite shop (they may be able to frost them in your wedding colors) and arrange them on a stand like this inexpensive one from Wilton.
Tiered Truffles
Set up a tiered pastry stand and load it with truffles or other chocolates. Some chocolatiers may give you a bulk discount. Even without it, high-end truffles like these from Recchiuti run under $1 per piece compared to $3 to $5 per slice for a midrange cake.
Candy Buffet
Some people offer a candy bar in lieu of wedding favors, but you can also do it in place of a cake. Pick up apothecary jars like these fancy ones from English Creek Gardens, or a more basic style like these discount jars. Fill them with bulk or cool old-fashioned candies, and arrange the jars on a long table with some candy scoops and bags or colorful Chinese takeout boxes. If you’re going to have children at the wedding, you might want to put the candy bar on a tall table so the kids can’t reach it without help from a parent. For tips, check out Dream Weddings on a Budget or this painfully pink (but informative) blog post about building a candy buffet.
Other Ideas
A chef-instructor from the Culinary Institute of America created his wedding cake out of Hostess products. Beautiful Italian-cookie cakes are a wedding tradition that can be DIY’d by ordering cookies from an Italian bakery and arranging them on a pretty tray (pile them from the sturdiest to the most delicate). And there’s always a wedding pie buffet or a custom piñata like this one on Etsy, shaped like a four-tiered wedding cake. Other available piñatas include Yoda, a skull and crossbones, or a service at Pinata Zone where you can submit your own art and they’ll quote you a price to create a piñata in that image.
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Wedding Cake Tips (cont.)
By Roxanne Webber
STANDS AND SET-UPS
Tiered/Stacked: Layers stacked on top of one another in diminishing sizes to create a classic-looking wedding cake.
Spaced/Raised Tiers: A tiered cake with space between each layer. Usually utilizes a plate-and-pillar stand.
Floating Tiers: A tiered cake that uses a special stand to separate the tiers without pillars.
FROSTINGS
Rolled Fondant: A thick and pliable sugar paste (like an edible Play-Doh). It’s what gives cakes a supersmooth matte finish and a slightly rounded appearance, and is what you’ll see on most “magazine” wedding cakes. It can be tinted with intense colors, and stands up well in hot outdoor settings. Fondant is often used to make drapes and other decorations. It’s not known for being tasty, however.
Marzipan: A paste made out of almonds and sugar. Strongly flavored, it can be colored, rolled thinly, and used to cover a cake. It can also be molded into fruit or other shapes.
French Buttercream: A rich, light-bodied frosting made by beating boiling sugar syrup with egg yolks, then whipping in butter.
Italian Buttercream: A very light, fluffy frosting made by whipping butter into an Italian meringue (egg whites whipped with hot sugar syrup).
FILLINGS
Ganache: Similar to what you’d find in a truffle, this is a somewhat soft filling made from a mix of chocolate and cream. Sometimes it’s also poured over a cake while still warm to form a glaze.
Mousse: A light, airy filling made with whipped cream folded into fruit, chocolate, or other flavorings. It’s usually stabilized with gelatin.
Bavarian: Not as fluffy as a mousse, this consists of a custard base (usually flavored with fruit) folded into whipped cream, and also stabilized with gelatin.
Pastry Cream: A custard thickened with flour or other starches. It’s what classically fills éclairs and cream puffs, and is almost always flavored with vanilla, chocolate, or coffee.
DECORATION
Gumpaste and Pastillage: Sugar pastes used to form flowers and other edible decorations that dry very hard.
Pulled Sugar: A method for making glassy-looking decorations out of sugar. On wedding cakes it’s often used to create ribbons. It’s made by melting sugar and pulling and folding it before it cools.
Swiss Dots: Decorative dots of icing piped onto a cake
Basket Weave: A piping technique that gives the appearance of woven frosting, like a basket.
CAKES
Génoise: A lightly textured yet rich cake made with eggs and butter.
Sponge Cake: A very light cake that contains no butter and is leavened only by beaten egg whites.
Butter Cake: A lighter relative of the pound cake; richer and denser than génoise or sponge.
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