Fondant Wedding Cakes

Did you know that more and more brides-to-be and even couples are making their own wedding cakes? Baking your own wedding cake can be a fun and cost-cutting alternative to securing the services of a professional wedding cake designer.

If you are planning on creating a wedding cake with your fiancé, consider a feature, such as a cake topper, or even a wedding cake theme that will signify one or more of your common interests.

At a recent cake show, a cleverly made topsy-turvy wedding cake quickly captured our attention. Each level had gum paste and marzipan sculpted figurines engaged in interests the outdoorsy couple shared, such as skiing and rafting. What a fun cake that was! But of course you and your betrothed could also create a more traditional and elegant cake that reflects your life together.

Speaking of tradition, in earlier times the wedding cake was called the bride's cake. Even today, it is quite traditional for the wedding cake to reflect the bride's tastes and style, while the groom's cake reflects one of his interests.

Often the wedding cake will compliment the bride's dress, whether white or colorful. If covered in fondant, the texture of the bride's dress may be reflected in the fondant. Or the wedding cake may match the color of the gowns worn by the maid of honor and bride's maid.

However, we are seeing an increase in wedding cakes that are designed to symbolize the interests of both bride and groom.

Here are some wedding cake ideas that can express an interest shared by the couple or a combination of the bride's and groom's individual interests:

- A wedding cake that compliments the wedding theme, such as Hawaiian, Cowboy/Cowgirl, Renaissance, Vintage, etc.

- A movie/musical theme wedding cake that compliments this type of theme wedding.

- A whimsical wedding cake with gum paste or marzipan figures that portray the bride and groom involved in their individual and shared hobbies.

For example, two cute figures in a boat together, an artist easel (the bride's a painter), a camera (he's a photographer), etc.

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Other wedding cake design considerations will include:

- The color theme used in the reception area.

- Wedding cake's flavor and filling and icing preferences.

- The cake's assembly; for example, stacked or tiered? And if tiered, will the tiers be placed directly above one another or will satellite tier stands be used? Or will this be a sheet cake?

- Shape of the layers: round, square, heart?

- Wedding cake ornaments may include fun charms for the brides maids, elegant cake jewelry, silk butterflies, live or sugarcraft flowers, and of course the cake's topper.

Whether you're new to cake decorating or have years of experience, you may find a step-by-step video guide to cake decorating and tier cake assembly is a great help.

Here's a tip from our "Cake Decorating Made Easy!" Video Books: Always choose the freshest of ingredients, and whenever possible, choose natural over imitation, such as butter over margarine. Your wedding cake deserves this kind of quality!

By the way, here's what one person said about our Video Books:

"For newbies, you will learn that cake decorating is not as horribly scary as you first thought, that within a few practice sessions, you will be feeling confident and creative and enjoying the fine compliments of your peers for your wonderful new masterpieces.

For you talented experienced cake makers, you will
also highly benefit from Sam's techniques. We can
never learn too much!"

Amanda v. d. G,
Whangarei, Northland, New Zealand

Making your own wedding cake can be lots of fun if you plan ahead, get help and allow lots of time for practice.

Here's a final tip. If you have difficulty finding anything for your cake, whether a cake topper that is just the right style and theme or a special food coloring for the icing, search "cake decorating supplies" + Wilton (anchor link to next article) or search specifically for the item you want, such as "castle cake topper."