I enjoy a good mock angelfood myself, but don’t really care if there’s a cake or not. Honestly, I think the cake/dessert is one area where the bride and groom can really express themselves and do something a little out of the ordinary. My co-worker did stained glass cookies. I’ve seen cupcakes arranged on tiered platters to look like wedding cake. I’ve seen a chocolate fountain with fruit to dip. The last wedding I went to in January had a chocolate truffle cheesecake with raspberry sauce (yum!).
If you do go with a sheetcake, I’d follow Eureka’s advice and skip the lettering. Lettering on a cake seems very graduation/retirement/birthday to me. I personally had mock angelfood with flowers arranged on the tiers. I didn’t want any little people on my cake. It was easy for me because my cake baker was the mother of my florist.
Unless someone makes a big deal about it being a fancy cake or something I don’t even notice. I was just at my friends wedding this weekend and I can’t tell you anything about the cake except that it was white and may or may not have had a few tiers. I am somewhat biased, however, because I don’t even eat cake at my birthday. I have found that it is always too sweet and I have never really developed a taste for standard cake. Now if you have something that looks like this or has a gangsta lean , I will pay attention but that seems a bit much for a simple affair.
Like Sarahfeena, I think the cake needs to match the rest of the wedding in terms of formality or informality. A typical homemade cake would look odd at a formal wedding and a five-tiered creation of a cake would not fit in with a barbecue reception. As for the taste, I can’t recall any that weren’t that tasteless bakery white cake with the Crisco-based frosting. Yeah, not so good.
I think that is the most ridiculous thing ever. Juvenile and stupid, that.
Me, I like the decorated frou-frou cake simply because there aren’t many excuses in life to get yourself one. But my cake had to be tasty and I remember it to this day - pound cake flavoured with orange. Deelicious.
I agree if you must have a sheet cake, skip the slogan and maybe ask the decorator to do something flowery or otherwise wedding-y; they can put pretty much anything on cakes now. Actually, you could get a photo of yourselves rendered on it in icing, if you wanted.
You don’t have to get a cake at all if you don’t want to. There’s nothing at all wrong with having something else for dessert at a wedding - a friend of mine does wedding cakes for a living, and she’ll also do cupcakes, which are awesomely delicious and can be made in several flavors to suit the individual tastes of the guests. Another woman I know does both regular wedding cakes and cheesecakes, and the cheesecakes are absolutely to die for.
There’s also nothing wrong with having something other than cake.
I guess I’ve been shocked recently at how much a “real” wedding cake costs. One baker said, it would be a mininum of $600 for 100 people. Argh! My dress, with all alterations, won’t cost that much. Which is why we’re looking at a Wegman’s cake instead. As long as it tastes good, right?
I do wedding cheesecakes as a little side business so I’m partial to the cheesecake.
However at any wedding I do to the Cake is important to me. Wedding cake should be amazingly yummy, pretty is a big bonus. What a lot of people in my area do know is a small tiered cake, one that would feed maybe 1/2 the guests. Then in the back they have sheet cakes make by the same bakery with the same frosting colors in the back cut up and ready to go out. Usually they do the sheet cake in all white frosting with a dot of whatever the other color might be on the cake in the center of the piece.
They are expensive! The hall where I had my wedding included the cake in the price. If they hadn’t, I would have probably spent more than I did for my dress, too…and I had a big ol’ frou frou wedding dress.
My brother & his wife had a small, 1-tier cake for the cutting ceremony, and sheet cakes for serving. The “decorative” cake was one of those with the glazed fruit slices on top. It was really pretty, but probably not too expensive. You might think about doing something like that.
I will say that I loved the cake at our wedding and am very happy we paid the money for it. But it was appropriate for our “type” of wedding and I see nothing wrong with a more informal wedding and not paying $700 for a cake. But what is most important is that YOU are happy.
$6 a head is really expensive. We may have just lucked out, we went to our neighborhood baker and he quoted us $2, that’s on the upper east side of Manhattan too!
Call around, you may get a lower price somewhere else. I also like the idea of one small pretty cake and sheet cakes for serving the masses.
Cake connoissuer. I’ve made four wedding cakes, including my own. So wedding cakes are interesting to me. I like to see what is done - especially if its unusual or interesting. Both decoration and taste.
The wedding cake I did for myself was a thin chocolate sponge cake with raspberry jam in between the four layers, covered in poured chocolate ganache and decorated with real gold foil and sugared violets. I’ve done cheesecake and flourless chocolate cakes (same wedding) and a white chocolate cake (that recipe makes the BEST wedding cake). I even did a vegan wedding cake (disgusting - cakes need real butter and eggs).
(If you have a friend that bakes, cakes make a great wedding gift)
As a cake baker, it tends to be the thing I notice most. But that’s me.
A lot of people are getting more nontraditional cakes these days. A friend of mine had one in the shape of the Empire State Building, with a bride on top and Spiderman climbing up the side to rescue her. It was fantastic.
Mine was pretty simple. Had to be, since I was making it myself, and I had way too much to do…four tiers, plain almond buttercream, alternating periwinkle blue and ivory, and royal icing morning glories that I’d made ahead of time, so all I had to do was bake, frost, assemble, and stick some flowers on.
I’m doing a “cake” in May for a wedding that’s going to be many, many layers of brownies in a tiered configuration with chocolate ganache filling and chocolate buttercream rosettes.
Oddly enough, you’re not actually supposed to eat it. It’s not used for it’s taste (or texture!), but because it’s good for creating a perfectly smooth finish on a cake, which is harder to do with buttercream, so you see it a lot on formal cakes. However, the fondant should be peeled off to reveal a layer of tasty frosting that’s meant for eating. Of course, some bakers don’t know that. The above mentioned Empire State Building cake had no yummy frosting under the fondant, hence, it tasted terrible.
So if you get a fondant cake, make sure your baker’s putting something good under your fondant, and tell your guests to peel that crap off before they eat it!
Wow! That’s insane. The most I charge is $4/slice, and that’s only for something that’s complex and labor intensive.
Wedding cakes are the only part of the reception I care about, unless some hot babe is getting a garter put on her. It must be white, but it is acceptable to have some of the cake be different for those that like that sort of thing. I don’t care so much about ornate decorating as I do about volume. I hate it when I get served a piece the size of a postage stamp and can’t get a second. Get a cake big enough so that I can return for more. And more.
I grew up with a mother that made wedding cakes and I helped her quite a few times. So I very much notice the cake, how its decorated, etc. (I really don’t care for the cake you linked to in the OP)
One thing you could do is get a smaller wedding cake, maybe two tiers with the fancy decorating and the little bride and groom. then get a sheet cake or two (depending on how much you’ll need) for the rest. It really helps bring the cost down.
(Now that I preview again I see Barrels suggested this, how did I miss that first time through?)
I know your wedding is a bit more independent but at all the weddings I have gone to (and my own sister’s wedding), the cake came as part of the package with the hotel. There’s one 2 tier cake they make that’s decorated pretty nicely and then everyone gets served off a sheet cake in a kitchen.
Totally agree, I think a sheet cake with writing would be fine at a bbq out of place at a catered wedding dinner. I would think the original cake fell off the table or something. It would be better to just cut sheet cake in the kitchen and not display it, or just serve ice cream or cupcakes.
I think a pretty cakes is a nice touch, and I definately check out the cake at the recpetion. But I admit that I’m into kitch wedding things, and I think its fine to just leave that stuff out.
I just talked to a baker on the phone that said that most people make fondant wrong and it tastes like crap. She claims hers is delicious. She also charges only $1.75/person + $25 delivery fee, which seems more than reasonable for 100 people. I’m going to go check her out next weekend. If it doesn’t seem like a good deal in person, then I’ll reconsider the sheet cake idea.
I know, I couldn’t believe it. She was asking $5.75/person for a minimum of 100 people. No way would I go for that. Does $1.75/person seem more reasonable? What would you expect for that amount?
