Easy Guide to Navigating Your Wedding Cake Tasting
As a self proclaimed sweet tooth, cake tastings are my absolute favorite planning meetings to attend! This also probably makes me one of the worst people to take to a cake tasting- I have never found a cake flavor I did not like. If you also find yourself in this sweet predicament, knowing that you will fall in love with each and every cake flavor, here are a few things to consider before tastings that will help guide you to the perfect cake!
1. Seasons
Just as you would consider your wedding season when choosing your color palette or picking out flowers, you need to also consider the season when it comes to your wedding cake! Although you can never go wrong with a classic white wedding cake, other flavors might be more popular with your guests depending on the season. With my spring/summer brides, the most popular flavors have been lemon cakes, raspberry fillings, and even a few coconut cakes. For my fall/winter brides, I have seen them opt for the richer flavors like chocolate, red velvet, and spice cakes.
2. Servings
This one is a bit of an obvious one, but you need to consider how many servings of wedding cake you might need. Most cakes are priced out per slice, so getting the right amount of servings is important! Servings can actually be a difficult thing to get just right, therefore you should make sure you are working with a bakery who will educate you on how many servings you will actually need and not try to oversell you and leave you with a freezer full of cake for the next year. Some things you should discuss with your bakery in regards to servings include: guest count- do you think each guest will want a slice, what time of the night the cake will be served, if you have additional snacks or desserts that will also be served, if your cake will be served tableside or on a display, and if you want leftovers. All of these questions help to factor in to calculating how much cake you might actually need!
3. Style & Execution
Like everything else with your wedding, you are going to want your cake to match the rest of your wedding in terms of style, color, etc. Wedding cakes are no longer just white tiered cakes with buttercream flowers. You can do virtually anything with your cake nowadays, even hang them upside if you would like! (google this, it’s insanely cool). And although it is so great to have a solid idea of your cake style, understand that this is a creative process between you and your bakery. Your style might be better executed with fondant instead of buttercream, or by adding a fake styrofoam layer, etc. Find a bakery that creates cakes similar to your style and trust in their creative process!
4. Pinterest Pictures Please
When meeting with your bakery, have an arsenal of inspiration pictures ready! Your bakery has likely seen and done just about every cake under the sun, so a “white tiered cake with roses” could mean a million different things to them. Inspiration pictures are the most effective way to communicate what you want! And don’t just bring inspiration pictures of your cake, bring pictures of your venue, flowers, dress, etc. so that your bakery can get a complete vision of your wedding style.
5. Bottom Line: Do what makes you happy
When planning a wedding, you will constantly be thinking about your guests and how to make this a memorable experience for them. Although this is important, you also need to make decisions based on what makes you and your fiance happy! If you want strawberry cake in the middle of winter- girl go for it! If your groom wants to take a page out of “Steel Magnolias” and have a red velvet armadillo cake- do it! At the end of the day, your cake is a small part of the biggest day of your life. So don’t stress too much and taste all the cakes!
Check out my Pinterest Page full of wedding cake inspiration and follow the Wedding Tip Tuesday series on my instagram!
I always love to share an array of vendors in different styles for my brides, but when it comes to wedding cake, I can only recommend one vendor for each and every bride! I will recommend Creme de la Creme time and time again for their amazing creations and their even more amazing flavors. Their white cake with buttercream frosting is TO DIE FOR! Seriously, I know white cake can sound boring, but you will fall in love as I do every time I attend their cake tasting! Not to mention, they have free cake tastings each month at their ‘open house,’ and if that isn’t enough to satisfy your sweet tooth, you can also purchase a tasting board to take home with you that features their 9 most popular cake flavors!