Choosing Wedding Cake Flavors

Every once in a while I hear a mother admonishing her daughter (the bride) that a wedding cake has to be white cake with a light color filling. If not, they continue, you will be able to see the cake and / or filling through the icing.

Perhaps that was true once upon a time. After all there was a time when man couldn't fly either. But it's not true now. The tools that modern pastry chefs have at their disposal make complete coverage of any cake easy.

As a result choose your cake flavors based on your tastes - not on a problem your parent's generation had to wrestle with.

There are a ton of options available to you. Have fun with your choices. Some bakeries require all of your tiers to be the same flavor with preset fillings others allow you to mix and match to one degree or another.

Choose what you want based on:

• Taste: We've all been to weddings where the cake tasted like sawdust covered in sweet lard. Don't be swayed by tales of the origins of the ingredients (unless you have health issues that demand it).
• Desire: Choose what you like.
• Tradition: Some traditions place great meaning into the flavor of the cake. If yours is one, don't discard the tradition lightly. You might regret it a few years down the road.
• Artistic Ability: This is especially true if you are one that values design over flavor or price. If you want a cake iced in fondant with butterflies made from gum paste nestled in hand sculpted bull rushes... obviously, you want to be absolutely certain that your pastry chef can sucessfully do it for you.
• Price: It's a grim reality, but we all have limitations on what we can spend. Don't expect the bakery to change their policies just because you can't afford their prices. Look for ways you can cut back to work with them to find something you can be happy with. If you can't, look for a less full service bakery - such as a grocery store that doesn't offer delivery and set up (it pains me to say that - set up of any wedding cake that does not place each individual tier on a separate stand is an art and I cringe and the thought of someone trying to do it themselves).

Of course there is no priority other than your own on the list above. You have to decide what is important to you. It's your wedding. Not your mother's. Not mine (it's good thing too, I'm already happily married). You choose what you want in your wedding cake.