As traditional wedding activities such as throwing the bouquet and finding the garter come and go in popularity, so too does the traditional wedding cake. Jon and I are not cake people -- we're more the brownie, cookie, doughnut and ice cream types. So when it came time to make the decision of whether of not to have a wedding cake, we initially shrugged it off. Cakes can range anywhere from $100 to thousands of dollars. With flavors ranging from classic chocolate and vanilla to dulce de leche and s'mores, the options have certainly kept up with the times. Yet, even when you do find a great tasting cake, most people don't even touch it once it's sliced and on a plate.

That said -- call me a traditionalist -- part of me still wants to actually feed my new husband on our first wedded day together. We started playing around with options -- cupcakes (been there, done that), bars, mini pies -- we just can't pinpoint what we want.

Did you offer a dessert bar or cake or both at your wedding? Especially if you offered something out of the ordinary, please share your sweet ideas with me in the comment section.



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Who wants to invite me to a wedding with this cake? Please? I want it! I admit - it might be a little more pricey than the cake you were thinking of getting, but it's healthier. Surely sticking pieces of sushi in each other's faces is more romantic than frosting. Although, if you really wanted some frosting, perhaps you could add a green wasabi frosting. I'd be OK with that.

If you need some help with it, you should know that the picture came from the wedding of Jef and Jin Yoon and the cake maker has shared the recipe on her website. Now, you've got no excuses. It's sushi time!

[via Baking Bites]

Last weekend, some good friends of mine got married. It was a lovely, low-key wedding and reception, held on a farm in Lancaster County. Instead of having a traditional wedding cake, they asked the guests to bring desserts for a final course smorgasbord. I brought my favorite flourless chocolate cake, as well as a walnut cake that I've been eying in Cooking for Mr. Latte for quite some time.

The flourless chocolate cake was a huge winner, but the walnut cake wasn't nearly as popular. I ended up bringing the leftovers of that cake home with me, and when I checked back in with it the next morning, I was surprised to discover that it had turned tender and crumbly, and had lost the slight bitterness that it had had on the first day. Of course, Hesser does mention that it does get better from sitting, but I didn't realize how drastically the flavor would actually improve with a little resting time.

I've been eating it for breakfast all week, and I've just been loving it. I highly recommend it with coffee or tea and think it would make a wonderful treat if you were having friends over a simple dinner. The recipe is after the jump.

I'm usually the last person to get excited about wedding cakes. I'll leave it up to you gentle readers to decide whether this is because of a deep-seated fear of commitment; the fact that many wedding cakes are towering, multitiered butter-cream behemoths; or some combination of all of the above.

Despite my hardened exterior, I got a kick out of the cake pictured here, which features 400 Emperor Penguins arrayed around a series of icebergs. The groom's uncle spent three days painstakingly creating them out almond paste, cake and chocolate.

It seems that the penguin motif was not intended to reflect the wedding's lack of black-tie attire, but rather as an homage to the grooms' interests. Seems the fellow has been to Antartica five times.

[via boingboing]

You wouldn't want to eat it and neither did dear old Vera Howarth at her 98th birthday party for the multi-tiered cake is 111 years old.

Originally the fruit cake was a full seven-tiered jobby and was baked by Vera's mother, Mary Emma Illingworth, to celebrate her wedding to Samuel Smedley in 1895. After the celebrations, the remaining top tier was placed in a glass case and has been kept in the family since, being brought out only for special occasions.

The last time is was eaten was in 1945 to mark the couples golden wedding. Now the white icing has turned brown, the once silver sugar balls are black, and the fabric leaf decorations have wilted. A superb family tradition and one I wish my motley bunch of a family would do something similar. Thing is cake and the Barrow's don't last long in the same room...

I couldn't find a picture of a brown and cracked old bit-o-cake so a pic of Queen Vick will have to suffice. Just imagine QV is waiting for some underfoot man to pour the cream over a pile of chocolate brownies...

 

While obsessively trolling the many wedding-planning blogs late last night, I came across these darling decorative accents for your wedding cake.

OK, I lied. I'm not sure how I found these. I think I plugged cake into a search engine. Either way, they're a hoot. I'd like to see it taken to the next level, though. Oh, say, a limited-edition bad celebrity marriage version.  Dennis Rodman-Carmen Electra could be the first set. Kinda like Homies. Then again, maybe not. 

You know this, right? The latest thing in wedding cakes - and by, "latest thing," I mean, "the fashion that began in Martha Stewart Weddings years ago and has now landed firmly in middle American weddings" - is to set cupcakes on wedding-style cake tiers. They can be artsy or prosaic, bold and beautiful or pasty pastel.

Best part about the cupcake tower is that it doesn't require any special skills beyond figuring out where to buy the plastic Romanesque tiers to set them on. You could even (yikes!) make your cupcakes with a mix. Got someone with passable baking skills in your wedding party? You no longer need to worry about whether your crucial middle layer will fall, or if you'll build a grand masterpiece only to have it crumble to pieces on the way to the reception. Get your friends a couple packages of cupcake liners and a bunch of baking pans, and you're golden. (Or, silver.)

Some might ask, does this make wedding cakery too accessible, with lovely creations available to the masses? Does this mean any amateur can get into the wedding-cake-making business? I say, as long as the cake is moist and the icing has lots of butter - go for it, middle America. Just make sure and get that invitation in the mail to me...