Cake!

woodchuck

I feel we need a wedding cake thread... I'm trying to be positive in the middle of all the madness :P

With the 5km being lifted, we're finally going to be able to get a tasting box from the lady who will be making our cake. We'll be getting chocolate biscuit cake and have the choice of 4 out of the following 6 cake flavours to try too:

- Raspberry sponge with light white choc + raspberry buttercream
- Lemon drizzle with homemade lemon curd & light vanilla buttercream
- Salted caramel with homemade caramel & light caramel buttercream
- Carrot cake with orange & white choc buttercream
- Red velvet & white choc with option of raspberry jam
- Choc fudge with choc buttercream or vanilla buttercream

Which would you pick

We'll probably opt for 2 tiers with maybe one tier of chocolate biscuit and possibly lemon drizzle cake for the other layer. I'm saying this without having tasted any of them yet though, so I'm trying to keep an open mind. But need to cut out 2 flavours for the tasting. Carrot cake is out, but not sure which other one to cut.

For anyone who has already gotten married, what cake flavours did you pick and why?

What flavours do people generally like or dislike at weddings?

(I know some people don't even bother having a bit of cake at weddings, some couples skip the cake entirely or opt for a cheese tower instead. But I LOVE cake and damn it, I'll be having cake on my wedding day, even if I've to take most of it home myself :P)

jellybear

Salted carmel and chocolate fudge!!! Yum!!!

We had rocky road, carrot (without walnuts) and red velvet We chose these flavours cause we felt they were a nice mix and hoped there would be something to cater to everyone's taste

Loveinapril

We didn't have a cake but I do enjoy a lemon drizzle at a wedding because it is light after the big dinner! I don't love chocolate biscuit cake because I think it has been done to death but definitely wouldn't say no to salted caramel anything!

1hnr79jr65

Lemon drizzle with homemade lemon curd & light vanilla buttercream

^^^ This is hands down the winner, super refreshing, tangy and tasty and its what one of the tiers of our wedding cake was. Everyone loved it as the flavor suited well with our meal also.

woodchuck

Yeah I was thinking lemon drizzle as a "light" option... and a chocolate layer, because I love chocolate :P

I figure chocolate biscuit cake would be more of a crowd pleaser than chocolate fudge cake though? I'm assuming because it's so dense though that it would need to be the bottom larger layer and there may be too much of it So there might be something to having a different chocolate layer that can be the smaller top layer.

I actually don't think I've ever had red velvet cake! Does it actually taste like chocolate? I always thought it was just a vanilla sponge died red. But I might reconsider if it's genuinely chocolatey...

confusticated

Great thread idea! I'd probably lose the red velvet from the list if it was up to me, but I love carrot cake so might have different tastes.

We're having bottom tier carrot with cream cheese buttercream, middle is lemon and top tier a very tiny (4"!) fruitcake, mostly because my mam loves fruitcake. Considering serving it with the canapés because it often gets ignored later in the night which I hate (I obviously don't ignore it but it's so sad to see plates of it sliced up with nobody interested in cake by that hour!)

1hnr79jr65

If you are going to pair flavors with different tiers, the lemon drizzle works very well with Raspberry sponge with light white choc + raspberry buttercream, this was actually our second tier. (i picked lemon tier, my wife picked raspberry)

Salted caramel with homemade caramel & light caramel buttercream & - Carrot cake with orange & white choc buttercream would also be a good combo

confusticated

woodchuck wrote: »

Yeah I was thinking lemon drizzle as a "light" option... and a chocolate layer, because I love chocolate :P

I figure chocolate biscuit cake would be more of a crowd pleaser than chocolate fudge cake though? I'm assuming because it's so dense though that it would need to be the bottom larger layer and there may be too much of it So there might be something to having a different chocolate layer that can be the smaller top layer.

I actually don't think I've ever had red velvet cake! Does it actually taste like chocolate? I always thought it was just a vanilla sponge died red. But I might reconsider if it's genuinely chocolatey...

It's meant to be chocolate but a lot of places now just have it as vanilla dyed red ☹️ I imagine that's the case with your baker if they have an option to include jam with it.

Lesalare

I'd not bother with the "Red velvet & white choc with option of raspberry jam".
It's a real American thing and frankly is just a bog standard sponge, dyed red. It's not traditionally got jam in it either.
I've always found it very meh.

As someone who works in food professionally I would recommend these personally:

- Lemon drizzle with homemade lemon curd & light vanilla buttercream
- Salted caramel with homemade caramel & light caramel buttercream
- Carrot cake with orange & white choc buttercream
- Choc fudge with choc buttercream or vanilla buttercream


Not sure I'd do choc biscuit cake as a wedding cake. I do like it myself but I always saw it as sort of a 'kid's birthday' thing.
But if you guys like it, go for it.

Faith

I’d go with raspberry, lemon, carrot and red velvet, but the last one would be with a gun to my head. I personally far, far prefer light and fruity cakes to heavy chocolate or caramel flavours, especially after a long day of drinking and eating.

Our wedding cake was a disaster, but we had three layers. I can’t even remember the flavours now! Maybe chocolate biscuit, a lemon layer and something else? Just goes to show how important it was, 5.5 years later I don’t think we even had a slice until several days after the wedding, when it was stale as bejaysus.

I love cake! But I fear I'll be too full/tipsy/scared of IBS flare up to indulge that night. Out of your options woodchuck the caramel is my favourite but it would be too heavy for me as wedding cake. So I'd choose the lemon. I think.

XxMCRxBabyxX

I will never turn down an excuse to talk about cake!!

We're going for cupcakes so will have a range of salted caramel, lemon and berry vanilla full size as well as some mini chocolate and vanilla. We wanted chocolate but thought it'd be a bit heavy as full size. I wanted as many options as possible!

pooch90

We had bottom layer of Mars rice krispie cake, middle lemon sponge and top of red velvet.
Didn't get to taste the red velvet! But the lemon was a big hit. I dont think I'd go for carrot cake tbh, unless you get it as top tier.

woodchuck

Thanks a million guys, great to hear everyone's opinions! Any excuse to talk about cake

I think we're going to cut carrot cake and red velvet from the list.

It sounds like lemon drizzle cake is quite popular! I like it myself and agree it's a nice lighter option after a 3 course meal earlier in the day. If it's so popular, maybe we should have it as the larger bottom tier. That would mean that chocolate biscuit cake is out for the top tier and we'd need to consider one of the other flavours. I wonder if chocolate fudge cake can be placed on top of lemon drizzle cake? Maybe it would be too heavy, but they're both just sponge and buttercream basically...

It'll be lovely to do something normal in relation to wedding planning for once anyway! I'll make sure to report back once we've gotten the tasting box

sporina

oh best of luck with the wedding planning - I hope it all goes to plan.. my heart goes out to couples who have been adversely affected by the virus in terms of weddings.. 2 of my mates have had to postpone theirs.. one was getting married paddy's day last year.. had people flying in from all over the globe.. nightmare.. anyway.. back to CAKE.

I don't mean to throw a spanner in the works, but I think your missing a good simple cake like a nice madeira with butter cream and strawberry/raspberry jam...

I am only saying this as I know a lot of people just prefer something nice and simple.. and when done well it can be hard to beat..

In any event, its your big day but if you wanna try and please everyone or most, then I would go with a variety.. scrap the choc fudge as you already have the choc biscuit cake.. and scrap perhaps the salted caramel..

I think Red Velvet is nice for a wedding.. kinda conducive to the occasion..

qwerty13

The only times I’ve had choc biscuit cake, it was too dry (so crumbs everywhere), and it was just boring. Maybe I’ve had it too many times, but it would be bottom of my list. Like the absolute bottom.

Faith

qwerty13 wrote: »

The only times I’ve had choc biscuit cake, it was too dry (so crumbs everywhere), and it was just boring. Maybe I’ve had it too many times, but it would be bottom of my list. Like the absolute bottom.

Have to agree, I've never understood why people like it so much

woodchuck

Oh that's interesting about the biscuit cake! Maybe I've always just been lucky with it, I always find the chocolate very rich and moist to offset any dryness from the biscuits. I was looking on our cake lady's Instagram again over the weekend and a LOT of people seem to choose some variation of chocolate biscuit cake! So I assume it must be a decent version that she makes. Or maybe it just comes down to personal preference.

I'm asking if she can throw in extra things too like marshmallows, maltesesers, twix etc though (have seen she's done that before)... more like a rocky road I guess. A bit childish I know, but might as well go all out if we down down that route :P

I think I'll have to come up with some sort of scoring system for when we sit down to taste everything. Like overall taste, texture, sweetness, moistness etc. We'll probably just go with out gut (literally :P), but want to milk the activity for all it's worth!

Faith

I think chocolate biscuit cake is often chosen because A) it's dense enough to support lots of weight above it in layers of other cake, a little goes a long way with serving, and C) it doesn't go stale as fast as baked cakes so you can keep the leftovers for ages.

confusticated

Yeah I'd agree Faith, it actually seems to have replaced the traditional fruitcake by ticking those three boxes which fruitcake would have done before!

I'm a bit surprised at the dislike for CBC here because I think it's been one tier of the cake at every wedding I've been at for the last few years. Having said that I'm not much of a fan myself, would way prefer spongecake of pretty much any flavour.

Also I wouldn't worry about tiers "going" together because it's unlikely people will have a slice of each tier, more so that there would be a good selection or choice between them. Leaving chocolate out of ours felt a bit weird but leaves it more open then for a chocolate dessert as part of the meal, plus our venue includes petit fours with the tea and coffee so that's more chocolate.

confusticated

Faith wrote: »

Our wedding cake was a disaster, but we had three layers. I can’t even remember the flavours now! Maybe chocolate biscuit, a lemon layer and something else? Just goes to show how important it was, 5.5 years later I don’t think we even had a slice until several days after the wedding, when it was stale as bejaysus.

Out of nosiness, what was the disaster?

Eireog1

Faith wrote: »

I think chocolate biscuit cake is often chosen because A) it's dense enough to support lots of weight above it in layers of other cake, a little goes a long way with serving, and C) it doesn't go stale as fast as baked cakes so you can keep the leftovers for ages.

You will be surprised how much cake is left over so you will want something that holds fresh for a while. We did Chocolate biscuit cake and fruit cake and a lemon sponge. I love Christmas cake as do all my family so it was easy to use it afterwards. I told the hotel to use all the sponge as I knew it wouldn't hold.



We had over 300 at our wedding and still had half the fruit and over have the chocolate biscuit cake left over and it wasn't a massive cake think it was 12 inch 10 inch and 8 inch.

woodchuck

Slightly off topic, but does leftover sponge cake freeze well? I've frozen things like banana bread, brownies and scones before with no issues. Wondering if any leftover sponge cake could be put in the freezer...

zedhead

woodchuck wrote: »

Slightly off topic, but does leftover sponge cake freeze well? I've frozen things like banana bread, brownies and scones before with no issues. Wondering if any leftover sponge cake could be put in the freezer...

Yep. You can freeze sponge and butter cream. I am making my own cake and plan on semi freezing the sponge ahead of icing so i have a firmer base to work with. But i have made cakes and frozen them for a week before defrosting a decorating. I have also frozen leftover butter cream and used it again on another cake.

sporina

v good points about the shelf life of the cake - as not a lot if it will be eaten on the night.. depends on how big the cake is though and how many guests will be at the wedding...

but i would definitely take shelf life into consideration.. ie fruit cake, CBC lasting longer than sponge varieties

I think it also depends on the age profile of your guests.. older folk like fruit cake and sponge and not so much CBC (we had CBC for my Dad's 70th - cut up loads of it and twas mostly wasted).. younger folk will go for CBC, Red velvet, etc.. (not set in stone obv)..

Lemon Drizzle is a winner anyway

You gotta please yourself too OP

sporina

woodchuck wrote: »

Slightly off topic, but does leftover sponge cake freeze well? I've frozen things like banana bread, brownies and scones before with no issues. Wondering if any leftover sponge cake could be put in the freezer...

definitely - just be sure to wrap in clingfilm and store in tupperware to avoid freezer burn.. I had a fab iced madeira cake etc for my 40th.. used half at the party and froze the rest and used it for another small party weeks later with some family who wer not there on the night.. twas perfect

Faith

confusticated wrote: »

Out of nosiness, what was the disaster?

An extended family member had started a cake business, so we asked them to make ours to support them. We were living abroad before the wedding, and I was getting umpteen anxious emails from them - they couldn't get the icing the right shade, etc. We agreed on a lace fondant decoration, at their suggestion, but I had to buy the mould for them. It was clear they were out of their depth, but I had a million things to be sorting so couldn't pay too much attention.

The cake we agreed on was 3 tiers with, I think, white icing and purple fondant sugar lace. When we walked into our room, we saw a plain white cake with some purple ribbon and flowers on top. I genuinely thought the hotel had brought in the wrong cake, but it turned out my relative completely f*cked the decoration up and has texted my mother the night before in a panic, begging for help. My mum finally suggested just putting some flowers on top and being done with it. I can't remember if we did a formal 'cake cutting' thing, but I definitely never even got a slice of the cake until several days later. Apparently it had tasted alright, thankfully.

I later found out this relative had let family members down before whenever they'd been asked to do things, so that would have been helpful to know!

aoife1991

We are getting our neighbour (who is a well known cake maker) to make our cake and the cake tasting was the thing I have most looked forward to since we got engaged! We are having two tiers - one milk chocolate biscuit cake and the second tier salted caramel biscuit cake. YUM!

When we got the cake samples, we both took notes of each one and didn't share our thoughts until the end. That way we didn't influence each other into liking any flavours more than we really did. Enjoy every minutes of it! So far, it's been the only part of wedding planning that I have enjoyed!!

I have to say, I'm surprised at the reaction to CBC on this thread. Every wedding I've been to, it has been extremely popular. I didn't like the sponge samples we got as I though they were a bit too dense and I'm not a big fan of sponge cakes in general.

confusticated

Oh god Faith! Not ideal at all but at least it tasted good!

I'm making my own as well and sort of living in fear of potential disasters but I'm well aware of my limits in terms of decoration. We've had a LOT of testers as a result

jellybear

confusticated wrote: »

I'm making my own as well and sort of living in fear of potential disasters but I'm well aware of my limits in terms of decoration. We've had a LOT of testers as a result

If you need an independent taste tester, I'll happily volunteer

Completely agree with people re chocolate biscuit cake. I really dislike it...husband loves it so we compromised with rocky road as one of our tiers. At least with that there's a bit more texture and taste. You guys all have me wanting cake now!:P

XxMCRxBabyxX

jellybear wrote: »

You guys all have me wanting cake now!:P

I am this close to emailing our baker for a new tester box "just to make sure we're happy with the flavours" because of this thread

confusticated

jellybear wrote: »

If you need an independent taste tester, I'll happily volunteer

Completely agree with people re chocolate biscuit cake. I really dislike it...husband loves it so we compromised with rocky road as one of our tiers. At least with that there's a bit more texture and taste. You guys all have me wanting cake now!:P

Oh I've plenty of volunteers, my future in-laws are within our 5k so I've started out on the right foot with them!

pooch90

Eireog1 wrote: »

You will be surprised how much cake is left over so you will want something that holds fresh for a while. We did Chocolate biscuit cake and fruit cake and a lemon sponge. I love Christmas cake as do all my family so it was easy to use it afterwards. I told the hotel to use all the sponge as I knew it wouldn't hold.



We had over 300 at our wedding and still had half the fruit and over have the chocolate biscuit cake left over and it wasn't a massive cake think it was 12 inch 10 inch and 8 inch.

We actually ended up with very little left over. We had 100 guests and the cake was demolished! The top tier of red velvet was gone in the blink of an eye, didn't get to taste it! Had some of the chocolate layer left and a tiny bit of lemon sponge.

Funniest moment of the wedding was my husband breaking the fancy cake cutter (wasn't really a sharp knife) when we tried to cut the bottom rice krispie layer! So be careful cutting

Sir_Name

Definitely chocolate biscuit, went down an absolute treat at our wedding! Bitta sugar to boost everyone.

Also second lemon drizzle its just gorgeous. Pretty sure a few of my friends did the three layers of chocolate biscuit con bottom, lemon drizzle and carrot cake! Something for everyone...

I love love chocolate biscuit cake. We are just going with a sponge though, two tiers. I think. There are some absolutely beautiful looking cakes out there, real works of art.

Actually something I notice, I contacted a bakery to see if they were available but in the end they took so long to get back to me I went with someone else. They were very active on Instagram though. Same thing happened with another supplier, weeks went by and nothing but posting away on social media.

Just something I found interesting.

woodchuck

Reporting back after tasting ALL the cake! Funny story, she actually gave us the wrong box the first time... she was very apologetic and gave us a second box for free. It actually worked out well for us though, because we got to try more flavours than originally planned and try some we really liked for a second time

I'll start with the ones we've decided NOT to go for:
- Choc fudge with choc buttercream or vanilla buttercream
This tasted nice and I'd happily eat it, but I wouldn't write home about it. I'm very fussy about chocolate fudge cake, so I wouldn't pick it unless I was completely blow away by it.
- Red velvet & white choc
This was one we received in error. It was fine... as some people said here, more of a modern version that's basically just plain sponged died red (and white chocolate and buttercream). It was a bit plain for our tastes though.
- Salted caramel with homemade caramel & light caramel buttercream
This one was really disappointing actually. The homemade caramel had a very strong overpowering flavour. More bitter than sweet... we actually think it might have been slightly burnt
- Orange chocolate biscuit cake
This was another one we received in error. I quite liked it, but Mr. Woodchuck doesn't like orange chocolate, so won't be opting for that one.

And now the 3 flavours we really like and are trying to whittle down to 2:-
- Lemon drizzle with homemade lemon curd & light vanilla buttercream
This one was really nice and didn't disappoint. The sponge was moist and zesty. The lemon curd was divine and the buttercream helped balance the whole thing out so that it wasn't too zingy.
- Raspberry sponge with light white choc + raspberry buttercream
I really liked this one too. The sponge was a very subtle flavour of raspberry and a little bit of white chocolate through it. There was raspberry jam, which we weren't expecting. And the raspberry buttercream was nicely flavoured too. If you didn't know what you were eating (we actually didn't the first time, because we were confused by getting the wrong box and weren't expecting any with jam), you might think it was just a plain sponge with jam and buttercream. But there's definitely something extra here that elevates it above the norm!
- Traditional half dark / half milk chocolate biscuit, with some maltesers, twix and marshmallows thrown into the mix
We really liked this one. It was just as it sounds tbh! A good chocolate biscuit cake, but with a little something extra with a few rocky road bits thrown in (but was still primarily biscuit cake).

We're only going to have 2 tiers, so now we're just trying to pick between the last 3 flavours! We're pretty certain we'll go for the lemon drizzle, so we're just trying to decide between the raspberry and chocolate biscuit now. I feel like the 2 sponge flavours are a bit more "special", but maybe it's a bit redundant to have 2 sponges? Maybe 1 sponge and 1 chocolate biscuit will give more variety to please most people? I could see us being leftover with a LOT of cake either way though... one tier would probably do, but I really want two :P Chocolate biscuit is probably more practical because it keeps longer and we're more likely to pick away at that than sponge cake after the wedding... but I'm surprised by a lot of the negativity it received here!

sporina

can you not go with all 3?

if not, then perhaps the choc biscuit as you seemed to really want it.. and you obv love the lemon drizzle.. (i'd prefer the raspberry one over the choc biscuit but its your wedding lol)..

woodchuck

We can't really just justify 3 tiers I don't think... we're only expecting to have up to 50 guests. Two tiers is already pushing it I think :P I suppose could talk to the baker though and see if there is any way to swing 3 tiers for 50 guests though...

Toots

We kept the second largest tier on our wedding cake - we had 4 tiers, 2 biggest were chocolate biscuit, tier 3 was carrot and walnut and tier 4 was lemon sponge. We had way more cake than we needed but it was nice to be able to enjoy a bit of it with a cuppa after the wedding. Chocolate biscuit freezes really well, so we sliced it up and froze it and defrosted as needed. It was great :pac:

sporina

i really think those 3 would be prefect..mayb you could go with smaller dimensions of each.. and as another poster said, you could have some the day after/ freeze what you don't use - would be so nice to have some at a later date - like 1 month after.. etc

C@t

We’re having 3 tiers for a July wedding, might be only 25 (fingers crossed for 50!!) but I still wanted a ”proper” wedding cake because I love cake
Check with your baker how well the sponge/buttercream freezes, but if you expect to have a lot left over, choc biscuit is probably a safer bet!

confusticated

Worth asking your baker if they would do 3 smaller tiers woodchuck? I know my friend was having a 12" bottom tier for her big wedding, but we're having a 9" bottom tier with 25/50 because I want the three tiers for both look and variety of flavours. Most cake freezes pretty well if it comes to it too!

woodchuck

confusticated wrote: »

Worth asking your baker if they would do 3 smaller tiers woodchuck? I know my friend was having a 12" bottom tier for her big wedding, but we're having a 9" bottom tier with 25/50 because I want the three tiers for both look and variety of flavours. Most cake freezes pretty well if it comes to it too!

Thanks for the tip! I asked our baker and she can do a 3 tier cake with a 9" bottom tier, but it will feed approximately 80 people. Realistically, we'll probably only have 40-50 guests and I know not everyone eats cake (and probably even less will if there's still a curfew of 11.30pm). So there would be a TON leftover!

Whereas the 2 tier cake sounds much more reasonable for our numbers... so we might just have to decide which 1 of the 3 flavours to cut

cant26

woodchuck wrote: »

Thanks for the tip! I asked our baker and she can do a 3 tier cake with a 9" bottom tier, but it will feed approximately 80 people. Realistically, we'll probably only have 40-50 guests and I know not everyone eats cake (and probably even less will if there's still a curfew of 11.30pm). So there would be a TON leftover!

Whereas the 2 tier cake sounds much more reasonable for our numbers... so we might just have to decide which 1 of the 3 flavours to cut

After the year you've had with postponing your wedding numerous times would you not just go mad and have the three flavours you want? That way there is no deciding on what to cut? Send your guests home with cake or cut it up for family the next day.

woodchuck

cant26 wrote: »

After the year you've had with postponing your wedding numerous times would you not just go mad and have the three flavours you want? That way there is no deciding on what to cut? Send your guests home with cake or cut it up for family the next day.

Lol we might alright

I think I'm using that excuse too much lately though... I'm even starting to consider getting a videographer now, which I swore I never wanted 🙈

confusticated

I'd nearly stick with the three if it's not crazy money, but I have completely disregarded the cost of cake since I'm making mine so fair enough if it can't be justified! Serving sizes for wedding cake can be small enough I find, we're thinking of cutting ours early and serving with the canapés and then if there's any left we can have that with evening food. Although not sure what the story will be with evening food if there's still a cutoff of 11.30...

woodchuck

confusticated wrote: »

Although not sure what the story will be with evening food if there's still a cutoff of 11.30...

Yeah I'm not sure what approach to take there either! I doubt many people will want evening food if they don't need it to fuel themselves for a late night ahead. And they'll probably still be full from dinner anyway. I was thinking maybe we could JUST do cake in the evening - a nice sweet treat for whoever wants it, without being too filling on top of evening food (and more people would be likely to eat the cake I think!). Or maybe something light like crisp sandwiches.

confusticated

Oh yeah that would be really nice, like a little bonus dessert before heading home!

sporina

i'm not married.. but Q - why don't couples use their wedding cake as the desert? Esp in these covid times.. might solve the left over cake issue?

woodchuck

sporina wrote: »

i'm not married.. but Q - why don't couples use their wedding cake as the desert? Esp in these covid times.. might solve the left over cake issue?

Some people do, but it's not that common in my experience.

Tbh, I just love desserts AND cake and want both And I want people to have a choice too (not everyone likes cake, but they might like other desserts).

Also, most places include dessert in the menu (but not an actual wedding cake). But people still like to have a wedding cake on display and so they can do an official cake cutting.

sporina

woodchuck wrote: »

Some people do, but it's not that common in my experience.

Tbh, I just love desserts AND cake and want both And I want people to have a choice too (not everyone likes cake, but they might like other desserts).

Also, most places include dessert in the menu (but not an actual wedding cake). But people still like to have a wedding cake on display and so they can do an official cake cutting.

era hard to please everyone.. some might not like the deserts on offer either..

but if I wer to get wed in covid times, I think i would do it.. I am sure an arrangement could be reached with the hotel re: the menu..