Weddingbee Blog

(Flavor Flav)

Who wouldn’t want this guy at their wedding, right?!

Okay just kidding. As much as I love watching rappers on a reality TV show, I actually want to discuss the many, wonderful, delicious cake flavor options out there. And not just for the filling but the icing choices, too! To start off with, here’s a cake that I desperately want to make - how fun would this be to surprise your guests with?!

(Super Epic Rainbow Cake, from Whisk Kid)

The cake was actually designed to look completely normal from the outside, with perfectly smooth white frosting… but when you cut into it - HELLO COLOR! Sadly, I’ll have to find a different occasion for testing this out since I’m not quite skilled enough to make my own wedding cake - perhaps the bachelorette party, though?

So, my favorite cake in the whole world is:

(Carrot cake photo from Flickr, although I don’t like nuts in mine)

And yes, as most people accuse those who claim carrot cake as their favorite, the reason I love it is because I could eat a gallon of cream cheese frosting. But we’ll get to frosting later. All of the bakers we went to tastings with had some form of carrot or spice cake, and I got to eat the whole sample since Mr. Guinea Pig doesn’t like it. As much as I loooove carrot cake though, I have to admit, it’s not a great flavor for spring. I almost always eat carrot cake for my birthday, which is in late fall, a perfect time for the heavier, warm spice flavor of carrot cake. But we felt like spring called for something lighter, so we had to try other cakes (ha!).

If I would choose carrot cake in a heartbeat, Mr. Guinea Pig would choose something along the lines of this:

(also found on Flickr)

Chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling and some chocolate frosting to top it off. Are you seeing a trend? Particularly important would be the chocolate mousse, Mr. GP’s favorite. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE chocolate. But I like my chocolate tempered with something not quite so heavy. If I eat chocolate cake, I prefer it with vanilla frosting. I would rather eat a chocolate chip cookie than a chocolate cookie. And I love vanilla fro-yo with chocolate cookie chunks mixed in. So while Mr. Guinea Pig and I both appreciate the deliciousness of chocolate, we decided all chocolate would be too much, and Mr. GP didn’t want to mix his chocolate with anything else (sigh), so that took chocolate off the list!

This left me a little bit surprised at our cake tastings, but what surprised me even more were the flavors we did decide on! When it came to something both Mr. Guinea Pig and I liked (a lot) and what we thought everyone else would also enjoy, there were two standout fillings: lemon curd and fresh raspberry preserves.

(fresh lemon curd)

(fresh raspberry jam)

Paired with a deliciously light and fluffy vanilla cake with a lemon syrup brushed onto it, we’ll have 2 layers of lemon curd and 2 layers of raspberry preserves in each tier (alternating). This cake screamed, “Spring!” to our taste buds - the lemon curd had just the right amount of freshness and a little tart to go with the sweet fruit of the raspberry. I always love lemon curd, but at other cake tastings Mr. Guinea Pig hadn’t really liked it, so we were both surprised when he declared this lemon sample delicious! That’s when I knew we would definitely be going with Fiona’s Cakes. If she can make a non-chocolate cake that Mr. GP enjoys, I’m sold. Her cakes were moist and flavorful, and the fillings were all freshly made and delicious. Not to mention, her prices weren’t too bad (although all the bakeries we looked into were in the same price range).

And now for the final decision - what kind of icing/frosting?! As I already mentioned, we knew it was not going to be fondant. The fondant used to decorate wedding cakes is generally made with sugar, water, gelatin and glycerin, and is rolled smooth then draped over cake layers to create a very smooth surface.

(example of a simple cake with fondant, from Flickr)

Mr. Guinea Pig and I don’t like the taste of fondant, and also didn’t want to pay extra for it when buttercream is delicious! Fiona only had two buttercream options, White Buttercream (also known as American Buttercream), and Italian Meringue Buttercream, but we also tested French Buttercream, Swiss Buttercream, and German Buttercream at one of the other bakeries. To avoid repeating information that’s already out there, you can read about the differences in this handy wikipedia article! While they are all some variation of sugar + butter, Mr. Guinea Pig and I much preferred the American buttercream. To me, the others were too slippery and I liked the texture of the American Buttercream better. It probably helps that it’s a little sweeter than the others, so my sweet tooth was happy.

So, there you have it! Our cake will be vanilla with lemon and raspberry filling, with a white buttercream frosting. I’m so excited, and can’t wait to eat a piece at the wedding! Would you eat a piece?

What are your favorite cake flavors? Did your wedding cake choice surprise you? Would you consider serving more than one flavor of cake (for example, we contemplated having 2 tiers of one type, 2 tiers of another)?