When You Don't Like Wedding Cake: Five Desserts to Replace the Age-Old Classic
Over the years, most brides and grooms have chosen a white, three-tiered wedding cake for their wedding reception. Flavors may have ranged from red velvet to almond, but the overall look of the cake remained fairly similar.
With the evolution of pastry arts, the choices for wedding desserts now far exceed that of the traditional wedding cake. If you are not a fan of cake or the visual appeal of the three-tiered wedding cake, then choose from one of the many other wedding sweets caterers and pastry chefs offer today.
Why Not a Pie?
Wedding pie can be cut and wedding pie can be eaten just as easily as wedding cake. The only complication with a wedding pie is the fact that there are fewer decorating opportunities.
For brides and grooms who choose pies over cake, one way to decorate the dessert table is to incorporate pie plates of varied sizes and heights. Candles, flowers, photos, and fabrics are other excellent ways to decorate a dessert table.
Delicious Fruits
Fruit makes for a perfect post-meal sweet, and it is a simple way to incorporate the seasonality of your wedding into the meal. Here are a just few examples of seasonal fruits that make for excellent desserts:
• Winter wedding: cranberries, dates, star fruit
• Spring wedding: cherries, strawberries, papayas
• Summer wedding: honeydew melon, peaches, blackberries
• Fall wedding: apples, raspberries, grapes.
Whatever fruits you choose, there are candied varieties for almost anything, for example, caramel apples or chocolate covered strawberries. Additionally, fruit complements other dessert choices nicely. Your pastry chef will mostly likely have several ideas for you to work with.
Pastry Tree
A pastry tree, often called a pastry tower, offers the guest a wide selection of dessert options. Instead of a one cake, with a pastry tree you would offer an assortment of pastries and desserts displayed on various trays. Guests could have a choice of everything from chocolates to baklava to lemon bars.
A Cake by Another Name
Not all wedding cakes need to be a moist vanilla flavor with butter cream frosting. If you enjoy cake, but would rather have a different variety of flavors and shape, most pastry chefs can make that happen. Try a carrot cake or a cheese cake for an unusual wedding-flavored cake, and ask that the presentation be less formal than the three-tier circular shape.
Instead, ask for individually-sized portions typical of a cupcake. Or, better yet, request an artistically designed creation for display purposes only. The cake that is actually eaten will be served to guests from sheet cakes, which aren’t seen, but cut in the kitchen immediately before service.
Bakery chefs don’t just work from tried and true recipes; they also push the envelope when it comes to developing new flavor combinations, presentation styles, and dessert ideas.
Fondue It Up
Incorporate the fruits, pastries, and cakes already mentioned here with a fondue fountain. Chocolates and syrups add a fun twist to just about any dessert. Side by side with a champagne fountain and you can’t go wrong.
The only obstacle to choosing a wedding reception dessert other than pie is the cake cutting ceremony. If you choose to participate in this tradition, then you may request that a small cake be made solely for that part of your reception. But then again, if you can find a way to feed each other cupcakes or fondue, that might be romantic too.
This article is presented by The Scottsdale Culinary Institute. The Scottsdale Culinary Institute offers Le Cordon Bleu culinary education classes and culinary training programs in Scottsdale, Arizona. To learn more about the class offerings, please visit http://www.Chefs.edu/Scottsdale for more information.
The jobs mentioned are examples of certain potential jobs, not a representation that these outcomes are more probable than others. The Scottsdale Culinary Institute does not guarantee employment or salary.
