Wedding Cake Flavors - NJ Cake Bakery

Wedding cakes are often the centerpiece of the decor of your reception. And although your guests may be impressed with the appearance of your wedding cake, what they will remember most is the taste.

Selecting flavors for your cake should be one of the sweetest parts of planning your wedding. Can you think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than sampling a few slices of several delicious cakes?

Finding the right bakery to work with is the first step in selecting the flavors for your wedding cake. Many bakeries will charge a small fee if you wish to taste specific flavors. Often this fee is deducted from your final cost should you decide to order from them.

Have a good idea of what your wedding menu will be like when you go to your tasting, so you can tailor the cake to the rest of the meal. For example, if your meal is focused on Spanish flair, how about a rich vanilla cake with dulce de leche or a guava filling? Or maybe a cake with hints of ginger would be a perfect ending to an Asian feast.

Think about choosing a flavor that might have personal meaning to you and your beloved. Was your first date over coffee? Perhaps a mocha filling. Is your fiancee Italian? A fresh cannoli cream may delight him.

Don’t be afraid to stray from basic flavors such as vanilla and chocolate. Some of the more unique and complex flavor combinations we like are:

• Coconut cake striped with key lime curd and vanilla bean filling. This cake is not only a delicious pairing of flavors, but it also looks amazing when plated .
• Dark chocolate cake with coffee buttercream and almond toffee bits. The crunchy toffee offers an unexpected yet delightful texture.
• Vanilla cake with banana cream and passion fruit filling. The combination is so very refreshing and perfect for a summer wedding.
   

You may also want to serve more than one flavor of cake at your reception. This can be accomplished by having a groom’s cake in addition to the wedding cake. Traditionally, groom’s cakes are a richer flavor like chocolate, red velvet, or a dense fruit cake. Of course, you could just choose the groom’s favorite flavor! You may also request your baker to make each tier a different flavor. This can often be done at little additional cost.



About us: Confectionary Designs is a boutique bakery located in Bergen county New Jersey NJ. Our specialty is creating custom cakes for all of life's occasions. We work with you every step of the way in creating a detailed and delicious wedding cake that you and your guests will remember!

New Jersey Wedding Cake Bakery

We created this wedding cake for a wonderful couple this summer. The only thing better than the outside of the cake is the inside! We made equal amount of servings of 1) chocolate with raspberry puree; and 2) key lime cake with key lime curd - both wonderful and refreshing flavors.

The couple asked for a special added touch to personalize the cake even more - can you see the sugar replica of the groom climbing out from the sugar peony on the bottom tier?

Click here to view some of our other wedding creations!

Winter Wonderland Wedding - NJ Weddings

http://www.confectionarydesigns.com

 

We were honored to have our winter-themed cake featured in 201 Bride magazine for their Winter Wonderland special. As always, its a pleasure to work with the professionals at The Finishing Touch Events. 

NJ Wedding Cake

http://www.confectionarydesigns.com

Our latest wedding cake design. We used styrofoam under the bottom tier to allow the addition of our signature 'sugar feet.'

A 'Simple' Wedding Cake

Sometimes the simplest looking cakes can be the most difficult to make. Its so much easier to put random dots all over a cake than to calculate the exact distance for swags on a heart-shaped cake and make sure the swags are placed perfectly! Remember when your high school math teacher said "you'll use this math again"? Well, he/she was right as we often find ourselves thinking back to our math classes (or calling my husband or 17 year-old niece) to help us out with design placement.

We made the following heart-shaped wedding cake for a wonderful couple who were having a small reception with 45 guests. Although the design may look clean and 'simple' these types of cakes are often the most challenging to work on but we find the end result quite appealing.

http://www.confectionarydesigns.com

Itty-Bitty Cake: The Winner!

We were so excited when our mini-wedding cake won first place in Wed's Great Cake-off in its category! This was especially an honor given the number of beautiful wedding cupcakes and small cakes submitted by some really talented decorators.

Creating 'itty-bitty' cakes is more difficult than working on a monster five-tier cake since it is such a small canvas on which to place so many details. Regardless of the work, the outcome gives us a great sense of satisfaction (especially when the work is acknowledged with a win and a happy customer!).

Thanks for letting me brag a little!

http://www.confectionarydesigns.com

The Season for Engagements!

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Bogota, NJ

I came across a statistic a few days ago that states 40% of all marriage engagements occur over the holidays. The reason for this is that the holidays present an abundance of opportunities for memorable proposals to take place.

I have to add myself to this statistic as I became engaged at midnight at the beginning of the new millennium. Just like so many other brides-to-be, the very next day I was surfing the internet for information and running out to the newsstand to buy every bridal magazine there is. Six months later we were married in Las Vegas with 50+ of our friends and family in attendance (and, no, Elvis did not perform the ceremony!).

Looking at the statistics on our website and blog it looks like many of the newly engaged couples are doing the same thing I did. The most popular search term coming into the blog is "Engagement Cakes" followed closely by "Wedding Cake Designs."

So a big congratulations to all those recently engaged couples (and those that will become engaged on New Year's Eve!).

NJ Wedding Cake and Fondant Recipe

http://www.confectionarydesigns.com

Bergen County Bakery

This cake was created for an elegant yet intimate wedding. We came up with the design based on the bride's dress and bouquet. The dress had slight accents of gold and was covered in beautiful beads. Her bouquet consisted of lilies and greenery so we came up with a design of sugarpaste flowers for this cake.

Usually for all our cakes we use premade Satin Ice rolled fondant which we find is very consistent and easy to use. For this cake we used a marshmallow fondant (see recipe below). Although the cake looked wonderful, we did find the 'home-made' fondant much more work and not as consistent as our tried and true Satin Ice.

Ingredients

• 10.5 ounce bag of marshmallows
• 1 tsp flavoring of choice - optional (vanilla, almond, etc...)
• 2 lbs sifted Confectioners Sugar
• 3 Tbsp  Water

Instructions

• Place marshmallows in a microwave safe container and melt on medium heat until just melted (about 45 seconds).
• Add the water and flavoring of choice and stir with a wooden spoon coated with shortening.
• Add 1/2 the confectioners sugar and mix well; add the other half and mix until incorporated. (note: you may also use your stand mixer with the dough attachment for this step) 
• Lightly grease your counter top with shortening and kneed until slightly stiff.
• Wrap in plastic wrap slightly oiled with vegetable oil. Let rest for 24 hours. 

The beads for the cake were made using our favorite bead mold from First Impressions Molds.  We have several of their molds and in our opinion these are the best on the market!

A Summer Wedding Cake - NJ Bakery

http://www.confectionarydesigns.com

Bogota, NJ

In New Jersey we received our first dusting of snow a few days ago and the weatherman says we should be getting hit with a big storm on Sunday. Looks like we'll be breaking out the shovels at the bakery this weekend!

As I was driving home today I was missing the warmer weather so I decided to break out a picture from last summer of one of our seashore wedding cakes. We loved making this cake and it was featured in 201Bride magazine. Everything you see is edible from the royal icing coral to the chocolate shells.

I hope you feel a little 'warmer' after viewing this cake!

NJ Wedding Cakes - White Velvet Cake Recipe

http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/

Bogota, NJ

One of the best parts of running a custom bakery is coming up with designs that fit the client, the venue, and the overall affair. The above cake just says "winter wedding" to me! OK - so there are no snowflakes, or sugar paste elves, but my partner did a great job designing this wedding cake for a very elegant, black-tie wedding. This white cake with black and super-pearl accents looked perfect on the cake table and complemented the classic decor.

So often we hear from clients "I want a simple cake" - this often makes me cringe as simple is often harder to do than a decorative cake. There is no room for error as the fondant and all the accents must be perfect because you can't hide anything!

All three tiers are made from our White Velvet Cake recipe which produces a wonderful, velvety texture. We needed to make 6 batches to complete the above cake. That's when a 20-quart mixer and 5-rack oven come in handy!

White Velvet Cake:

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter, room temp
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F . Grease and flour 2-8 inch" round pans
2. Sift the flour and salt together and set aside.
3. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Add eggs one at a time and mix well.
5. Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk.
6. Alternately add flour and buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour.
7. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean. Cool cake,