Wedding cake trends change swiftly and beautifully….just like wedding dress trends. From elegant simplicity to wild and whimsical colors, today’s wedding cake captures the personalities of the bride and groom, suits the season, fits the formality and delights wedding guests as a centerpiece of the reception ballroom décorand eventually as a delectable highlight of the dessert hour.
Wedding Cakes
Here are the top trends for wedding cakes in 2012:
Height: Wedding cakes are getting taller in 2012, not just with the number of tiers but rather with the height of each tier in the creation of an elevated cake.
Flavors: In 2011 weddings, red velvet cake was all the rage, and now that trend is fading out in 2012, in favor of exotic flavors such as pomegranate, blackberry blueberry, fig, orange chocolate, and blends of creamy textures with exotic fruits. One top flavor composition is a moist cake with a fruit filling, such as white chiffon with blackberry mousse or banana cake with crème brulee filling or chocolate wedding cake with white chocolate mousse and raspberry filling. In addition to fruit-filled cake, we’re also seeing carrot cake with cream cheese filling holding on as a favorite of our brides and grooms.
Invitation-Inspired: Wedding cakes of 2011 were very much designed to look like wedding couture, with layers and folds of fondant to look like wedding dress fabric, and sparkling accents to mimic the crystals or rhinestones on the bride’s dress. Now, cakes are taking their inspiration from the wedding invitation, namely the layers of textured paper, vellums, fabrics, pearlized borders and the colors the bride and groom have chosen in their wedding invitation design.
Colors: Wedding cakes are returning to all-white for a pristine, elegant simplicity that is hand-painted and hand-accented by top NJ cake designers with all-white designs, vibrant color cut-outs of fondant or sugar paste, or the new hot color combination for 2012 wedding cakes: black and white.
Going Royal: The royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton put everything regal back on the map for wedding trends in 2012. Opulent designs with lots of piped white icing rosettes, ‘drapes,’ and painstaking lacy details give a sophisticated edge to a royal wedding cake look, whether it’s a modern-day royal wedding design or a lacey, finely-detailed wedding cake from Marie Antoinette’s era. The effect is refined, detailed and princess-like.
Simplicity. A wedding cake frosted in smooth layers, looking like wrapped boxes and very minimally accented with cut-out sugar paste or piped-on icing pearls is a very big wedding cake trend for 2012. Budget weddings often call for less ornate wedding details, but this style of wedding cake looks more expensive than it is. In a single, solid color, this cake wows wedding guests for being a stunningly simple work of art.
Artistic: A number of New Jersey and New York wedding couples choose a wedding cake design filled with colorful, vibrant accents, swirls, sugar paste cutouts, in a whimsical and artistic flair. These complex, geometric cakes are eye-catching and unforgettable, the perfect end to a fine dining experience.
Nature-inspired: As a stylistic evolution of the green wedding, or eco-friendly wedding with an emphasis on nature, it’s become a trend for wedding cakes to show off more flowers, even sugar-paste leaves and actual branches. The colors of nature-inspired cakes are most often white, off-white or a muted golden shade to show off the pastel florals, and we’ve also seen some robin’s egg blue cakes in the wedding reception dessert roundup.
Flower accents: Whether they’re real or fashioned from fondant, sugar paste or marzipan, flowers remain a popular wedding cake accent. In 2012, wedding cakes will be decorated with more magnolias, peonies, tulips, ranunculus and especially blue orchids, while last year’s roses and daisies fade back a bit.
Cake Stand Design: Many creative brides and grooms plan lovely presentations for their wedding cakes, displaying them in their wedding reception venue with elevated stands or colorful blocks, even wood platforms and ornate pedestals displaying their cakes.
Wedding Cake Bars: Why choose just one wedding cake? A big trend for 2012 is to select one main wedding cake design for your cake-cutting ritual at your wedding reception, and then place that cake on a buffet table filled with an array of different, smaller wedding cakes in coordinating colors, but different flavors and fillings. Also on the cake bar: chocolate truffles, chocolate dipped strawberries, and other delectable desserts. Our finest NJ pastry chefs offer an array of top-trend wedding desserts that put the perfect finishing touch on your spectacular wedding reception.
Michael Mahle, Director of Communications, Pleasantdale Chateau
While some wedding couples are planning ‘green weddings,’ a great many of our New Jersey wedding couples are focusing on their wedding menu’s green salads. In one of the freshest wedding catering trends, a new focus lands on the salad course, with couples requesting gourmet mixes of greens, vegetables, nuts and cheeses. The salad course is no longer an afterthought as couples design their menus. Brides and grooms who come to the The Manor are just as interested in creating unique salad courses as they are in designing their cocktail party menus, their sit-down dinners and their dessert hour menus.
The salad course has long been designated as a refreshing ‘palate-cleanser,’ giving guests a delightful plate of fresh, organic salad greens, crisp raw vegetables and vinaigrette after they’ve enjoyed heavier, perhaps creamy or cheese-based appetizers at the cocktail hour. In past years, at many wedding venues, salads were comprised of simple, basic iceberg or Romaine lettuce with a slice of tomato and several cucumber rounds, topped with vinegar and oil, or a classic Caesar salad. Now, the gourmet trend in wedding catering is to choose more adventurous, more unique salad elements, creating layers of more sophisticated flavors.
In short, the salad course has emerged as a new spotlight feature of the wedding menu. Wedding dining will never be the same again.
Here are some of the top trends in creating an ‘inspired salad course’ to create a more elegant dining experience:
- Add color to your greens. A plate of freshly-picked mesclun greens creates a foundation of light and dark green colors on which your topping elements rest. A tri-color salad of arugula, endive and radicchio blends pale and dark greens with the bright reds of the radicchio for a colorful presentation and both sweet and bitter greens blending in a dish with flavor depth.
- Add sweetness to your salads. Here at the The Manor in West Orange, one of our most-requested salads is an arugula salad with red onion, mandarin orange and sliced almonds, with the sweetness of the orange adding a burst of flavor in each bite. Sweetness may also come through the dressing, such as a berry vinaigrette, or cubed mango, apple and other sweet fruit toppings.
- Add crunch to your salads. The top trends in crunchy gourmet salads include croutons, almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds and pine nuts, among other nuts.
- Add unique vegetables to your salads. New Jersey tomatoes are often a Must in a fine garden salad, but the new trends in crunchy garden salad bites include beets, cauliflower, asparagus, and snap peas. Mushrooms have burst upon the salad scene as another top trend in toppings.
- Add seafood to your salads. A tiny cluster of fresh lobster meat or crab placed on top of a salad is a new secret ingredient to elevate the salad into a gourmet course.
- Add cheeses to your salads. Guests appreciate the attention to detail when a server offers to shave fresh Romano cheese over their salads, and slices of fresh mozzarella, parmesan or crumbles of feta or goat cheese add the perfect topping and taste to a salad.
- Get creative with vinaigrettes. Our salad dressings include red wine vinaigrettes, raspberry vinaigrettes, and balsamic vinaigrettes. The trend in salad courses is to lighten up the dressing calorically, skipping heavier, creamy dressings in favor of lighter, fresher, fruity vinaigrettes.
Your wedding makes a fabulous first impression when guests are approached by smiling, white-gloved waiters presenting them with spectacular hors d’oeuvres on silver platters. As sensational as it is to welcome guests in VIP-manner, the true measure of a successful wedding cocktail party is the variety and pleasing gourmet tastes of hand-passed hors d’oeuvres.
Here at the Pleasantdale Chateau in West Orange, as well as at our sister wedding venues the The Manor, the Highlawn Pavilion and the Ram’s Head Inn (the latter located in Galloway, New Jersey), we finesse our cocktail party fare to include the top appetizer menu trends originating from the world’s best regional and cultural fare, organic and imported food trends, and our own chefs’ sophisticated palates and advice on which tastes pair perfectly with others. Any fan of Top Chef knows that dishes need to coordinate, to pair well with one another, to make sense in a presentation. Our New Jersey wedding couples come to us with impressive culinary wishes and experience, and we hear equally from bride and groom about their preferences for their wedding cocktail party hors d’doeuvres list.
Here are the top wedding hors d’oeuvre trends for your wedding’s sensational start:
Hot Hors D’oeuvres
- Offer five or six hot hors d’oeuvres at the cocktail party, no matter the season.
- Offer exotic flavors such as Moroccan chopped chicken salad on garlic toast and Thai curry samosas with tamarind dip.
- Offer unique twists on meat appetizers, such as hangar steak on brioche crouton with a shallot marmalade or an andouille sausage en croute.
- Offer unique twists on non-meat choices such as fontina cheese, asparagus tips and mushroom Panini.
- Include gourmet cheese options such as hors d’oeuvres made with Camembert, Fontina, and Brie, since wedding guests adore palate-pleasing bites of tasty cheeses they might not buy for their own meals and parties.
- Seafood appetizers are a top trend, including wedding classics such as Maryland crab cake, scallop Rockefeller and sautéed shrimp – again, crowd-pleasers to guests who may not prepare gourmet seafoods for themselves.
- Risotto dishes are also a top trend right now, with lobster risotto requested often by our New Jersey wedding couples.
Cold Hors D’oeuvres
- Offer tasty cold bites served on ceramic spoons, such as our red snapper ceviche with pink grapefruit and cilantro.
- Offer creative seafood salad spoonfuls or toast-toppings, such as a crab salad with apple and chive.
- Tartlets are easy-to-enjoy appetizers, with guests enjoying cheese flavors such as our artichoke, goat cheese and black olive tartlet.
- Hand rolls and vegetable sushi hors d’oeuvres please guests who enjoy fresh and healthy appetizers, and the trend is for unique twists on hand rolls – such as our smoked salmon and avocado cream cheese hand roll.
- Gourmet meats such as tuna tartars and beef Carpaccio give guests an upscale raw appetizer to enjoy (and again calls to the dishes our New Jersey couples see prepared on Top Chef.)
Presentation Points:
- Pair your hot and cold hors d’oeuvres with gourmet dipping sauces, such as creamy ginger sauce or mango dipping sauce.
- Make it easy for guests to help themselves to appetizers, offering them on ceramic spoons or with appetizer spears or picks.
- Choose colorful dishes, such as those topped with bright green herbs or dots of sauces.
- Have wait staff offer cocktail napkins printed with your married initial monogram as a fine, personal touch to your cocktail party menu presentation.
Bon Appetit!
Chef Robert Albers, Executive Chef, Pleasantdale Chateau
