Wedding Gazette

Wedding Cake Dictionary

By Jennifer Baumann

Do you want fondant, royal, or buttercream? Will it have dragees, marzipan, or ganache? If you're trying to order your wedding cake and have no idea what your baker is talking about, walk in like a pro armed with your dictionary of wedding cake terms.

Icings

Buttercream:

The traditional icing served on every store-bought birthday cake you've ever had. It's rich and creamy and is easily colored or flavored, and is used for fancy decorations like shells, swags, basketweaves, icing flowers, etc. Since it's made almost entirely of butter (hence the name), buttercream has a tendency to melt in extreme heat, so it's not recommended for outdoor weddings.

Fondant:

Martha Stewart's favorite. This icing looks smooth and stiff and is made with gelatin and corn syrup to give it its helmet-like appearance (it's really very cool looking). It looks the best when decorated with marzipan fruits, gum paste flowers, or a simple ribbon, like Martha likes to do. Although not as tasty as buttercream or ganache, fondant does not need refrigeration, so it's the perfect icing to serve at your beach wedding.

Royal Icing:

A mix of confectioner's sugar and milk or egg whites, royal icing is what the faces of gingerbread men are decorated wtih. It's white, shiny, and hard, and does not need to be refrigerated. It's used for decorations like dots and latticework.

Ganache:

This chocolate and heavy cream combination is very dark, and the consistency of store-bought chocolate icing. It can be poured over cakes for a glass-like chocolate finish or used as filling (it stands up beautifully between cake layers). Due to the ingredients, however, it's unstable - no heat or humid weather, or the icing will slide right off the cake.

Whipped Cream:

By far the most delicious and by far the most volatile, fresh whipped cream is usually not recommended for wedding cakes because they have to be out of the fridge for so long. If you must, it looks beautiful with fresh flowers and extremely white and fresh -- just keep it in the fridge until the very last second.

Decorations

Marzipan:

Italian paste made of almonds, sugar and egg whites, molded into flowers and fruits to decorate the cake. They're usually brightly colored and very sugary. Marzipan can also be used as icing.

Gum Paste:

Gelatin, corn starch, and of course sugar make this concoction that produces the world's most realistic, edible fruit and flower decorations. Famous cake designers like Sylvia Weinstock are huge fans of the gum paste. The cool thing is, you can keep decorations off your cake for centuries and they'll never fall apart or decompose. Creepy, but true.

Piping:

Icing decorations like dotted swiss, basketweave, latticework, and shells. Icing comes out of a pastry bag fitted with different tips to create these different looks, which can range from simple polka dots to a layered weave that you'd swear is a wicker basket.

Pulled Sugar:

If you boil sugar, water, and corn syrup it becomes malleable and the most beautiful designs can be created. Roses and bows that have been made from pulled sugar look like silk or satin, they're so smooth and shiny.

Dragees:

Surely you used to beg your mom for these when you were in the baking aisle of the grocery store like I did. These hard little sugar balls are painted with edible gold or silver paint, and they look truly stunning on a big ol' wedding cake.

Be sure to look at lots of different styles of cakes before you go to your baker so you have a pretty good idea of what you want. The more froo-froo you get on your wedding dessert, obviously, the more it will cost, so sometimes the simpler way is better. And, don't forget to ask for a taste test!