All About Cakes

In this blog, Claire goes over everything you need to know about cakes and dessert for a wedding at Trellis 925, a Central Florida Wedding Venue.

How much does a cake cost?

Cakes are actually a per person or by the slice type deal, so you pay anywhere between three dollars and thirty dollars per slice depending upon where you go as well as the design you get. The design of your cake does have a lot to do with the price. The cheaper ones tend to be just plain buttercream white frosting cakes, no actual designs (such as pearling, sugar flowers or things like that they tend to be a little bit more expensive). Good ways of designing your cake without having a lot of per person costs are to get little flowers from your florist and adding those to your cake as well as a cake topper from websites such as amazon or Esty or any other way of designing that is not actually getting handcrafted like patterns on the cake. 

Trellis is an Orlando Wedding Venue, and typically we see a lot more anywhere between the five dollars and eight dollars per slice type of pricing in this area, so that’s what you would most likely get although there are some really fancy cakes out there and bakers that do get up to $30.

Other ways of reducing the price of the cake would be to get a smaller tiered cake maybe for around 50 people (an eight-inch and six-inch tiered cake) just for display, and then having a sheet cake in the back for the caterers to cut and pass out to your guests. People aren’t going to really notice a difference in that at all because they only see the sliced-up cake after the smaller cake it’s been pulled into the back.

Fake cakes are also a great way of reducing prices, as a lot of bakers as well as designers and décor people tend to have Styrofoam cakes with a pretty pattern that you can use to look real. A lot of times they will also insert an actual slice of cake into the fake cake and match it with the design already made in the fake cake for you to actually cut it in front of the guests, and it also works well for pictures.

Layers vs. Tiers

People usually get confused between layers and tiers of cake, and the difference between them. Typically for weddings, you see a three-tiered cake, so you have the large one at the bottom, the middle one and then the small one on top. Those different “levels” are your cake tiers. Layers means when you slice the cake, the whatever tear that you have, might have multiple layers inside of it, of the flavor chosen. 

If you are a sweet tooth or like multiple flavors that you tasted at your cake tasting you can have multiple flavors in the different tiers, so for example, you can have a chocolate cake fr your bottom tier, a vanilla as your middle tier, and a raspberry cake flavor as your top tier. You can mix and match the flavors based off of what you like per tier, but not per layer. 

The only exception of this mix and match would be if you are thinking of a naked cake. It is possible, but we don’t suggest you changing the flavors of the tiers, since there’s no frosting around, it’s just the cake with a slight buttercream, so you can see through to the cake and if you’re getting different flavors, you don’t want it to look weird with different colors. 

Frosting Choices

Buttercream Frosting: It is an American butter cream frosting which tends to be a little bit thicker and a little bit sweeter. What you would get if you were to get a cake through us or one of our vendors that we work with.

Italian Meringue Buttercream: tends to be a little bit lighter and fluffier, still pretty sweet but just a little bit lighter and it’s a lot harder to work with so we don’t see it too often with the bakers around here although it is super popular in other areas. This type of frosting is harder to work with and can easily melt, so Florida doesn’t really like it.

Fondant: We usually do not recommend this option, as it doesn’t really taste too great in most of people’s opinion, but it makes that really smooth look and you can do a lot of different cool designs with fondant. 

Traditions

Another thing to think about is if you are you going to save the top tier of your cake, as this is a tradition for some people where you take the top tier home and you eat it on your anniversary. The tradition behind this dates really far back to when cakes used to be almost 100% sugar, which means that they were 100% preserved all the time when couples way long time ago used to make cakes for their wedding and it was really sugary, so they could save their cake for one year and they would have it on their anniversary, or specifically they were used to like celebrate their baby announcement. So, because cakes were really expensive during that time and preserved really well with the super sugar and the lack of eggs and things like that (that today’s cakes use) they were able to preserve that really well. 

The tradition has stuck around but the ease of keeping it good has really not, because we want the fluffy light delicious cakes, and not the super sugary like old-time cakes.

So, if you’re planning on saving your top tier there’s a couple of things you really should think about. The first one being: you need to bring a box for the top cake. Either you or you can request your cake baker to include it in your order so that you can actually take it home with you. We don’t have any cake boxes at the venue, and neither do any of our preferred caterers, since it is not part of our job description. Something we also highly suggest is that if you really want to follow the tradition and keep the cake for that long, that you plastic wrap it and then put it in a freezer tight bag. Make sure you keep it frozen; freezer burn free and wrapped.

Delivery

Some things that you need to know prior to going and getting your cake tasting is your venue and your set date, for delivery purposes, and your guest count because it does impact the number of slices you will need. Knowing the time of the ceremony/when you can set up, is also crucial, so that you can get your cake delivered on time and be ready to go before everyone gets there.

When it comes to delivery, we highly suggest that you have a professional cake baker do that, because when you get a tiered cake, they tend to be a little bit wobbly. Taking it into the car is a lot riskier than having a professional in charge of keeping the cake secured. Also, having the cake in the car in Florida weather is not the best idea. The frosting can end up melting, and the cake tilting because of that. This also goes with any deserts you plan to bring, just make sure everything stays cool before they get to the venue. 

We at the venue also don’t touch cakes when they get delivered here. Your cake maker does need to set it onto the stand, since we won’t take it out of the box to not take any risk of ruining the cake or the possibility of everything falling apart.

Dessert Tables 

For dessert tables, it is really up to you and what you would like to have. At The Urban Loft, we typically use an 8 ft wood table for the cake and dessert in front of the grass wall. We encourage large dessert setups as it looks absolutely beautiful and your guests will definitely find something they enjoy.

Some of our favorite types of dessert options are chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate covered pretzels, rice krispy treats, cake pops, and cookies.

Now you know all about Cake and desserts to choose the right option for your wedding!