Traditional vanilla cakes and other white cake recipes that are anything but boring.

As fun to make as it is to eat, our sparkling marmalade-candy cake takes a little muscle -- and that's about it. Buy your favorite hard candies, place them in a large resealable plastic bag, get a rolling pin, and have a blast pounding away your prewedding jitters. Then press the glittering crushed pieces to the sides of a buttercream cake. (Orange hard candy, La Vie de La Vosgienne, amazon.com.)

You and your groom are sure to be smitten with this wedding confection: a fondant-covered, raspberry-buttercream white cake. Xs and Os made of piped royal icing decorate the exterior and grace each slice.

A creation that is tropical through and through. The yellow-cake layers are brushed with rum syrup and filled with passion-fruit curd and rum-and-vanilla-bean buttercream. The top of each tier is spread with more passion-fruit curd. Hibiscus flowers, lychees, coconut, mini pineapple and bananas, and tamarillo crown the cake. Pressing a straw mat into the ivory fondant produces the textured appearance. Serve with a slice of fruit such as star fruit, and coconut sorbet.

To make a classic cake with a touch of strawberry, use any white or yellow cake recipe and best-quality store-bought strawberry jam. Try our yummy White Butter Cake recipe; it includes batter, buttercream, and fondant.

These cakes are sure to recall the joys of summer. Fresh strawberries top stacked pound cakes instead of the traditional biscuits; mascarpone cream is sandwiched between the layers. For an easy-to-slice texture, almond paste and cornmeal were mixed into the batter. Platters piped with royal icing in a basket-weave pattern lend a country feel; they sit on ribbon-wrapped columns that elevate the dessert from its rustic origins and allude to the shape of a conventional tiered wedding cake.

Little in the pastry world is more charming than a perfectly constructed individual dessert, especially when it's these dreamy mini angel food cakes drenched in icing and topped with a spun-sugar crown.

This whimsical cake takes its inspiration from a nostalgic dessert: the tricolor Neapolitan ice cream slice. Here, the familiar three flavors and colors of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry recur throughout -- in the cake layers, the strawberry jam and chocolate ganache between them, and the exuberant fondant decorated with dots, stripes, and a quilted pattern. Ice cream cones in tall glasses will further delight children -- and children at heart.

Here, we put the notion of icing on ice, relying instead on unadorned pastel layers for graphic appeal. Coconut pound cake, tinted with gel-paste food coloring, serves as the foundation, while white fondant and passion-fruit curd rests on top (the curd is also between each layer).

An assortment of "Ridiculous Rum Cakes" by Pamela Cianci, who owns Sugar & Spike, rests on a stacked cake stand built and painted by the couple; the cakes were baked in antique pans found at flea markets.