Frozen-Treat Wedding Cakes
Photo: Con Poulos
We present eye-catching, mouthwatering wedding cakes that you (yes, even you over there, with the drawer full of take-out menus) can whip up yourself. So check your cooking angst at the door -- creating these confections will be a piece of cake.
Chill out before your big day by making these delightful sorbet bombes. All you need is a mixer to soften the sorbet and a metal container or four (we used cake molds and a vase to get these shapes). Once the sorbet is smooth in consistency, spoon it into the containers (for visual flair, layer different flavors), and freeze overnight. At your wedding, just slice and serve! Lemon, peach, coconut, and pink grapefruit sorbets are showcased in our versions, but you could easily substitute ice cream.
To construct our irresistible lemon icebox cake, with its layers of scalloped lemon cookies and honey mascarpone cream, we simply built from the bottom up. Top with candied lemon slices for a tangy-sweet cookie cake that will appeal to fickle kids and grown-up foodies alike. (We made the cookies from scratch, but store-bought ones work just as well; try Moravian Meyer lemon cookies, Salem Baking Co.)
Architectural yet intimate, our white-chocolate panel cake requires neither culinary talents nor design skills (other than the ones you learned in preschool). Just order a buttercream cake from a local bakery and a pack of chocolate panels from chocolatier Christopher Norman. The rest is a cakewalk: Adhere panels of varying heights onto the tiers, and fill the ledges with golden raspberries or another fruit. (Cake panels, $400 for 100 panels, Christopher Norman Chocolates New York, 212-402-1243.)
This happy rose confection may look couture, but just about anyone is capable of re-creating it. Start with a plain fondant cake from a bakery. Next, print out our template of abstract roses, place parchment paper over it, and trace with a piping bag of royal icing. Once dry, peel the paper from the piped roses, and adhere the designs to the cake using gum paste that's been mixed with hot water.
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.)
Fancy: Yes. Fussy: Not in the least. To make these mini chocolate-covered desserts, we poured a glaze over each cake and piped on lines -- and, in the case of the cake in the middle, circles -- of melted white chocolate. (Perch the cakes on a wire rack so excess glaze doesn't pool.) Then we gently dragged a toothpick through the lines to create the designs.
Give your cake a splash of whimsy. Order up a fondant cake, plus a bucket of fondant, from a bakery. Add food coloring to the fondant to get the right hues, and roll out into a thin sheet. Cut with various teardrop-shaped cookie cutters, let dry, and attach to the front of the cake with gum paste mixed with hot water. (Cookie-cutter set, Ateco, Sur La Table.)
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