There are hundreds, if not thousands of wedding cake flavors to choose from.
How many should you offer? How to structure your menu?
Let’s talk about that.
I don’t know about you, but in this economy, I’m constantly looking for ways to save money. And it is one of the reasons I went back to rethinking my menu, so I can simplify the process which leads to saving time and money.
Here are a few suggestions:
Choose a base recipe. I have one for vanilla flavor and one for chocolate. The rest of my recipes are built with flavors and extracts added to that base recipe.
For example, for a lemon flavor, I add lemon juice, lemon extract, and lemon zest – it is very easy to have a consistent flavor, because lemons are available all year round and I can use organic fruits without added too much to the cost.
However, I no longer offer strawberry cakes, because I use either fresh in-season organic strawberries or freeze-dried strawberries as my flavoring and both options are very expensive.
If you do not know where to start with your recipes: I love Liz Marek’s cakes from Sugar Geek Show (recipes are free on her website). Choose the one you think is easy to make and play with flavors.
Choose one type of buttercream. My all-time favoring is Italian meringue buttercream because it is very stable and light, but it takes forever to make…
So I tried many different buttercreams to find the one I like the flavor, which could be colored and easy to make.
And my new go-to is Faux Swiss Meringue Buttercream, which is made with pasteurized egg whites, powdered sugar, and butter. No need to cook egg whites, so it comes together in one bowl within 10 minutes. You can find a recipe here: Easy Buttercream.
And then I add different flavors to make this buttercream more exciting. I prefer Amoretti Natural Flavors and Gusteau’s Emulsion
Develop your menu and come up with exciting combinations. I prefer to offer a fully-designed menu rather than flavors.
And here is why: if you want your client to book your cake, it is your job to position yourself as an expert and make their choice as easy as possible. That includes providing them with solutions, such as flavor combinations. It might sound fun tasting different flavors, but you need to protect their decision-making capacity to book your service))) I know that this might could rough, but this is actually better for everyone: the fewer decisions your client needs to make, the higher the price. (Tip: than you can offer to “develop” a special combination for an extra charge.)
To come up with your own interesting flavors, I go back to my favorite book: The Flavor Thesaurus: A Compendium of Pairings, Recipes and Ideas for the Creative Cook
This book gives you suggestions on every flavor and what you can pair it with. There is no pictures, but lots of great combinations and examples.
Or you can look into pastries and other recipes books to be inspired for your own flavors. Like this book: Eclairs: Easy, Elegant and Modern Recipes
Limit your offerings. In my experience, 12 flavors are plenty to choose from for a wedding cake. And for a tasting menu, I give them the option to pick any 6 flavors.
You should have a few very basic recipes, such as vanilla with vanilla buttercream, chocolate with chocolate, and something fluty, such as lemon with blueberry. The rest is up to you to get creative and develop recipes based on your location, certain fruits you want to incorporate, or your favorite flavors.
I would suggest against offering seasonal flavors because tastings are usually 6 months before the wedding and you would need to make a fall-flavored cake in the middle of the Spring).
Now you have it!
