Wedding Cake Woes: Why Do They Taste So Bad?

Wedding cakes have a reputation for tasting bad. While some people enjoy them, many find them dry, overly sweet, and inferior in quality to regular cakes. Fondant icing, which is commonly used for its neat appearance, is often blamed for this, as it is considered tasteless. Other decorative elements, such as marzipan and royal icing, may also contribute to the issue. Additionally, the focus on structural soundness and visual appeal can compromise the flavor of large wedding cakes.

Wedding cakes are made for appearance, not taste

Wedding cakes are often made for appearance, rather than taste. This is due to a combination of factors, including tradition, emotion, fashion, and cost. Traditional methods for making wedding cakes prioritise structural soundness and visual appeal over flavour. For example, fondant icing, which is commonly used on wedding cakes, is valued for its neatness and smooth appearance, despite its unpopular taste.

The process of making a wedding cake also contributes to its lack of taste. Each tier is baked and cut into layers, brushed with liqueur or syrup, filled with cream, stacked, assembled, iced, and decorated. This lengthy process, which can take up to eight hours, primarily protects the look of the cake rather than its taste.

Additionally, the role of the cake as a ceremonial centrepiece means that its symbolic value often surpasses its role as food. This symbolism does not come cheap, with the cost of wedding cakes almost doubling in the last decade, reaching a national average of $4 per slice in the United States. As a result, couples may prioritise the visual impact of the cake over its flavour to ensure they get their money's worth.

Furthermore, the skills required to create ornate wedding cakes are often held by those without a professional baking background. Decoration hobbyists, art majors, jewellery makers, and even dentists are known to create wedding cakes, focusing on the aesthetic rather than the culinary experience.

However, it is worth noting that not all wedding cakes are made solely for appearance. Some bakers are committed to creating cakes that are more than just ornaments, prioritising flavour and using alternative ingredients and methods to enhance taste.

Fondant icing looks neat but doesn't taste good

Fondant icing is often used by bakers and cake designers due to its versatility and ease of use. It can be rolled out to cover a cake or used to sculpt three-dimensional flowers and other decorations. However, despite its neat appearance, fondant is often unpopular in terms of taste.

Fondant is made from a mixture of sugar, water, corn syrup, and gelatin, resulting in a clay-like texture. Some people compare its taste to marshmallows, while others find it unpleasant or chewy. It is also less sweet than other types of icing, such as buttercream, and can be time-consuming to make.

The taste and texture of fondant can be too intense for some people, leading to a common practice of removing the fondant layer before serving cake to guests. Some cake designers opt to cover the cake in buttercream, which has a silkier and creamier texture, and then add fondant decorations on top. This approach combines the benefits of a neat appearance with better taste.

While fondant is useful for creating unique shapes and designs, it is not necessary for simpler, more rustic cakes or for adding height to a multi-tiered cake. Buttercream or naked cakes can also be used for a wedding, providing a more natural and tasty option.

Bakers prioritise engineering over flavour

Wedding cakes are often engineered to be structurally sound and visually appealing, with flavour taking a back seat. This is because the cake's symbolic value as a centrepiece often surpasses its role as a dessert.

The traditional process of making a wedding cake is as follows: up to a week before the wedding, the individual tiers are baked and cut into layers. Each layer is brushed with liqueur or syrup, then filled with a creamy filling. The layers are stacked into tiers, assembled into a single cake, iced, and decorated. This process is designed to protect the look of the cake, but not necessarily its taste.

Fondant icing, for example, is often used to create a neat and smooth finish but is not particularly tasty. It is made from a mixture of glucose and vegetable shortening and has been described as "plasticky" and "tasteless".

Some bakers prioritise flavour over appearance, abandoning traditional methods and ingredients in favour of more innovative approaches. For instance, Susan Morgan, owner of Elegant Cheesecakes in Half Moon Bay, California, uses a soft and flexible chocolate dough called plastique to wrap her cakes instead of icing. This not only tastes better but also allows for stable stacking of dense cheesecake tiers.

Other bakers, like Ron Ben-Israel, a top New York wedding cake baker, have perfected buttercream frostings that are smooth like fondant but much more delicious. He is known for his Swiss meringue buttercream frosting and is on a "crusade against fondant" and the use of shortening in buttercream, which makes it "stable but sickly sweet, or tasteless".

While some couples may be willing to sacrifice flavour for appearance, it is important to remember that guests will likely care more about how the cake tastes than how it looks. As one source puts it, "No one wants to waste calories on a cake that tastes like feet".

Bakers use shortening instead of butter in buttercream

Wedding cakes have a reputation for tasting bad, and this is often because they are made for appearance rather than taste. Bakers may use fondant icing, for example, which looks neat but doesn't taste very good.

One reason why wedding cakes may taste bad is that bakers use shortening instead of butter in buttercream. Shortening is 100% fat, whereas butter is only 80% fat and contains about 20% water. Shortening is made from hydrogenated vegetable oil and has no flavour, whereas butter has a rich, creamy, dairy taste.

Shortening is useful in baking because it helps baked goods rise and hold their shape. It also creates a softer, lighter, and more tender texture. In American buttercream, shortening can make the frosting more stable and less likely to melt in the heat.

However, despite these benefits, many bakers prefer to use butter in their recipes because of its superior flavour.

Bakers lack a background in baking

Wedding cakes have a reputation for tasting bad, and one reason for this is that many professional wedding cake bakers lack a background in baking. They may be decoration hobbyists, art majors, jewellery makers, or even dentists, but they are not trained bakers. This means that they may not have the necessary skills and knowledge to produce cakes that taste good.

Wedding cakes are often made with fondant, a super-smooth mixture of glucose and vegetable shortening, which is valued for its neat appearance but is not particularly tasty. Fondant is often used by bakers who are focused on decoration rather than flavour, as it is easy to work with and creates a smooth, flawless finish. However, it can taste bland and artificial, and some people find it unpleasant or even inedible.

Another reason why wedding cakes may taste bad is that the traditional methods used to create them prioritise structure and stability over flavour. Large, tiered wedding cakes need to be structurally sound, so bakers often use recipes and techniques that ensure the cake can support its own weight. This can result in cakes that are dry, dense, and lacking in flavour.

In addition, the filling and frosting choices in wedding cakes can also affect their taste. Some bakers use overly sweet fillings, such as supersweet fruit fillings or extremely sweet buttercream made with shortening instead of butter, which can be cloying and unpleasant. The focus on creating a stable cake structure can also lead to a lack of moisture in the cake, resulting in a dry and crumbly texture.

Finally, the unique challenges of baking a large, tiered cake can also contribute to the bad taste of wedding cakes. Baking and assembling a large cake is a complex and time-consuming process, and it can be difficult to ensure consistent flavour and texture throughout. The cake may also need to be baked in advance to allow for cooling and decoration, which can affect its freshness and overall taste.

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