Wedding cakes and favours: hints and tips

What's in a wedding cake?
The classic wedding cake is a rich fruit mixture, either supported on columns or stacked in three tiers, and covered with marzipan and white royal icing.

Alternative wedding cake ideas
If fruitcake isn't to your taste, you can still have a traditional-looking iced wedding cake, but opt for an alternative filling, such as chocolate, coffee or carrot cake.

Less conventional wedding cake ideas include mini wedding cakes for each guest, or tiers of pastel-iced fairy cakes on a glass cake stand. Or go for a touch of continental chic in the shape of a French croquembouche—a pyramid of choux-pastry buns topped with spun sugar and caramel.

When to serve the wedding cake
Custom has it that the wedding cake is cut after the speeches, but if you are serving your cake as pudding, your caterers may ask you to cut it before, so they can take it away and cut it up to be served with coffee once the speeches are over.

Sorry you couldn't make it...
It's a nice idea to send small pieces of wedding cake to people who were unable to attend the wedding. Wedding stockists sell small cake boxes for this purpose. Include a picture of the happy couple cutting the wedding cake to give the recipient a glimpse of what the wedding day was like!

Saving the wedding cake for later
Tradition has it that couples keep the top tier of their wedding cake to serve at the christening of their first child. If you want to do this, first remove the marzipan and icing, then wrap the cake in greaseproof paper before storing it in a cool dry place.

Where do wedding favours come from?
Wedding favours originated in Italy, where they are called bomboniere and consist of a little bag of five sugared almonds, symbolizing health, wealth, happiness, longevity and fertility. Bomboniere are still popular today, but nowadays wedding favours can be any kind of small gift, edible or otherwise.

Edible goodies...
...make popular and delicious wedding favours. Consider shaped biscuits (hearts are an apt choice), cute iced cupcakes bearing the initials of the bride and groom, frivolous bags of colourful sweeties, or dainty boxes of indulgent chocolates.

The homemade touch
If you're on a tight budget, handmade wedding favours add a personal touch. Keen cooks can buy cute cookie cutters and bake their own biscuits or make chocolate truffles. Package them in cellophane finished with ribbons that tie in with your wedding colour scheme.

Alternative wedding favours
Tempting non-edible wedding favour ideas include scented gifts such as soap, votive candles, small envelopes filled with flower seeds, or a CD of the bride and groom's favourite songs.

Where to place your wedding favours?
Either position a wedding favour at each place setting or, for added impact, group all the wedding favours together on a table so guests can help themselves as they leave.