Perhaps the "streets lined with gold" rumors that flourished during the Gold Rush were actually a response to the state's endless, green meadows covered in California's state flower, the golden poppy. Imagining the rich, golden orange of this flower is one way to begin seeing your California wedding cake. A cake adorned with poppies made of golden icing and accented with carved orange peels and lemon slivers can display a little slice of California. Or perhaps you'd rather embrace the strawberry fields of southern California and add the taste of locally-grown strawberries to your traditional white-cake mixture. Choosing flavors from California can only make your wedding cake taste even more divine.
Flavorful and Beautiful California Wedding Cakes
People have long looked to California as a place bursting with opportunity and renewed life. This entrepreneurial spirit can be reflected in the style you choose for your California wedding cake. Trendy southern California wedding cakes often have elaborate designs etched in contrasting icing patterns that race up the cake tiers. Adorn a wine-country wedding cake with twisting vines, green chardonnay grapes, and indigenous black walnuts. You can decorate a more rustic northern Californian cake with local berries, such as a jam-layered white cake filled with blackberries or boysenberries. For a soft touch, surround your cake tiers with the delicate pink of the well-known rhododendron found in the redwood forests, matched with some traditional pink roses.Of course, if you've already chosen a themed wedding in California, your cake may be embedded with sea shells and starfish carved in icing or perhaps palm leaves and birds-of-paradise. Choosing real, fresh flowers to adorn your wedding cake is actually less costly than the hours of labor a cake decorator would take to reproduce the same flowers in icing. Consider incorporating flowers among icing, such as traditional lilies cascading down your cake tiers with classic pearl beads encircling the cake's base and dotted in your chosen colors among the flowers. In the sunny state of California, no one will gasp at bright cake colors, so choosing an array of orange, yellow, and bright red flowers for your cake arrangement is a welcome feast for the eyes.
Choosing your California Wedding Cake Vendor
Like any business that contributes to your wedding, your cake vendor must have a strong, solid reputation and should have a history of making cakes for weddings and special events in your local area of California. Despite being told by your wedding planner that your cake vendor is the best around, you can still visit the cake maker's bakery to see portfolios of past cakes and to assess the friendliness and cleanliness of the business and the freshness and creativity of their cakes. Find out if your California cake maker can work within your budget to achieve the kind of cake you were intending, and if not, see if the cake maker has suggestions on how to cut corners. Many California couples now have a much smaller than usual wedding cake made up with lots of delightful, decorative toppings while also having several sheet cakes for guests made of the same cake and frosting flavors as the bride and groom's cake.Whether you go modern with a geometrically-pleasing Californian wedding cake that looks more like art than food, or you opt to enrich your traditional white cake with the California flavors of nectarine, grapes or blackberries, your California wedding cake will be the envy of your guests from the moment they spot it near the head reception table. And the best part about wedding cake is that you and your groom will be the first to cut through its perfect appearance and have the first mouth-watering taste!