A little wedding cake on every table

Here's an idea I've been wanting to try, so I made a couple to show what it looks like: a small wedding cake on each guest table.

It does two jobs at once

Most centerpieces are something you look at and then take home or throw away. This one is part of the table setting and the dessert.

The tables are dressed before anyone sits down — no waiting for flowers to be delivered the morning of. Then when it's time for dessert, every table already has one in front of them. No queue at the cake table, no plating, nobody eating twenty minutes after everyone else.

It also means the couple can still have their own tiered cake to cut for photographs without needing it to feed the whole room.

Old-fashioned piping, on purpose

These are done in the vintage style — draped swags with fluted edges, ruffled garlands, rows of piped pearls, and a heavy shell border round the base. All of it in the same ivory as the cake underneath.

White-on-white is harder than it looks. There's no color doing any of the work, so every line has to hold its own shape or the whole thing goes flat and muddy. What you're actually reading when you look at it is shadow.

The style suits small cakes especially well. On a full-size tier this much detail can get busy; at this size it reads as jewellery.

What's inside

Carrot with vanilla buttercream frosting.

Want to talk about it?

If you're planning a wedding and this sounds like your kind of thing, ask me — how many tables you've got, what your colors are, and we'll work out what it takes. They don't have to be white.