Desserts are becoming increasingly lavish affairs, sometimes even the highlight, at wedding receptions!
JACQUELINE TAN tucks in.

LET THEM EAT CAKE
As weddings get more sophisticated, more couples are ditching dummy cakes for the real McCoy. While the traditional tiered design still has its following, wedding confections now come in all shapes and sizes.

Chef Markus and his team have dazzled with their fantastical designs such as a large tiered cake adorned with flowers that are moulded from icing sugar, a white castle confection complete with gates, moats and a drawbridge, as well as quirky 3-D cakes. Chef Markus has even created “his” & “hers” wedding cakes, such as a red Ferrari car accompanied by a Louis Vuitton bag.

If you love flowers, a wedding cake, with its large surface area, presents yet another platform to add on your favourite blooms.

SMALL IS GOOD
In the US, the current trend at wedding receptions is to serve miniature cakes as desserts, a practice which has found its way here. Miniature cakes are not only pretty to look at (in fact, they usually look too good to eat), they are also much easier to stomach at the end of a filling eight-course meal. Flavours have evolved from chocolate and dried fruits, to Grand Marnier, floral and everything in between.

“Even though chocolate is still an all-time favourite, floral flavours such as rose, violet and hibiscus are becoming very popular,” says pastry chef Pang Kok Keong of Canele Patissiere & Chocolaterie.

Chef Pang loves experimenting with flowers, not just in cakes but in chocolates and macaroons. “The floral extracts lend a light lovely fragrance and a sweet, romantic touch,” he says.

DESSERT STORM
If you want to leave a lasting impression, it’s hard to go wrong with a dessert buffet. Over at the Grand Hyatt, Chef Gottfried Schuetzenberger gets “requests for dessert buffets for every other wedding”. And at the Conrad Centennial Singapore, about 25 per cent of the 200 weddings held last year featured dessert buffets.

From the ubiquitous chocolate fountain to delectable French pastries, luscious homemade ice cream and pudding, you’re basically limited only by your budget.

Brides like Cheng Siew Lee decided on a dessert buffet as it gave her and her husband a chance to interact with their guests in a more relaxed atmosphere. “We wanted to mingle with our relatives and friends after the dinner, and the dessert buffet was a great way to get our guests to stay, instead of scooting off early,” says Siew Lee.

Pastry chef Tan Siang Yee of The Patissier wowed her guests with some 20 varieties of desserts at her wedding. “I wanted to treat my guests to something different at the end of the meal,” says Siang Yee. “So I worked with my team of five pastry chefs to create a dessert buffet featuring the works!”

For mixed marriages, a dessert buffet is a great way to showcase the different cultural backgrounds of the couple. Chef Gottfried, who clinched the Cacao Barry Pastry Chef of the Year title at the World Gourmet Summit this year, produced an awesome spread of traditional Italian sweets and pastries and local Chinese desserts for an Italian-Chinese couple.

Your choice of dessert also depends on whether you’re having an indoor or outdoors do. Mousse and cream do not hold well in the open, so consider “live” stations offering desserts made a la minute such as souffle, crepe or flambe.

 

For more, get your copy of Her World Brides Jun-Aug 08 issue.