Wedding Cake Alternatives for Your Reception

By: Alexine

While wedding cake is a great traditional desert and masterpiece for your reception it is not always the most desired desert. There are many delicious treats out there that you might want to indulge in instead of a cake. To help determine if you want to venture outside the box when it comes to wedding cake I came up with some alternative deserts for your reception.

Whipped Mousse Tower

This idea was inspired by the champagne flute tower with a different technique of filling the glasses. Instead of a champagne tower you could have a tower of round wine glasses filled with your favorite flavor of whipped mousse. If you do not know what flavor to choose that everyone will enjoy, you can have a double layered glass of chocolate and vanilla topped with a slice of strawberry or shaved chocolate. This desert is sure to put a smile on everyone’s face.

Ice Cream Cake

Who doesn’t love a delicious layered ice cream cake with cookie crunch layers and fudge frosting. You would not be able to display the cake at your wedding reception for long but if the venue had a walk in freezer this would be a great option. Just wheel it out on the table right before you cut into the layers of ice cream and dive right in. Although it would be hard to have this cake sit out for any period of time I don’t think there will be any left by the time it was going to melt.

Tiers of Truffles

If you shop around town there is sure to be a truffle maker close by in a bakery or sweet shop. You can substitute having cake and indulge in a variety of delicious truffles on your wedding day instead. There are a variety of three and four tier serving dishes to display the truffles on to give the appearance of layers. This is an easy desert that you could quickly put together yourself for the wedding reception.

Ice Cream Social

Instead of doing a formal desert that is served to your guests at the reception you can have and ice cream social. In other words a special ice cream buffet with different flavors and fun things to mix in. There are ice cream shops out there that do this so you might be able to hire them to come and make custom ice cream mixtures for your wedding guests. However, you can also set up a similar thing where the servers mix the ice cream and then put it in the bowls or waffle cones for your guests. Either way it will be delicious.

Pastry Platters

This idea came from tasting those delicious Italian bakery sweets that include Bavarian cream, chocolate, nuts and other delicious ingredients. For the reception at desert time you could have a series of small platters with the pastries of them at each table. The platters could include éclairs, cannolis, ricotta tarts, nut horns and cream puffs. This is a great assortment that is sure to please all your guests.

Pick and Choose

While I many not of hit on the wedding cake alternative you were thinking about, hopefully this helps with the presentation and brainstorming. There are many sweets out there and these five are all great ways to have a different type of desert for the wedding reception. Have fun making your decision and remember to take the climate and venue accommodations into consideration. You wouldn’t want to have a desert disaster at the wedding.

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