Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran

This year will see a shift away from pas­tel-coloured cakes and an em­brac­ing of dra­mat­ic colours. You will see turquoise, coral, pur­ple, green, blue, and or­ange-coloured wed­ding cakes. How­ev­er, black and white cakes, ac­cent­ed with bold, coloured ac­cents (think: red, hot-pink or vi­o­let flow­ers), will al­so be pop­u­lar this year.???

Here are some oth­er things we will see:

De­tails

Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of bridal fash­ion, cakes are go­ing to be pret­tied up with pleat­ing, ruf­fles and bow de­tails in fon­dant.

Retro styling will al­so be in vogue, and it will not be strange to see 2010's cakes gussied up with de­tails like pol­ka dots, graph­ic-in­spired na­ture de­signs, stripes and plaid ef­fects. Gold or sil­ver sug­ar plaques, fea­tur­ing mono­grammes, will al­so be styl­ish this year, as well as hand-paint­ing on cakes, us­ing ed­i­ble gold leaf and ed­i­ble paints.

A rev­o­lu­tion­ary new shape

Move over mi­ni-cup­cake, and make way for the "cake ball" which has a very sim­i­lar shape to choco­late truf­fles. Cake balls can be wrapped in fon­dant, driz­zled with glaze or iced. They are an un­usu­al twist over tra­di­tion­al cup­cakes.

Frost­ings

What will cakes be coat­ed with this year? Most prob­a­bly but­ter­cream and fresh fruit. They are both more eco­nom­i­cal op­tions than fon­dant. Many peo­ple even say they pre­fer the taste of but­ter­cream over fon­dant. But­ter­cream, how­ev­er, won't be suit­able for out­door wed­dings–it will melt! How­ev­er, fon­dant will con­tin­ue to have its fol­low­ers, since noth­ing can beat it for its pris­tine smooth­ness and ver­sa­til­i­ty in de­sign.

Oh, so high!

This year, we will see an in­crease in the num­ber of cake lay­ers, to an av­er­age of about five to sev­en or more. Cakes will al­so be taller and nar­row­er.

What's keep­ing com­pa­ny with the cup­cakes?

Some cou­ples are choos­ing new con­fec­tions for their "cup­cake tree" or tow­er, such as: mi­ni-�clairs, tiny cheese­cakes, tarts and cin­na­mon rolls.?

Choco­late de­tail­ing

All-choco­late cakes, both in­side and out­side, will be in vogue this year. These cakes will fea­ture de­tail­ing such as choco­late flow­ers, dots, curls and sticks.