Kensington Palace announced today that London’s Violet Bakery will have the honour of baking the royal couple’s big day dessert, which will be a “lemon elderflower”-flavoured concoction smothered with buttercream and topped with fresh flowers. Did someone say spring wedding? Yes, yes they did.
While we get that every second wedding you’ve been to lately probably had a similar-sounding cake on display (the rustic-chic trend refuses to die), this is a royal wedding. And royal weddings, history tells us, demand snow-white fondant, delicate embellishment and, in the case of Princess Diana’s 1981 wedding to Prince Charles, men in white hats.
Below, a comparison of royal wedding cakes for your perusal:
1/ Meghan Markle and Prince Harry
Violet Bakery pride themselves on rustic buttercream cakes made with seasonal, sustainable ingredients. Judging by their previous work, we can expect Harry and Megs’ cake to look a little like this:
2/ Prince William and Kate Middleton
Everyone’s favourite royal couple (oh wait… see above) opted for an extravagant eight-tier tower of a cake with all the trimmings (in fondant, of course) for their 2011 nuptials. The work of Fiona Cairns, it was made with the traditional fruit. That distant sound you hear? The Queen quietly clapping her approval.
3/ Princess Diana and Prince Charles
Princess Diana and Prince Charles’ five-foot-high fruit cake was topped off with a bouquet of red roses and baby’s breath (remember, this was the ‘80s). The head baker of the Naval Armed Forces, David Avery, was entrusted with its creation, for which he wore a chef’s hat and, for reasons unknown, a lab coat.
