Cake trends are always changing, new cakes are being developed daily, along with some fantastic new designs. Their success is often based now on their popularity via social media channels. Instagram is a great place for cake inspiration, a mixture of professional and hobby bakers share their designs on public platforms to display achievements and to gauge peoples interest in new designs.
When a lot of people enjoy a certain design, they will often share it with friends or even attempt to replicate the design themselves. These are a mixture of new birthday cakes trends in 2020 or the latest wedding cake trends in 2020.
So, here are some of the trending cakes from the first half of 2020:
Geode Cakes
These amazing cakes are a type of illusion cake. To create these gorgeous cakes, it’s a case of creating a standard beautifully flavoured layer cake. Once you’ve created the sponge cake, you’ll need to sandwich buttercream between the layers of sponge and then covering outside of the cake in buttercream as well and carve out a shape or the area that you want to create the geode illusion. Then you’ll need to put a thin layer of crumb coat buttercream and pop it in the freezer to set it. Then you’ll need to cover it with a second layer buttercream and back in the freezer for 5 minutes until its firm. Then you’ll need hard-boiled sweets crushed up into a mixture of medium and small pieces, which are placed and sticks to the buttercream in the shape that you have cut out. Finally, you’ll need some edible paint, which you mix with clear alcohol and paint the colour on to the crushed sweets. And the final touch which most people add is using edible gold lustre mixed with clear alcohol again to create a gold paint, which is painted along the edges of the geode area.
Faultline Cakes
Faultline cakes are in a way, peekaboo cakes. The way they are created is by using the buttercream to create the illusion as opposed to carving out the cake. You create the standard sponge cake and buttercream layer cakes, cover the outside and top of the cake and put it in the freezer until it’s firm to the touch. You’ll then be able to place your peekaboo on top of the buttercream, around the centerline around the cake. This can be anything you like to put your own spin on it, some use the buttercream palette painting, some use hundreds of thousands, others use rice paper with a printed image. You really can make these cakes your own. Once you have placed your reveal, you’ll need to pipe a buttercream line at the top and bottom of it. This will help to prevent your buttercream from fully covering it. Then you can put your second layer of buttercream on the top and bottom of the cake and put it in the freezer again. As a finishing touch, you can either use the geode effect with crush boiled sweets or painting the edges of the Faultline with gold edible paint.
Geometric Cakes
Sharpe edges – that’s the theme for these cakes. It can be the whole cake or the illusion of the shape edges using elements like chocolate work or sugar paste. Some make a whole tiered cake geometric while others just choose to make one layer geometric or use round cakes and add geometric elements. To create a geometrically shaped cake there are cake tins available to create shapes such as hexagons, alternatively, some choose to take a round cake and cut it into a hexagonal shape. The principal for decoration is standard covering them in buttercream to make sure that the edges are clean and crisp. Other’s may choose to use sugar paste or chocolate to highlight the edges.
Illusion Cakes
It takes a lot of time and patience to get the hang of these wonderful cakes. Illusion cakes are amazing, they are able to trick the eye into believing these cakes are something they’re not. To create these cakes, you’ll start off with standard cake sponge and buttercream, the size will depend on what illusion you are trying you create. For a tall or wide illusion, you’ll need several cakes and possibly some cake boards and dowels to support it, depending on the size. The idea is then to sculpt the cake into the basic shape and get it as smooth as you can. Some use a bread knife to carve, along with sculpting tools (like the ones you use for clay work and/or baking sculpting tools). Once you’re happy with the shape of the cake you’ll need to cover it in a thin crumb coat layer of buttercream and put it in the freezer to set it. Fondant then covers the whole of the cake; tools are used to gently shape the fondant to follow the lines of the sculpted cake. Some use coloured fondant to create the final illusions, while others use edible airbrush painting to finish their illusions.
Metallic Cakes
These cakes sound a bit strange, but they are actually trending very well for wedding cake designs this year. They’re simple in their construction, using round cakes with buttercream layers and buttercream surrounding the cakes on the sides and top. Then one the buttercream is set it will either be hand-painted or airbrush painted with edible metallic paint. There are variations of colours used, including gold, silver, copper, etc.
Painted Buttercream Cakes
An artistic twist to create beautifully handcrafted cakes. As above with the metallic cake, the inside of the cake is a normal sponge (of any flavour) with buttercream covering it. The design is completely different, however. The outside is designed intricately using coloured buttercream applied with a palette knife, to create an almost oil painting effect on the outside of the cake. The designs vary but a lot of the designs we’ve seen are beautiful floral designs. These really are stunning, elaborate, yet strangely subtle in their own way.
Trending Cake Flavours
Every year there are a variety of new cake flavours coming to light, from people experimenting with new combinations. There will be other things that influence trending cake flavours, for instance after the Royal wedding of Harry and Megan, there were many people who wanted a lemon and elderflower cake.
We are constantly looking to expand and develop new flavours for our cake range, so why not take a look to see what flavours we have on offer. We have a great range of standard cake flavours, along with gluten-free cakes and vegan cakes. Our cakes taste as good as they look – we believe in beautiful simple cakes that taste amazing.
We are excited to see what new cake trends that emerge throughout the rest of the year.