One of my favorite things about our first wedding anniversary last month (in addition to our incredible Ojai trip) was eating the top tier of our wedding cake! If you haven’t heard of this tradition, it’s considered good luck to freeze the top tier of your wedding cake (only serving the lower, larger tiers to your guests) and then eat it—or at least some of it—on your first wedding anniversary.
I personally really dislike the taste of freezer-burned food, so I was pretty unsure how this would turn out. Would it even be edible after a whole 365 days in the back of our freezer? Somewhat unexpectedly, it turned out DELICIOUS! I was so happy with it that I wanted to quickly share how it worked in case it helps anyone else who wants to try this tradition.
The way I froze it: I placed the top tier (which our caterers wrapped up for us the night of our wedding, and Grace’s brother (and best man) carried back to his hotel refrigerator) into a large straight-sided bowl, and then fitted a large ziplock bag around the whole thing. Then I put rubber bands around the opening of the bag so that no air could get through. It was sort of a random way of packaging it, but it was the only way I could think of to cover the entire cake! The food storage containers I have just aren’t big enough, and I needed something solid and airtight. You could also purchase a large airtight container, I just didn’t think of this in advance.
The way I defrosted it: I think the method of defrosting is probably just as important as the method of freezing. I consulted my best friend on this, who happens to have gone to culinary school :) As Grace and I headed out the door to our anniversary weekend trip, I took the cake from the freezer (still in the container I mentioned above) and put it in the refrigerator. Then it had about 48 hours to slowly come to a cold, but not frozen, temperature. I think this gentle defrosting really helped preserve texture and flavor. When we got home from our trip on the afternoon of our actual anniversary, I took the cake from the refrigerator, removed the packaging around it, and placed it on a cake stand on the counter. Then it had a couple more hours to come to room temperature.
It turned out better than I ever would have expected! I honestly couldn’t tell it had been frozen for a whole year. I went into it thinking we’d just eat a couple of bites for good luck. As it turns out, we ate the entire thing over the next few days! Our top tier was a coconut-pineapple flavor, which reminded us both of our wedding and our honeymoon in Hawaii. I kept the cake in the fridge, covered, when I didn’t have it out to cut slices.
The way I styled it: Just to make it extra special, I decided to buy some small pink tulips and arrange them around the cake. I love small things like that :) Definitely not necessary, but it also was reminiscent of our wedding since our florist had styled our cake with our wedding flowers. Here’s how it looked that night:
Hard to believe that top tier is the very same one we ate last month. I also served it on a cake stand we received as a wedding gift from a family friend, so that made it extra special too!
I hope this post gives you some tips if you want to try out this tradition! If you didn’t or don’t want to save your top tier, I also think a nice tradition would be to get cupcakes in your wedding cake flavor from your baker! Grace and I plan on doing that in anniversaries to come! Our other flavors were red velvet (bottom tier) and carrot cake (middle tier). YUM!