10 Best Summer Wedding Cake Flavors in 2024

Heavy, overly sweet, rich cakes are best for winter. Summer cakes, on the opposite, tend to be light, airy, subtly sweet, and refreshing.

They often feature seasonal fruits or berries that add sour flavor undertones.

Key lime, orange buttermilk, lemon-meringue, and berry burst cakes are very different, but all share a flawless harmony of delicate sweetness, savoriness, and sourness.

The most sweet-toothed brides will appreciate coconut or banana-caramel cakes.

If fruits seem too obvious and thus an unexciting option for you, opt for herbs, florals, or pink champagne instead.

These ingredients aren’t common in wedding cakes but are surprisingly delicious, balancing between bitter and sweet.

1. Coconut Cake

Coconut flavor never fails to awaken images of a tropical paradise. And there’s no better time for a coconut cake than a summer wedding.

The variety of cake recipes featuring coconut is endless. The most traditional combination is a vanilla sponge of chiffon cake with coconut buttercream covered in coconut flakes. This totally white cake looks impeccably elegant and dreamy.

However, a coconut wedding cake doesn’t necessarily have to be white. Coconut perfectly pairs with strawberry, lime, mango, lemon, and a multitude of other fruits and berries.

Different layers combined create a real fruit burst and a lively color mix.

Of course, I couldn’t disregard one of the most celebratory coconut cake recipes – pina colada. This famous cocktail is made with rum, cream, coconut, and pineapple.

All pina colada ingredients are well suitable for a cake – even rum, though you should consider kids attending the wedding before serving a cake with some alcohol content. Thankfully, you can use rum extract instead of the real drink.

2. Key Lime Cake

Summer is the time for refreshing cakes, with slight sourness and light texture. Key lime cake fits this description perfectly. Such a creative wedding cake flavor is remarkable and irresistibly delicious.

Of course, a key lime cake doesn’t feature fresh lime slices inside but rather lime curd, lime jelly, or lime juice in the sponge. Vanilla buttercream ideally balances lime sourness and makes the cake texture smoother.

Lime sourness can also be balanced with sweet fruits such as coconut or other sweet ingredients, such as white chocolate or honey.

But if you aren’t a fan of sweet cakes and would like to enhance the sourness, opt for a lime-orange or lime-bergamot combination instead.

If you find buttercream or cream-cheese cakes too heavy for summer, ask your baker for a lime mousse cake. With a dreamy, light texture and subtle sour flavor, such a cake will be the perfect match for a hot summer day.

3. Lemon Meringue Cake

Lemon-meringue cake is a traditional recipe that’s extremely popular at summer weddings, and that’s no wonder. This mellow, juicy, lush flavor combination toes a narrow line between sour and sweet.

Lemon buttercream on poppy seed sponge topped with meringue is a timeless classic. However, you can also come across lemon-meringue cheesecakes, where lemon cream cheese on a biscuit base is combined with a thin layer of lemon curd.

Not only is the flavor of this cake remarkable. Lemon-meringue cakes have a distinct look with a burnished, textured surface. Such cakes typically feature minimalistic decoration, if any.

Due to its purposely imperfect beauty, classic lemon meringue cake is a perfect match for rustic or bohemian weddings.

4. Orange Blossom Cake

We’re continuing the citrus theme with an orange blossom wedding cake. Oranges are much sweeter than lemon or lime, so orange cakes aren’t sour but have a very subtle, balanced citrus note.

Orange can be mixed with an array of ingredients, including spices such as cinnamon and clove, honey and maple syrup, other citrus fruits, herbs, and almonds.

Depending on the chosen supporting flavor, you can achieve completely different results.

As the name suggests, the perfect decoration for an orange blossom wedding cake is orange blossom, fresh or made from chocolate or marzipan.

Talking about chocolate – orange goes well with all chocolate types. Orange cake with dark chocolate ganache or smooth dark chocolate coating has a slightly bitter taste, whereas white chocolate, on the opposite, makes any cake sweeter.

5. Strawberry Cream Cake

Name a better combination with strawberries than strawberries and cream, and I’ll give you an award. Jokes aside, these ingredients create a perfect flavor and texture harmony – dreamy, light, subtly sweet, but fresh.

Such a delicate flavor combination demands a puffy, soft base – regular sponge cake may seem too heavy. Vanilla chiffon is a much better option. Alternatively, you can opt for strawberry cheesecake topped with whipped cream.

The design of the strawberry cream cake should be airy and whimsical. Think naked layered strawberry cake topped with cream, fresh strawberries, and flowers.

If a plain strawberry and cream combination seems too boring for you, consider adding in some champagne for a puffier sponge texture and fresher taste or baileys liqueur for a smoother texture and sweeter taste.

6. Banana Caramel Cheesecake

If you have a sweet tooth and don’t fancy citrus or berries, I’ve got a perfect wedding cake idea for you. Banana caramel cheesecake is eminently sweet but not less summery than sour alternatives.

Regular caramel can be replaced with salted caramel or peanut butter for a more interesting, sweet and salty flavor mix. Toffee sauce is another alternative to caramel.

The perfect toppings for a banana caramel cheesecake are walnuts, almonds, marzipan flowers, or whipped cream rosettes with dried banana slices.

However, a naked, glossy caramel surface on such a cake looks no less appealing than intricate decorations.

7. Berry Burst Cake

You can’t go wrong with using seasonal crops in your wedding cake. For autumn, it’s pumpkin; for spring, it’s peach or pear; but summer is berry time.

Berries can serve as a classic vanilla buttercream wedding cake topping or be in the spotlight, added to the cream itself, or as an extra layer in the form of jam or jelly.

There’s no need to pick one or two berry types – mix them all to create a real berry burst wedding cake. You won’t go overboard if you pair berries with a classic layering, such as buttercream, cream cheese, or whipped cream.

8. Jasmine Green Tea Cake

Not all summer wedding cakes feature some sort of fruit. Jasmine green tea cake is a creative, remarkable option for brides who love to surprise others.

Jasmine green tea has a distinctly bitter taste and delicate yet invigorating floral flavor. The taste can be balanced with honey, cream cheese, or buttercream.

If you’re concerned about making green tea the key ingredient, ask your baker to add a layer of raspberry jam or lemon-ginger curd. These ingredients will add new flavor undertones and make the cake even more colorful.

Jasmine green tea cakes are typically lively green, brighter than pistachio but lighter than matcha cakes. Thus, the best colors for decorations are white, pink, and yellow.

By the way, if you don’t fancy jasmine tea, you can replace it with matcha or wasabi. These ingredients have an even stronger and more unusual taste. However, this makes them a risky option for a wedding cake, so you should find a skilled baker.

9. Citrus Herb Buttermilk Cake

From the first glance, citrus herb buttermilk cake may seem like just another variation of orange or lemon buttermilk wedding cake. But citrus isn’t the key ingredient in this recipe.

Some may consider herbs an odd choice for a wedding cake. However, not all herbs are the same. The best herbs for a cake are what I call sweet herbs, including lemon balm, lemon verbena, some types of mint, and lavender.

More conventional herbs such as basil, bay, chervil, fennel, rosemary, sage, and thyme can work well in cakes, too, if used wisely.

Citrus fruits are the safest option for a herb cake, though some sweeter fruits, like apricot or pear, are also a great choice.

Regardless of the specific flavor combination, the mix of fruits and herbs in a wedding cake is unusual and impeccably sophisticated.

Such a cake demands an equally elegant design – a plain, smooth white surface topped with fresh herbs and fruit slices is a great example.

10. Pink Champagne Rose Cake

Pink champagne wedding cake screams “celebration!” featuring airy, puffy chiffon and delicately sweet, slightly bitter champagne buttercream. Such a cake is already bound to cause a wow effect, but what if you add rose to the recipe?

Floral wedding cakes are rapidly gaining popularity, with the most common florals used in such recipes being lavender and rose. Rosewater has a distinct floral flavor that is not quite savory and not quite sweet.

Pink champagne chiffon cake with rose buttercream will deliver you a full sensory experience and will certainly be remembered by the guests.

Such a cake will be a perfect fit for whimsical weddings, especially if your dress is powdery pink.

The choice of decorations for such a cake is pretty obvious – something playful, dainty, and preferably pink.

Chocolate spheres resembling bubbles, macaroons, cream rosettes, or realistic rose flowers will look dreamy and give the guests a hint of the flavor.