
Toasted Sesame and Citrus Wedding Cake
Everyone loves receiving a homemade gift, but how about a showstopping, two-tiered, citrus-festooned, sesame-laced wedding cake? With a little planning (and an organized freezer), it’s so much easier than you think. Thin, even layers of vanilla sponge cake, soaked with a vivid citrus syrup, are draped like lasagna sheets into pans, along with swaths of nutty sesame buttercream, charred citrus compote and a granola-adjacent sesame crunch. The cake rests while you do, then is removed from the pans, coated in buttercream, packed up and assembled the day of the wedding. There's no finer — or more delicious — way to allow the effort, care and creativity of its maker to come through. And don’t forget to save and freeze the excess cake scraps for ice cream sandwiches, trifles or snacking. For the equipment you’ll need to put this cake together, check our Wirecutter’s recommendations for baking essentials and cake decorating tools.
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