How to Decorate Your Wedding Cake (and Desserts!) with Springerle Molds

Once upon a time, in the 1400s, Swiss and German bakers began making confections inside intricately carved wooden springerle molds. Today, there are hundreds of wedding-ready motifs that can fit any season, color palette, or personality. We put the classic casts to work to create fantastic favors and dress up desserts. The results are anything but cookie-cutter.

Winter Wedding Cake

Come cooler weather, bring on the starry skies, angelic choirs, and majestic evergreens. These iconic motifs are tailor-made for a wintry wedding and can decorate a variety of confections. For this peppermint-buttercream-filled cake, we imprinted fondant frosting with a snowflake-embossed rolling pin. Then, royal icing was used to attach fondant cookies, cast from springerle molds of snowflakes and the season's zodiac symbols, onto each tier. Love the look? See if your local pastry shop will embellish its specialties with a favorite mold (all molds in this story are from springerlejoy.com, unless otherwise noted).

The Details: Snowflake rolling pin, $29, algiscrafts.etsy.com

The detailed carvings on springerle cookies are amazing alone, but your caterer can elevate them even more by painting the details with luster dust or gel food coloring. Or for a fetching favor, tuck sugar, raspberry, and mint-chocolate cookies into glassine bags, keeping the pretty prints visible. Vancouver-based Butter Baked Goods topped their marshmallow-mint sandwich and coconut-cherry bar (bottom) with springerle trim (from $5 each). 

The Details: Christmas tree mold (cut from "Santa With Bag" mold), $36, fancyflours.com.

When dreaming up your spring wedding cake, think about the buds that are meaningful to you, like those in your bouquet or the first ones he gave you. Our orange-chiffon confection with mascarpone filling is adorned with birds, bunnies, and blossoms, including that wedding favorite, lilies of the valley, a symbol of purity and happiness.

April showers bring May flowers, such as tulips and forget-me-nots, which appear on the springerles atop these dessert-table treats. Serve tea cakes (topped with fondant cookies for extra panache), like these from Dragonfly Cakes in Sausalito, California, with coffee and—you guessed it—tea (from $5.50 each). You can take the molds literally, or choose flavors you love that jive with your color scheme: We used rose extract for the pink goodies; Key lime for the green; and lemon for the yellow. Together, they add up to a spread that packs a pastel punch.

Sun-drenched afternoons, a salty, seaside breeze—there's a reason the warmest season is fancy-free. Show off the fruits of your (planning) labor with a series of small wedding cakes that celebrate your theme at each table. Attendees will be thrilled to bug out, set sail, or be berry merry. Place individual cakes on each plate, or set a larger one in the center of the table for guests to share. A single cookie on top of the smaller confections also acts as a topper. For the larger, table-size cake, multiple cookies were placed around the tier's edge so that, once cut, each slice had its own little ladybug. If your party is outside, opt for hardy fondant frosting. It would be a buzzkill if the bee-adorned orange cake with chocolate buttercream melted in the heat.

The Details: Pineapple mold, $32, and bee mold, $21.50, fancyflours.com.

If you're throwing a wedding after Labor Day but before the holidays, showcase springerle molds displaying autumn's bounty (think pomegranates and mushrooms) on your dessert spread. Wheat, vines, and acorns make an appearance in the treats on our four-tiered stunner, but cute critters, such as gathering squirrels, are delightful toppers, too. Both the cookies and the frosting are marzipan, which comes by its warm beige color naturally. The seasonal flavors inside the tiers—spice cake with brown-sugar buttercream—guarantee that the confection tastes as good as it looks.

Brooklyn-based One Girl Cookies stuck baked springerle cookies on brownie bars with dulce de leche frosting (from $6 each). Hazelnut bars or shortbread would also make a delicious base. A cornucopia, symbolizing plenty, marks this small tartlet from New York City's Once Upon a Tart and cues the loads of flavor in store: pumpkin, cinnamon, and gingersnap ($12 each).

Styled by Kate Berry and Katie Covington. 

Cakes by Jason Schreiber. 

Cookies by Patrice Romzick. 

Art directed by Elisabeth Engelhart.