Top Cake Trends 2022

Archive note: This article records our cake-trend predictions for 2022, written as the industry was emerging from pandemic restrictions. Time-relative comments, demand observations and product references below reflect that period; current ranges and availability may differ.

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While 2021 may have been the hodge-podge in-pandemic-limbo year of brownie boxes, biscoff-this and biscoff-that, 2022 was already showing signs of a new lease of life for cake creativity. As we emerged out of lockdown and started celebrating more IRL there seemed to be a bigger appetite for celebrating in style, even if on a smaller scale.

These are our favourite predictions to make - what could possibly be more exciting than cake trends eh? Here were our predictions for the year:

Top Cake Trends of 2022

5) Sugar Free Cakes

Between lockdowns 1, 2, and 37, millions of borderline bananas were baked in banana bread, and we found lots of culture in loaves of sourdough. All of this baking may have been a great release for our cooped-up minds and for mental health in general, but many of us were also feeling as the saying goes, "a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!". Free-from baking had been on a steady rise anyway, and sugar-free recipes were gaining more attention with diets such as Keto and Paleo. Whilst we are Anges de SUCRE, aka SUGAR angels, hence only make sugar-full recipes (despite innocent requests to do otherwise), here's a recipe for a sugar-free chocolate cake that I tried and tested at the time.

4) Tiddly-Tiered Cakes

Events were still being cancelled or down-sized but cakes did not have to be. Our tiny tiered cakes had become increasingly popular. We barely sold any Tiddly Tiered cakes when we created them in 2017 and lo and behold, who knew a few years down the line that's how we'd be bringing home the dough!

They're the perfect size for when you don't want to sacrifice style, as the design shown served between 6-8 portions as a two-tier or up to 20 as three-tiers.

3) Cake-scaping

On the other end of the extravagance scale was cake-scaping. Where traditional tiered cakes have whole layer cakes in varying sizes stacked vertically on top of each other, this modern style has them arranged on one board. What it lacks in height in comparison to tiered cakes, it more than makes up for in creative decorating potential.

This simply comes down to the large amount of surface area created by not stacking the cakes, hence cake-scaping can be just as dramatic, if not more, than traditional tiered cakes. Just see how fabulous these examples look!

2) Rainbow Cakes

Yeah, yeah, it was not a new trend. Rainbow cakes had been around for decades. It may have been pushed to the background by the health-police for all the offending food colours, but there's nothing that cheers the big kid in all of us more than a bright rainbow. Rainbow Cakes, the brighter, the better, were back. I was already hating the amount of washing up (but the sight of the cakes was worth it!).

1) Meta Cakes

Cake was simply not enough. Hence we found ourselves, after a world-ripping pandemic, decorating cake with MORE cake. And more cake. What started as an innocuous enquiry turned into me creating a silly cake where a chubby unicorn is passed out in caked-out bliss, slumped against a MINI 3" cake, with a cupcake decorated with a teeny tiny slice of a MICRO-MINI 2" cake. Cake on a cake on a cake on a cake. The self-referencing Meta Cake. This may actually have been the best and worst cake trend ever. Still, better than a Geode cake surely!

And that brought us to the end of our predictions for cake trends in 2022. Let us know in comments what you'd like to see more of (or the back of) in cake.