The icing on the cake at Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s wedding? It was, indeed, the cake: A delicious five-tiered ivory-colored white chocolate mousse decorated with marzipan roses encircling the bottom of each tier.

Cutting and eating it became their special day’s grand and sweet finale. Not only was it color-coordinated to match her Armani-designed gown, but the dessert, which looked like a hoop skirt, had been prominently displayed on a table filled with white flowers.

Would any of their guests have left without a taste? Of course not. That wouldn’t have cut it.

But you don’t have to be a celebrity to have a memorable wedding cake. Local pastry chefs say the days of cardboard-flavored white cakes with bland icing and a plastic bride and groom on top are long gone. Advances in baking and decorating have opened a flood gate of design, flavors, colors and toppers.

Brides and grooms often want today’s cakes to have the “wow” factor. They figure, why not send guests home with a good taste in their mouths?

“The wedding cake should be the big bang at the end,” agrees pastry chef Victoria Kenyon, owner of Ashaway’s Toria Dolce ( www.toriadolce.com). “The cake should be unique, different and taste fabulous. It’s the ‘tada.’ ”

Since 2003, Kenyon has whipped up more than 50 wedding masterpieces. Few of them, she said, were traditional. All of them reflected a couple’s sugar-coated dream of how to round out the special day.

“The sky is the limit nowadays,” said Kenyon. “The wedding cake should be consumed, and the couple should be very creative about it.”

She said she once fashioned the pleating in a bride’s gown and the theme of the invitation into a cake. It had lots of color, including periwinkle pleats, a sage-colored bow and small flowers.

Kenyon has cooked up the French version of a wedding cake, which is called a croquembouche. It is a cone-shaped cake of profiteroles, a crème-filled pastry usually flavored with liqueur and glazed with caramel. She created a groom’s cake to look like a wheel of Jarlsberg cheese featuring tiny gum-paste mice. She has accommodated brides who wanted cupcakes, and those desiring individual cakes on each table (they doubled as centerpieces).

As for fillings, Kenyon said there are endless possibilities. She recalled creating a filling of white chai tea blended with white chocolate and fresh blackberries. Other brides have had tiers with alternating different fillings.

Her cakes frequently are dolled up with fruits, flowers, seashells, ribbons or designs out of fondant, which is a dough-like icing of sugar and water that is easily fashioned into flowers or a bow. These days, the once-traditional plastic bride and groom cake toppers are usually only used by couples who have picked one up a vintage one at a flea market or want to use the one their parents or grandparents used.

Kenyon, who has a licensed professional kitchen in her house, recommends couples visit her a few times to taste-test cakes. She charges about $4 per guest, and takes charge of setting up the cake at the venue the day of the wedding.

BARBARA BRAUNSTEIN’S daughter Dania had no intention of having an all- white wedding cake, said her mother. The cake ended up with oodles of flowers cascading down five tiers. The flowers were the colors of her wedding: green, purple, pink and orange. Alternating tiers were filled with either a lemon filling or chocolate-raspberry.

Mark Soliday of Confectionery Designs ( www.confectionerydesigns.net), a Johnson & Wales University professor, designed Dania’s cake. Barbara, who lives in Massachusetts, compared Soliday’s work to that of an artist.

“Essentially, he baked a white cake, which became his canvas,” she said. “He paid attention to detail and gave my daughter exactly what she wanted.”

Braunstein stumbled onto Soliday — who with his wife, Marie, runs his company out of a professional kitchen on their Rehoboth property — when searching for a baker who could guarantee no cross-contamination with nuts. Her son-in-law has a nut allergy, and most bakeries, she found, used nut products. “Not all of them could guarantee non-nut-contaminated cooking equipment,” she said.

Now in his fifth year, Soliday, who charges about $6 per guest, said that cakes have become “a personal expression and dramatic. In the last three years, I’ve noticed that we have started planning them with brides andgrooms six months in advance. It used to be cakes were left to the last minute.”

He added that more than half of his cake-making tools come not from a cooking store but from Home Depot or Lowe’s. “Hand me a paint chip, and I can re-create the color,” said Soliday who added that he can whip up any filling, from a comfort flavor such as chocolate or peanut butter to an exotic Brazilian dulce de leche. “All I need is a flavor profile, and anything is possible. If it’s grandma’s cookies, (then) just hand me the recipe.”

Several brides asked him to sculpt the cake to look like their gowns. For one, he developed the top two tiers as the bustier. He pressed tulle onto the cake to create texture. The bottom tiers re-created the skirt. He topped off the design with a giant chocolate sash and oversized bow.

“We will go as crazy as you want to go,” he said. “The important thing is that the cake tastes good, reflects the bride and groom, and turns out how the bride and groom wanted it.”

WHY HAS THE WEDDING cake taken on a larger-than-life role these days?

The answer, according to Soliday, is the media. He said such channels as the Food Network have piqued the public’s interest in unique food presentations. “Between competitions and shows, people have become savvy about flavor and design.”

Rose Runte, a sales executive for Tiffany in New York City, told Soliday that for her cake she wanted something that would stand out. “All wedding cakes are the same,” she said. “It was important to us that we had something people will remember.”

She designed a salmon and terracotta-colored cake with each of the four tiers a different shape: round, square, pentagon and rectangle. She wanted two fillings, tiramisu and Bailey’s Irish cream, to reflect her husband’s heritage. On one tier she wanted gold stripes; the bottom layer would have their initials. On top would be a roses-and-fruit arrangement.

Runte found cake-maker Soliday after doing some research. She wanted a baker who would be able to coordinate with the florist and caterer.

“He was open to any idea,” she said. “We felt comfortable with him, and he kept us informed by sending mock-ups and showing us the layout beforehand.”

Runte said that it’s critical for brides and grooms to only use a baker who offers delivery and set-up services. “Find out how close to the reception they deliver the cake,” she said. “If you want to incorporate flowers, then find out if they can work with the florist.”

CHEESECAKE ANYONE?

Gianfranco Campanella of the Providence Wedding Cake Company and the corporate chef at Mediterraneo on Federal Hill said that about 20 percent of his wedding cakes are cheesecakes. He also makes wedding carrot cakes.

“Whoever orders cheesecake will go for funky flavors like Creamsicle, key-lime and piña colada,” said Campanella, who charges about $3.25 per person with a minimum of 100 guests. “Many brides incorporate ribbons and want the cake color-coordinated with the wedding.”

Mini-Adirondack chairs, shells and sun and surf continue to be themes that Audra Lalli of Newport’s Mad Hatter Bakery places on her creations. She has baked up more than 200 wedding cakes during her nine years of business. She has incorporated ribbons and appliqués and used polka dots.

She created a rocket ship-shaped cake for a couple of rocket scientists, recreated the Newport Bridge; fashioned skulls from icing for a Grateful Dead-theme wedding, and painted clouds and blue sky for pilots tying the knot.

But Lalli agreed with area chefs that while the cake may look marvelous, it must have flavor too. After all, one wedding tradition that has yet to go out of style is freezing the top tier to eat on a couple’s first wedding anniversary. And, given today’s cake-making standards, oh, how good it will taste.