Planning Weekend Recap: We have a Baker!

Hello, again.

If you've been following along, you know that this past weekend, Douglas and I went up to Roanoke for three days of nothing but meetings related to the wedding. We had appointments with the rabbi, a venue, a photographer, two catering options, and three bakers! Don't worry, we'll get to everything.

Let's start with the one part of wedding planning I was really looking forward to (and really enjoyed) - cake tastings! We chose bakers who all worked out of their own homes in Roanoke, VA.

Three bakers. Three days. Three tastings.

Unfortunately, Douglas and I didn't go into these meetings being as prepared as we would have liked to be. Typically, we'd come in with at least a rough idea of what we wanted. We came in with "we're not doing fondant" and that was about it. We had only started discussing the wedding cake, past the cake and icing selections for the tastings, a few days earlier and neither of us really had a strong idea of what we wanted. Luckily, all three bakers were fine with that. Being unprepared, we were able to spend more time talking about us and our ideas for the wedding so that the bakers could get to know us and our style instead of spending the time simply designing the "perfect cake". One of the bakers even emailed us a follow up pointing out how much she enjoyed the appointment because she got to know her potential clients.

Let's start at the beginning. I apologize for the lack of photos, but we were having so much fun, the cake was gone before I even thought about breaking out the camera!

Friday - Baker #1: Kelly's Cakes
For Kelly, we got to choose three types of cake and three fillings to try. She whipped those choices up as cupcakes which we then split.

Flavors sampled:

• Yellow cake with raspberry filling
• White cake with chocolate mousse filling
• Marble (chocolate/vanilla swirl) cake with an oreo cream filling

Highs and Lows:

1. All three flavors of cake were very tasty and moist.
2. The buttercream icing was sweet but not as sweet as you'd find on most birthday cakes.
3. The raspberry filling was also tasty, not too sweet.
4. The chocolate mousse was a let down as a filling. The mousse itself was quite tasty, but it just didn't do anything for us with the cake.
5. Kelly actually used a chocolate pudding with crushed oreos filling instead of the oreo cream filling for our tasting. This filling with the marble cake was very good! It ended up being our favorite combination from this tasting.
6. Kelly was very easy to talk to and had a photo album of past cakes for us to look through. 
7. Kelly's husband had a bookshelf full of zombie books which included the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. This endeared them to us very quickly.
8. Our meeting with Kelly had a very relaxed vibe to it. I felt like we were more likely to design something birthday cake-ish with Kelly. That wouldn't be a bad thing considering we're going for a relaxed and fun vibe for the wedding.

Saturday - Baker #2: Cakes by Lisa
For Lisa, we got to choose one cake and one filling to try. Lisa put this combo together in a 2 layer 6" round cake (essentially the top tier). If we wanted to try other combinations, she would make any additional number of cakes for $15/cake (cost of ingredients). We went with two combinations to try.

Flavors sampled:

• Devil's food cake with raspberry filling
• Marble cake with chocolate mousse filling

Highs and Lows:

1. Typically Lisa leaves the cakes out of the fridge for a while so that you are able to taste the cakes as they would be on your wedding day - at room temperature. Unfortunately, due to her busy appointment schedule that day, she wasn't able to have the cakes out for too long before our arrival.
2. The chocolate mousse was once again a disappointment as a filling. The mousse itself was very tasty but the cake with mousse filling was underwhelming.
3. The devil's food cake was by far my favorite cake out of the weekend. There is nothing quite like a well done devil's food cake. 
4. Douglas really enjoyed the raspberry filling which seemed to have been made from real raspberries (seeds and all). 
5. The buttercream icing was sweet but wasn't too sweet and was quite tasty. There was a proportional layer of buttercream icing to the cake and the combinations worked well.
6. Lisa had about four photo albums of previous cakes for us to look through. She had a decent variety of designs. After sharing our story of the ring Douglas used to propose, Lisa threw out the idea of doing sugar printing of some of our favorite comic book cells to drape over the cake. A very interesting concept.
7. The reason I pointed out the temperature factor in the first bullet is to point this out in this seventh bullet. We took what was left of the sample cakes home with us and left them out for the rest of the day. We then served them as dessert after a family dinner. The cakes were definitely at room temperature at that point. What a difference!!!! The cakes were phenomenal! All of a sudden, the mousse filling worked amazingly well with the marble cake. The devil's food with raspberry was devoured! There was barely a crumb left untouched of either cake by the end of the night. 
8. Our meeting with Lisa was relaxed but still felt a bit formal. The cake we started to design had more of a traditional feel to it with some quirky design features to give it personality. Also, not a bad thing since this is still a wedding. 
9. In discussing the chocolate pudding and oreo combination we had at our last tasting, Lisa left the table, grabbed the left over mousse from when she made our cake, crumpled some oreos into it and let us dig in! If you have an idea of something you want, she's game to try and make it work. While I'm not sure whether we'll be adding the oreos to our mousse filling for the cake or not, I can tell you that Douglas and I left no mousse left to get tossed out.

Sunday - Baker #3: Casey's Cakes
For Casey, we didn't have to make any decisions on flavors. She provided a spread of cake flavors with buttercream icing in the form of many cupcakes.

Flavors Sampled (of the ones we can remember):

• Raspberry cake
• Chocolate raspberry cake
• Blackberry cake
• Dreamsicle cake
• Amaretto cake
• Key lime cake
• Strawberry cake
• German chocolate cake
• Red velvet cake
• Marble cake
• Chocolate cake
• Almond cake
• Lemon cake

Highs and Lows:

1. Out of the three bakers, Casey's was the least sweet buttercream icing. It was still tasty, though.
2. The typical flavors didn't wow us: chocolate, yellow, marble. But some of the special ones did: raspberry, blackberry.
3. The cake was full of flavor. When biting into the blackberry cake, I felt as though I was one step away from having juice in my mouth! 
4. Casey had a large number of photo albums of past cakes for us to look through. Out of the three bakers, she had the most variety in her cakes flavor-wise and design-wise. I really dug her hexagon shapes, especially when she mixed them in with the standard rounds or squares. 
5. The feeling of this meeting was very laid back and casual. It was like sitting in a friend's kitchen and running with any idea you could come up with. This meeting was the only one where we ended up designing an entire cake. We were able to take elements from different cakes in her photos to put something interesting together. 
6. Since we had too many cupcakes to try during our visit, we were able to take some back with us to NC. On our trip back, Douglas and I weren't feeling too well and feared that it was the cupcakes that were upsetting our systems. We decided not to rule Casey out until we sampled the rest of the cupcakes after dinner. The cakes were still moist and full of flavor, but we realized that the flavors were simply too strong. They were fine for a bite or two, but no one could see anyone eating an entire slice of cake. 

Summary
No matter who we were going to go with, we learned that we would be looking at a 3-4 tier cake with buttercream icing and different flavors of cake on each layer. The cake would cost us less than $500 depending on the design work we would end up wanting. Cake delivery, set-up, etc. was all included in the cost and the top tier was always offered as a gift.

We learned that we do not like the idea of an all white cake. It needs some personality and color to it. We found some different ideas of designs and how to work in our wedding colors that we may/may not end up using in the long run. We won't be covering the cake in fondant, though there may be some elements of the decorations that may end up being fondant.

After taking a day to come off of our sugar high from days of eating cake and buttercream, we reviewed our experiences with each baker and what we thought of our samples. The choice was very easy to make for us and was based on the cake and icing.

Today we emailed Lisa to book her for our wedding! We have a baker! We enjoyed her cakes so much that we're already planning to ask if she'll do two more sample cakes for us to purchase for when we get all of the parents together in town for a sampling of the wedding menu. We can't wait! We ate so much cake from Lisa and never felt heavy, bloated, or overly full. Just typing about it is making me crave another slice of that devil's food cake!

Douglas and I got an added bonus while meeting with the bakers - insight into the local caterers. One name kept popping up as a highly recommended option. The catering story, though, is for another post.