Cake Poll

Hello, readers. It's been a long time since we had a poll post. This one is for those who have planned events that have already taken place.

Do you have any wisdom to impart on deciding on details about the (wedding) cake? Is it wiser to get just flavors you like or to mostly cater to the palettes of your guests? Did you end up with a lot of leftovers? How many people could your cake serve vs. the number of people showed up?

Planning Weekend Recap: Cake Tasting is a Gateway Drug

So this isn't so much a recap as a warning to those who have not gone through this yet.

This is your brain:

This is your brain on cake:

Our last cake tasting was almost two weeks ago and we haven't been able to get cake off the brain since! We've been able to be good, for the most part, but it's getting more and more difficult as time goes on. Last week we used the excuse of sampling the local cupcake bakeries to go and check out Polka Dot Bake Shop which is right around the corner (yes, trouble).

Douglas and I went in expecting to get maybe two cupcakes each to sample and enjoy. Once we got there and saw what was in the case, however, we were up to six or eight cupcakes we wanted to get (of course three of those were the grasshopper pie flavor - definitely worth it). Each cupcake is $2.50. We were so near to 10, which would have been $25, that I just decided to say "screw it" and get a dozen for the same price. We walked out of Polka Dot with a full dozen and included some chocolate-free ones for Louis to try. The full dozen made it home, but about four cupcakes didn't make it through lunch - two of them being the grasshopper pie flavor. The grasshopper pie is a chocolate cupcake with some milk chocolate in the cupcake with mint buttercream icing with an Andes Mint on top - and we all know what a sucker I am for Andes Mints *drool*. Getting that out of the way, I can now share the other flavors we tried:
chocolate with chocolate buttercream
chocolate with vanilla buttercream
yellow cake with chocolate buttercream
yellow cake with vanilla buttercream
red velvet with cream cheese icing
german chocolate cake with a coconut/nut topping
cotton candy (dyed yellow cake with pink sugary cotton candy flavored buttercream)

They were all quite tasty. The cotton candy one surprised me. It was very sweet, which was expected, but it wasn't overkill.

Of course, those were the offerings last Friday, and most of them are on the menu, again, for tomorrow. So tempting!

And then, of course, there's Just Baked on the other side of town.

They won me over with their chocolate maple bacon cupcake. It doesn't sound that great, but it tasted exactly like biting into a thick warm Belgium waffle, drenched in maple syrup, topped with a big pat of butter with a side of bacon. Seriously, my mouth is watering as I type this. If you like breakfast, you'll dig this cupcake. I'm really glad these guys are across town because I might become too much of a regular otherwise (did I mention they have Oregon Chai?). Flavors we've tried include:
chocolate maple bacon
signature chocolate
sugar cookie
vanilla vanilla
french toast
chocolate mint

Flavors we'd like to try include:
chocolate Amaretto
root beer float
churro
hot fudge sundae
campfire smores

Again, *drool*

Ever since doing our cake tastings and deciding on a baker, we haven't been able to stop thinking about how good the cakes by Lisa were and we've been having to try to compensate. The key is moderation, but we've eaten more cake in the past two weeks than we've had in probably all of last year. What can I say? We've tasted blood and we want more, more, MORE, MORE!

The upside is that I've learned that the cupcake shops here in Charlotte are much better than the ones in Georgetown. Georgetown Cupcake has a terrible icing to cake ration and their cake leaves a lot to be desired (dry, lack of flavor, etc.).  They appeared to be selling on icing and whatever they shoved into the icing as a topper. Baked & Wired had much better cupcakes than Georgetown Cupcake (also known as DC Cupakes). Neither, however, were as irresistible as Just Baked or Polka Dot.

If we resist going to either bakery tomorrow (they both have really good flavors on Friday), I might have to attempt to make my own batch of mint buttercream and whip up some cupcakes.

So, fair warning - when planning to do cake tastings, don't think that you'll only be bad during that day or weekend. It will stick with you until you O.D. and it's taking quite a while to O.D.

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.

Wedding Budgets: You Don't Know Jack!

I, as many others, used to sit back while watching wedding shows and scoff at how brides couldn't spend within their budgets. Heck, I still do! I about lost it the other day while catching "Rich Bride, Poor Bride" when the couple had $40 or $50K to spend on the wedding, fought each other about what got cut and what didn't, and still went $24K over budget (and they shrugged it off as if it was nothing because daddy was paying)! My head about exploded.

It took me a while to wrap my head around spending a few thousand dollars on one day; family gathering, celebrating, etc. granted - I still couldn't rationalize spending, essentially a salary, on that one day. While I still would balk at even thinking about spending $20K, I could easily be talked into it.

Our budget is no where near those numbers, but it's a budget that makes us happy. We are not lavish people and we aren't foodies, so there really isn't much for us to spend our money on, right? Ha! We are quickly learning how fast vendors want to eat your entire budget. Tell them you have $x to spend on their service, and they fire back with proposals that come in at least $1K over your limit. That's without tips, unpredicted expenses, and unrealistic estimates on how much people will drink (yes, I'm talking about a caterer).

To be fair, we are just starting out with some of these conversations with vendors, so we have yet to see how willing they are to work within our budget and how well they listen to what we want. However, with the estimates for catering, I'm already trying to rack my brain for other, more cost-effective, options.

Money goes quick when you're planning a wedding. On paper, we already have expenses divided between "budgeted for" and "out of pocket" expenses. So our budget is more for day-of expenses and vendors: venue, officiant, food, beverage, cake. Even with limiting the money to the day-of vendors, we're still left trying to figure out creative ways to get around the expenses we can't fit into the budget, or may have to choose between: like photography and entertainment. Yes, photography, due to the size of the expense for just day-of shooting, is on the chopping block. *tear*

Just looking at our big picture budget right now (we haven't gotten into the details of out of town bags or decorations yet), it's very easy to see how couples go over budget for their wedding in just trying to provide the basics for themselves and their guests.

While we wait for the caterers to revise their proposal and be in denial about the $4/glass of soda expense ($480 for soda, tea, and water?!?!), we will distract ourselves by choosing the combinations of cake and icing that we'll be trying from three various bakers. *drool*

Even for Classic Coke in a glass bottle, $4 is a stretch!

Speaking of yummy cake - here is the inspiration for our current cake design idea. *evil grins*

Bond Cake, James Bond Cake

My Sweet Tooth is Tingling

Oh yes. Your friendly neighborhood bakers have started to be contacted to schedule tastings! This has been one of the highlights of wedding planning that I have really been looking forward to. As much fun as the tastings are going to be, talking about our options and narrowing down our flavor choices is going to be painful...unless we have something to help us through it.

I recently dabbled with making whoopie pies. I am now very tempted to make way too many whoopie pies to try different cake and filling combos.

Devil's food with mint?
Yellow cake with almon?
Red velvet with chocolate ganache?
Marble with buttercream?
Chocolate with marshmallow filling and crumbled graham cracker topping?

See? You're drooling already and are mentally going through your kitchen searching for a snack cake.

On top of those big decisions, we also need to figure out how we want the cake to look. Knowing us, our preferences run toward the geeky.

Weighted from Companion Cube by Jet City Cakes

Threadcakes entry from 2009 "The Red"

 

 

I tried tracking down more geeky sweets to share, but had a hard time getting the permalinks from the flash-based sites. So, instead, I will point you in the direction of some blog posts on one of my favorite sites, CakeWrecks.

Star Wars Sweets

Mario Mania

Back to the Future

Cartoon Cakes (TMNT, Futurama)

and one of may favs

Gamer Goodness