Another post about cake :)

Frequently I get newsletters from theknot.com. Not quite so many that I feel spammed, but regularly enough to only skim them. Today’s email contained a newsletter – not sure how often this comes out – that informed me that one of the choices we made for our cake is one of 7 (New!) Cake Trends. See for yourself:


Go figure. I don’t know if its brides flexing their recessionista muscles, or people are finally starting to admit that fondant is lovely to look yet more expensive and funny tasting, but I’m glad to see that the sage advice of icing your cake in buttercream is finally becoming mainstream. We picked buttercream for our cake only because I looove buttercream. The fact that it’s more reasonably priced is just icing on the cake (pun intended – lol).

If you’re interested in viewing the other trends you can check them out here. All this talk of cake is making me hungry. Off to see if there’s one last slice of strawberry layer cake…

♥

Idunno about you, but I need a visual.

I don't know if you noticed, but I failed to mention what I want the cake to look like in my last cake post. The cake design is just as important to me as the contents, and I knew I'd need a visual aide to explain my vision to the baker. So I threw this together in PowerPoint:

click to enlarge
Basically, its my two favorite cake inspiration pics, and an explanation of which aspects of the inspiration cakes that I'd like our cake to have. I also included a small picture of our cake topper so that the baker could see it without me having to tote it around. Here's a larger one.

I made the cake topper using some wooden letters from Michaels, a thin wooden dowel (divided into 3 pieces), metallic green acrylic paint and a little bit of high gloss sealant.

Making these was a really simple project. First, I sanded and painted the letters, then I used hot glue to attach the dowels, and finally I spray painted the letters with the high gloss sealant. The whole project took me less than a couple of hours, and only cost me about $6. I think they're going to be really cute on the cake, and are very similar to the topper from one of our cake inspiration pics.

I was able to leave a copy of our cake planning sheet with Lorene and I'll have a copy in my wedding planner. I'm thinking about updating it to include the cake dimensions and flavors (may as well be thorough, right?). I highly recommend pulling together a comprehensive visual aide when you go speak with your vendors. If you don't know what you like, that's one thing. But when you know what you want, I think it helps your vendor if you can connect the dots between your inspiration pictures so they'll have the vision too...in your own words.

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We Got a Cake!

Today, MamaP, my BFF Brew (who's also a groomsman) and I went to have a cake tasting. MamaP suggested Lorene from Lorene's Loving Oven to bake our cake because she'd had Lorene's pies when my uncle passed away several years ago and was impressed by the quality. Lorene is a professional baker whose product really does taste homemade.

I was a bad bride, and didn't take any pics at the tasting - of the adorable little cakes she served, or us eating said adorable cakes. When I stopped by on Tuesday (on a whim) She asked what I'd be interested in tasting and I told her we wanted to taste the standards, as well as their specialty: butter pecan. She also did a small cake in fondant, because I told her I wasn't wild about it and MamaP and Brew had never tasted it. The verdict? It tasted better than I thought it would, but it still felt a little weird in my mouth. Like, the texture is so different from the rest of the cake, there's a little fondant left in your mouth that you have to kinda chew separately.

When I say it that way, it sounds gross, doesn't it? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound gross.

Anyway, we (mostly me) ultimately decided to have three tiers: the bottom tier will be a white cake with refreshing lemony custard filling. The middle tier will be red velvet with creme cheese frosting in the middle, and the top tier is chocolate with a fudge filling. The whole thing will be covered in vanilla butter cream.

As much as I love our cake, we are almost doubling our cake budget. And I cant pretend to be thrilled about that. As many of you know, the plan from the beginning was to get our cake from Publix. I love Publix. But as we moved along, the idea of getting our wedding cake from (my favorite) grocery store became more unsavory. I thought talking to the baker would make me feel better, but it just made me more uneasy. I was looking for someone to bake our cake without realizing it. So when MamaP suggested Lorene, and the cake was delish, I was sold.

I'd love to say we'll find some where to cut so that we can afford our cake. But we might not...and were getting it anyway. The deposit is paid. It is going to be SO GOOD. So good that people are going to be trying to take cake home. You'll see.

How do you feel about cake? Do you love cake too? Are you making it a priority at your wedding or are you willing to spend a little less so you can spend a little more elsewhere?

♥

This looks yummy!

While spending a little quality time with Google Reader this evening, I ran across this lovely confection:

(Image source)
Its got the classic simplicity vibe I'm going for, and as a bonus its like I conjured the cake myself: It has a solid line detail at the bottom of each layer, white hydrangeas, and letters for the cake topper. I know I haven't told you much about our cake topper, aside from the fact that I made it (did I even tell you that? lol), but take my word for it...ours is fairly similar with one important difference. This cake appears to be covered in fondant - which is NOT going down at our wedding. Buttercream for me, thank you very much. And I'd want to do ribbon at the bottom of each layer rather than (again) what appears to be fondant.

Anyway, this cake makes me swoon. And I just had to share. As Rihanna would say its "posted-up at the top spot" on our list of cake possibles.

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Cuts like...a knife!

Mornin ya'll!

I know I've been super scarce this weekend - I'm in Columbia kickin it with the PHI. Anyway, I'm stopping in this morning to share something I'd been pondering for quite a bit: the cake cutter set. When I first started looking, I really fell in love with this Things Remembered set:

(Everlasting Love Server Set at Things Remembered)

It has hearts, and its not too gaudy or over the top...its all on sale for $39.99. Yes you heard me right, that's its sale price.

If I werent living on a graduate student's pay, I would totally get this one:

(Love Knots Cake Knife and Trowel Set by Vera Wang)

Again, absolutely fabulous, right? But at $60 for the set, the chances of you spotting this at my wedding reception are even slimmer.

I know, what a silly thing to be concerned about. The ones above are gorgeous. But Practical Patti starts to nag at me when I'm shopping. Her/my issue: how many times are you really going to use an engraved cake cutter set?

Of course I cant answer that.

And the rationale is, if youre going to spend all that money on something like that (were talking at least $30 for the simple ones - which may or maynot include the engraving), you should be using it on the regular. I'm a baker - I bake cakes/cupcakes/pies on the regular. I could always go for a good long knife that will allow me to seamlessly move through yummy baked goods with the greatest of ease (think: trapeeze...cake trapeeze - lol!). Mom/Dani and I had decided that a good cake knife is always good. A knife that is dedicated only (mostly) to cakes could get some good use. That trowel thing seems more aptly suited for a sweet potoato pie. In n fact, thats what mom uses hers for. Again, I'd totally get use out of it, but I cant actually see using it on my wedding cake. Do people do that? Plus mom mentioned that of all the weddings she's been to, she cant ever remember seeing the cake set.

Sadly, I hadn't either. That was the last nail in the cake cutter set coffin.

However, because of the before mentioned reasons, I see great value in a good cake knife and set out to find one that was lovely, could be used again, and could be easily dressed up with some ribbon or something tied around the handle.

Enter our Bed Bath and Beyond registry. Our BBB registry is china, bath items, bedding, and a few kitchen things. There are lots of nice things I'd love for our grown up house when I picture the PHI and I hosting thankgsiving/christmas dinner for the family. It also includes a pretty cute server set which....(wait for it)...has a cake knife as an option! I'll show it to you and then I'll tell you how much it costs, k.

(Gourmet Windmere Cake Knife available at BBB)

Simple? Check!
Easily dressed up? Check!
Matching other serving pieces! Check!
Will do a bang-up job cutting cakes? Check!
Price: $7.99 - Sold!

Yes, you read that right...$8. I'm so buying that when I get paid again. Not that I think they wont have it anymore, but my approach to these kinds of things is that I'll still need it 6 months from now like I need it now. May as well purchase it now if I have the cash. The set also has a trowel that comes with it, that if I remember correctly I have also registered for...for pies, not cakes - lol. FYI: I used a similar price-to-use ratio to make a determination about our toasting flutes, but I'll save that for another post.

How about you? Are you trying to find a happy medium between things you "need" for your wedding, things you can/will actually use after the wedding, and cost?

♥

Cake a year later?

Everyday I get emails from brides.com telling me about cool and unique things I can do to put our special touch on the wedding. A lot of them I save. Since its coming to my Gmail, I can easily add it to the wedding folder for safekeeping/searching when I come back to it.

Today I got a jewel. The PHI and I had totally planned to do the whole cake cutting thing and mom has asked what were going to do with that top layer of cake, considering we were planning to eat it (or at least try) on our first anniversary and would probably be leaving straight from the Palm beaches to go on our honey/mini moon. I didn’t have an answer really – I knew someone would figure something out or it would live in mom’s freezer indefinitely.

From brides.com:

Instead of freezing the top layer of your cake to eat on your anniversary, arrange for the baker to create a mini version of your wedding cake to be made one year later.

Genius, right?! I have no idea what it will cost, but considering one of my cake choices include a cake that Publix has in its special cakes booklet, I feel like they will be making it or something very similar for a while.

This may just work folks…I’ll keep you posted.

♥