It's mocking me

The top layer of our beautiful and delicious wedding cake is safely ensconced in several layers of Saran Wrap and nestled in a plastic container we got from the Container Store which happens to be the perfect size. It sits on the top shelf of our freezer.
The problem is that every time I open the freezer, it's sitting there, staring at me. It's calling to me, whispering, "Eat me!" a la Alice in Wonderland.

Source
I don't know if I can make it to our 1 year anniversary. Or more accurately, I don't know if our cake will make it that long.

I heart cake

This morning, through a fortuitous chain of events, Jakob & I were able to schedule a cake tasting. In case you're counting - yes, this is number 4. This one was with Colorado Rose Cake Company in Berthoud, Colorado. If you're planning a wedding in along the front range, this place is definitely worth a visit.

Their cakes consist of four layers of cake with three layers of filling. For information on cake. filling, and icing flavors offered, check out their Information page.

Our tasting this morning included seven yummy options:

(clockwise from top left): Butter Pecan cake with Bavarian Cream filling & buttercream icing, Yellow cake with Apricot Mango filling & whipped icing, Spice cake with Apple filling & buttercream icing, Pumpkin cake with Bavarian Cream filling & buttercream icing, Almond Poppyseed cake with Raspberry filling & buttercream icing, Almond Cherry Cake with Cherry filling & whipped icing, and Chocolate-Chocolate Chip cake with Mocha filling & buttercream icing. We were also able to try their cream cheese mints, which are sold by the pound and are used as favors for your guests.

Normally, Jakob doesn't like anything pecan, so imagine my surprise when he actually liked the butter pecan cake! I'm a typical Southern girl - love my pecans! Not so typical of the South is my love of mango, so of course I was excited about the second cake we tasted, yellow with apricot mango filling. Both of us liked this one too - looks like choosing may be challenging. Jakob adored the spice cake with apple - me, not so much so. Neither of us cared for the pumpkin. The almond cherry with cherry filling - I'll admit I was a little nervous about this one. The last time we tried a cake with cherry filling, we loved it but were afraid it may be too strong a cherry flavor for our guests; and this one was cherry cake AND cherry filling. Luckily it wasn't overwhelmingly cherry-ish! That only left the chocolate-chocolate chip with mocha. Both of us were trying to keep an open mind about the idea of chocolate cake, but I had barely started chewing when I blurted out, "Too much chocolate!" So, once again, chocolate was an easy one to scratch off our list.

Later, I will let you know which cake company we have decided to go with. First, let's talk about how I found the four companies where we scheduled consultations. First, we were given a list of preferred vendors from the Stanley Hotel, way back when we were going to have the wedding there. That's where I got the contact information for Colorado Rose and Kim & Company. Later, I decided I should broaden my search area to find more potential vendors. For that, I turned to my trusty friend Google. (Yes, when a question arises that I cannot answer, my response is almost always, "Let's Google it!") That's where I found Tee & Cakes and Cakes by Karen, both located in Boulder. Cakes by Karen actually has four other locations as well, one of which is in Denver.
Another invaluable resource has been the website for the Estes Park Wedding Association. I consider myself lucky that the town we chose for our wedding has its own wedding association & website with vendor listings. I highly suggest you check for the existence of one in your town. Before you think, "There's no way - my town is too small," let me tell you a little about Estes Park. Nestled in the Rocky Mountains, Estes Park has an area of just 5.9 square miles and its population in 2000 was just over 5,000 people. Granted, there are a lot of wedding there due to the beauty of the scenery and the ambiance of the town. But if there's one thing I've learned on this crazy roller coaster called wedding planning, it's that it never hurts to ask!

Previous cake posts:
C is for Cake (Cakes by Karen, Boulder/Denver)
Virgin Wedding (Tee & Cakes, Boulder)
It's Finally Here (Kim & Company, Estes Park)

C is for Cake

Jakob & I managed to squeeze in a cake tasting this morning between my manager's meeting at 9am and work at 1pm. Luckily, the bakery we went to has five locations in the Denver area. Cakes by Karen is a little more expensive than the other bakeries we've tried, and their delivery charge to Estes Park is the highest, but one of their flavors intrigued me, so I had to try it.
While driving home from work tonight, I realized that I've been telling you about the results of our cake tastings, but if you've never been to one, you may not know what to expect. In our experience, this is what typically goes on. Sometimes you're asked to look at the list of available flavors and choose the ones you'd like to try. At the tasting itself, cakes are brought out - often in the form of cupcakes. You are given time to taste the options and talk among yourselves before the baker or consultant discusses the nitty-gritty: pricing, servings, flavors, and decor. You are given the opportunity to ask any questions you may have. One thing I like to do is see photos of cakes actually decorated by the person who will be doing our cake. It's nice to look through a book of ideas, but if the person who will be decorating YOUR cake is unable to execute those designs properly, it's just a waste of time. And while, yes, I want our wedding cake to be delicious, I also want it to be beautiful.

Unlike our previous tastings, Cakes by Karen actually baked us an entire little cake in each of the flavors we chose to test out. A slice of each type was cut for each of us:

Strawberry cake with pineapple filling & champagne cake with strawberry filling.

Lemon cake with raspberry filling, white cake with cherry filling.

First up is strawberry cake with pineapple filling. Jakob LOVES pineapple, so I figured we should have at least one cake with pineapple something. He was a bit apprehensive about strawberry (pink) cake but after we tasted it, we really liked it, and he said he could get over the unconventional color in exchange for pineapple filling.
According to the person I spoke to from Cakes by Karen, champagne cake with strawberry filling is their most popular cake. Not so much for us. There wasn't anything particularly spectacular about it -in fact, something about the combo reminded us of Pez - great for candy, but kinda weird for cake.
The lemon cake with raspberry filling was totally for me. I love lemon cake as much as he loves pineapple. Originally I wanted to try the lemon cake with lemon filling, but was told that may be too much lemon. Too much lemon?? There's no such thing! So since I like raspberry, we tried it that way, and it was incredible! The sweetness of the raspberry was the perfect juxtaposition to the lemony goodness of the cake! We've found a winner!
Last but not least is the white cake with cherry filling. Both of us really liked it - the lightness of the cake didn't compete with the cherry flavor, which was a real cherry, not maraschino taste. In the end, we crossed this one off the list - both of us really like cherries, but we recognize not everyone does.
Bonus points for Cakes by Karen - although we did not get to keep the rest of the cakes (yes, greedy little ol' me was hoping), we were offered a piece of each to take home. Needless to say, I gladly accepted.

Virgin Wedding??

Okay, so our second cake tasting was at Tee & Cakes in Boulder, Colorado. The cake artist there is named Kim - super nice, super cool chick! The shop itself appears to be a converted mechanic's shop in the Pearl Street Mall, and it's really what I think of when I think "Boulder"...kind of a combination of green, hippie, college chic.
Here are our (cup)cakes:


(clockwise from top left) Summer Picnic, Bunnies Delight, Capri Kiss, Virgin Wedding

First up was Bunnies Delight, a fresh carrot cake with grated orange zest topped with white chocolate cream cheese buttercream. Although a delicious carrot cake, it just wasn't the "bridal" cake we were looking for. I LOVED the icing!
Summer Picnic was a sweet cream butter pound cake with mascarpone cream and seasonal fresh berries. It was interesting - I'm used to strawberry shortcake, but this had all kinds of berries - it really is like a summer picnic, but still not what we were looking for.
Virgin Wedding is a pure white cake laced with almond, filled with Tahitian vanilla bean flecked buttercream. There were two things I didn't like about this cake - first, the cake was very dense - I personally prefer my cake to be light and fluffy. And then there was the icing. I've shared with you my love of cakes and even some photos of cakes I've made. What I didn't mention is that I make my own buttercream icing. I won't tell you what the base of the icing is because you may never look at cake the same way again, but it's NOT butter. This icing was butter. Of course I took a big ole bite and felt like I'd just put a spoonful of country crock in my mouth. Some people love the mouth-feel of butter, but I'm definitely not one of them.
Capri Kiss was by far my favorite. It's a lemon cake, infused with Limoncello liqueur, filled with alternating layers of lemon curd & sweet cream. Kim makes the lemon curd from scratch, and that cake is divine!
I left the shop torn. I loved the capri kiss, but I really want a two flavor cake, and I wasn't at all crazy about the French BUTTERcream icing either. On top of that, Kim's decorating style and mine weren't really in sync. At the end of the day, I reluctantly had to scratch Tee & Cakes from my ever dwindling list of possible bakers for our wedding cake.

Did you get any unexpected surprises during your wedding vendor research?

It's Finally Here

It's cake tasting day! It's cake tasting day!
Yes, I'm actually doing a silly dance to go with my very silly song.

Second only to photography, the cake is my single most important wedding expense. You see, I make cakes myself. I made my niece's baby shower cake.


I also made her wedding cake.


I even made the groom's cake. In my defense, I'd been making cakes for three days straight and I was exhausted by the time I got to this one. Besides, I maintain that we were going for the rustic look to go with the whole hunter's fleur-de-lis motif.


Both Jakob's family and mine are a little crazy about cake. Scheduling cake tastings has definitely been one of the highlights of my wedding planning journey. So without further ado, our first (two) cake tastings:

The first bakery we went to is Kim & Company in Estes Park. Bonus, she also does floral design so we were able to get a quote for both cake & flowers while we were there. Like a lot of bakers, she gave us a cupcake tasting. And yes, I took photos, even though Jakob made fun of me.


(clockwise from top left) white cake with white icing, Italian cream cake with almond butter cream icing, carrot cake with cream cheese icing, and chocolate with chocolate icing (I think that one's obvious). We also got to taste the strawberry & raspberry fillings.

We weren't allowed to choose the flavors we tasted - those were the standard ones.
The carrot cake was great, but just not "us". We had already agreed we didn't want chocolate cake or chocolate icing - it just doesn't make me think wedding cake. Besides, I'm really not that fond of chocolate cake (sorry, all you chocaholics out there). I went into the tasting thinking I'd like the traditional white cake with white buttercream the best, and it was fantastic! I loved the cake, loved the icing. I was thinking this is the one. Then we tried the italian cream. It's white cake with almond and coconut, and it was topped with the almond buttercream icing I so wanted to try. I LOVE this cake! I didn't expect Jakob to be crazy about it because he really doesn't like the texture of coconut. Guess what - he loved it too. Kim even said she could throw the coconut in a food processor so the texture wouldn't be noticeable.
We looked through her photo albums of work, and I loved the diversity of designs she's able to do. Perhaps even more important to me is that she has a steady hand when icing designs onto cakes. This was important because I want some elegant little scrollwork. Fondant is easier to deal with but I HATE the taste of fondant!

Next up, cake tasting #2.

Let Them Eat Cake

Today I scheduled my first (two) cake tastings! I can't tell you how freaking excited I am. I am a total cake fanatic. I even took a Wilton class at my local Michael's so I could make birthday cakes for the kids in my life. When my niece got married a few weeks ago, I made her three tiered wedding cake AND the grooms cake. I even got upset last spring when she called to tell me that the girl who was co-hosting her baby shower with me was going to buy a cake for the event - I was that dead-set on making the cake for her shower.
Since Jakob and I are planning a trip to Estes Park on the 26th, we decided we'd check out a couple of bakeries that are on the way. I made a couple of phone calls today to schedule our consultations. One place lets you taste from whatever they have baked, but the other one (Haute Cakes in Boulder, CO) has an online menu that we got to choose from. We were told to pick three options, so I perused their selections. The first two were easy to pick, but I was having trouble deciding between numbers 3 and 4 on my list. When I called the owner, Kim to ask a few question before giving them our final selections, she told me not to worry about choosing - we could taste all 4! I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
Don't worry - LOTS of photos will be taken and I'll be writing about our favorites from our first round of cake tasting.