Wedding Wednesday - Cake!

It's Wednesday - let's talk about all things Wedding related! I decided that today I'd share about our quest to find the perfect baker for our wedding and share a little story about how this Southern Belle marrying a Yankee brought about some laughs - certainly where cake is concerned!

I think we all know that cake is an important part of any wedding reception - whether it be a simple, naked style cake with just a little frosting and decoration or a multi-tiered masterpiece covered with buttercream and fondant flowers - you know you've got to have that cake! Sampling different cake creations was certainly a highlight of the wedding planning process - and having said that, we only tried two spots and knew we'd found our baker!

The first bakery we looked into is called Crumbs & Crumbles and is located in Winchester - the town where I work! The bakery does wedding cakes, birthday cakes and macarons! Y'all know I love a macaron and so after reviewing the flavors and seeing that with a remote tasting you received a complimentary box of macarons - I was ready to order our samples! 

We got Whiskey Caramel with Swiss Buttercream, Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting and Cookies & Crème with American Buttercream. The owners of the bakery delivered the cupcakes to my parent's house with a sweet little box of macarons on the side and the tasting began! I should mention - my fiancé is not a huge fan of sweets, so I knew we'd have a little bit of an uphill battle to find something he liked!

However - the Whiskey Caramel cake with Swiss Buttercream was a huge hit with both of us and we quickly decided it was our hands down favorite! We knew we would be looking at other spots, but this particular cake was making the top of our list - for now! And the macarons were absolutely divine! The shells were light and crunchy, the fillings sweet and perfect - everything from Crumbs and Crumbles was perfection!

A second spot that I couldn't resist giving a try was Fluffy Thoughts Cakes - a bakery that I first got to know when it had a kiosk in Nationals Park and offered delicious treats and truly amazing Star Wars themed cakes! Everything I'd ever tried from Fluffy Thoughts was so very tasty and so when we went toward DC for a meeting with caterers (more on that in another post) - we also stopped at Fluffy Thoughts Cakes and picked up our samples! 

I honestly can't remember all the flavors we tried - we did get a Passion Fruit & Raspberry, a Strawberries & Cream, a Cookie Dough, Cookies and Crème, Coffee and... another that I cannot remember. The cake flavors were delicious and wonderful but we just couldn't shake how delicious the samples we'd received from Crumbs & Crumbles had been! Ryan didn't like a single one of the options we'd chosen from Fluffy Thoughts and while both locations offered delicious options - we quickly decided that Crumbs and Crumbles was the bakery for us!

We contacted Crumbs & Crumbles pretty much immediately to be sure to secure our date and let them know we'd want a three tier cake for our wedding day. I know right now that two of our layers will be Whiskey Caramel and Churro... haven't quite decided on the third layer yet! And of course, their Swiss Buttercream - it's light and tasty without being overwhelmingly sweet! I've shared a couple pictures of things I'm thinking of as options below - but I haven't quite narrowed down exactly what we want!

The final giggle on this post - at least, I think it's funny - is the debate over a groom's cake. I was born in California and raised for most of my life in Mississippi! When a couple get married, you have a wedding cake and a groom's cake... who among us can forget the armadillo groom's cake in the movie Steel Magnolias? Well, I started talking to Ryan about his groom's cake - he was born in New Jersey and raised in Pennsylvania - and he thought I was nuts! He'd never heard of such a thing and didn't understand the point. We have laughed over this quite a bit in the last few months... 

It remains to be seen - will we have one cake or two?