Cake!

So we finally booked a baker! I know I told you I tasted some cake a couple months ago, and then I let the issue drop.

At the end of January, we went to visit Eric's sister and her new baby. It coincidentally was also Eric's sister's husband's 30th birthday that weekend. I decided it would be good to have some cake, so I set up a couple tastings to pick up and bring with me.

One was from Adrienne's, and they asked me to pick out six flavors to try. I was amazed when we opened the box:

This is the after-we-devoured-cake shot, but I think you can tell that it was six full slices of cake. They were actually all put right next to each other and then iced to look like one complete cake, so I didn't know what to expect! We tried white, lemon, strawberry, red velvet, raspberry, and Italian cream. You can see the 3-0 candles we picked up to celebrate Brian's birthday, too. Free sample cake for someone else's birthday... ghetto, perhaps, but that's how I roll. It was fun to get to taste everything with Paige and Brian, too.

Strawberry was the clear winner, although it is a very shocking pink. After I got back, I set up a consultation with Adrienne (she does her consultations after the taste test, which is awesome), and got pricing and design info. Adrienne is awesome and very friendly, and I'm happy I met with her.

Everything stayed in limbo until Eric came to visit last week for Match Day. I arranged to pick up tastings from 4 bakeries: Plehn's, which I had previously tasted by myself, Bussmann's, Williams, and Adrienne's (for a comparative taste test). There was another tasting but it turned out it would have cost us $20, and I figured there are enough bakeries that will give us free cake that I didn't need to worry about a place that would charge us for a tasting (plus, I already knew their prices and they were the most expensive yet!).

Here's what we collected and assembled at the apartment:

Plehn's, yellow and strawberry:
Since they knew I was picking up the tasting to taste later, they included their icing in a little waxed paper cone for us to dispense ourselves. That's my icing handiwork pictured. I've always wanted to do that!


Williams Bakery, yellow iced with chocolate and chocolate iced with white/yellow:


Bussmann's, 2 chocolate cupcakes and I think 4 yellow cupcakes. The fact that there are 4 made me think that maybe I actually ordered 2 yellow and 2 something else (lemon?), but I didn't taste any difference, so I'm not sure what happened there...


And Adrienne's, where we picked up a slice of strawberry cake. I was totally going to pay for it, since it was a repeat tasting, but they gave it to us for free!


And here is the aftermath:
From left to right: Plehn's, Williams on the plate, Adrienne's pink strawberry, and Bussman's cupcakes in the box.

The clear winner was Adrienne's. it was moist and flavorful, absolutely scrumptious. Plehn's was not too far behind in second -- very moist and light cake, but their strawberry wasn't as flavorful as Adrienne's. Adrienne's was also the most expensive, but we're so happy with the cake that it's totally worth it. (It's still within our original budget.)

So it's going to be a three-tiered strawberry cake with whipped cream filling, iced white and decorated with fresh flowers. I'm really excited for wedding cake now!

Cake for me!

I've been putting off looking for a baker for our cake, for a variety of reasons. First, I just knew it was going to be expensive -- I had checked out a couple local bakers who put prices on their website and I just couldn't stomach it. $3+/slice? It just seems ridiculous when the slices are so small and you can buy a whole box of cake mix for less than $2. (I'm aware that $3/slice is pretty standard for wedding cake, at least in this area, and I can only count my blessings that I'm not getting married in New York.)

(It's probably pretty clear, but I'm not a cake snob. My favorite cake is any sort of from-a-box chocolate cake. No icing.)

Plus, since Eric no longer lives here in Louisville, it would be so depressing to go to all of these cake consultations by myself, and just not fair for me to get to taste the cake without him. Delicious, but not fair.

But this weekend, with the calendar ticking away before my eyes, I got serious and started the research end of things. I made a list of as many bakeries as I could find in town, and made a few phone calls. It turns out a lot of bakeries are closed on Mondays, which I didn't know. Anyway, I ended up with an appointment for two days from now for a consultation and tasting, and I just figure that if everything works out OK price-wise and initial tasting-wise, I can always bring Eric back the next time he visits for a confirmatory tasting.

I called another bakery who gave me a price quote over the phone, and I asked about the often-mentioned strategy of having a small display cake and sheet cake to make up the difference. It turns out this is pretty economical, so I was excited and invigorated to do more cake searching.

Then I spent the rest of the evening pulling together pictures of cakes to send to Eric, in order to get his opinions on decorations, before I go to these consultations. It just wouldn't be nice of me to order a big purple cake covered in pink sugar flowers, you know? I'll share my inspiration photos with you later.

But today, when I was out running errands, I drove by one of the more well-known bakeries in town. I decided to pop in and see if they could just give me information -- I wasn't expecting to taste cake or anything like that. And the consultant was nice enough to sit down with me and write up a quote for me on the spot. This bakery doesn't price by the slice; instead, they start with the appropriately sized basic yellow cake with white icing and standard, unfancy decoration, and go up from there for colors, flavors, fillings, etc. But still, their quote was very reasonable, especially with the small-cake-plus-sheet-cake strategy, and I started to warm up to the whole cake thing.

And the best part? She offered to give me some cake to go! "Just a second and I'll ice a couple pieces for you. Just tell me what flavors you'd like."

And so I left Plehn's Bakery with a yellow cupcake and a piece of strawberry cake.

Mmmmm. The yellow cupcake was really really really really good. Light and moist. The icing was pretty standard buttercream -- I don't really like icing, so I scraped it off, but it tasted like good buttercream. I ate it for -- I mean, in addition to -- my lunch, because it was lunchtime. (Seriously, I stopped at Whole Foods and picked my way through the store sampling the freebies, pondered for a long time over the prepared foods bar, and settled on some sushi. After I ate the cupcake.) I had the strawberry cake just a little while ago, eating it in front of the webcam for Eric to see (and envy), and it was pretty good. It wasn't particularly strawberry-y, and it wasn't quite as moist as the yellow, but that might be because it sat in the box all day, I'm not sure. Still very good cake, don't get me wrong.

So, depressing single consultations and unfair solo tastings? Who cares! I'm going to keep tasting as much cake as I can! Who knew there were all these perks to planning a wedding? This might have to become a habit of ours in the years to come.... ;)

Food tasting!

About a month ago, Eric came to visit and we had our tasting with the caterer. At that point, we were pretty sure we were going to hire Chardeau's Classic Catering, because Michelle Pendleton was so great to work with and their prices were very reasonable, but we wanted to taste the food first to make sure. Some caterers I talked to wouldn't do a tasting until after we had signed a contract, and that really rubbed me the wrong way, so I appreciated that Michelle was totally happy to do a tasting for us.

Disclaimer: I only took one picture, at the very end. It's at the bottom of this post. It's not the best food picture in the world, so don't be disappointed once you get down there.

Here's what we tasted:

Appetizers to be passed during cocktail hour on the roof:

• Eggplant and roasted red pepper bruschetta
• Potstickers with ginger soy dipping sauce
• Gorgonzola and caramelized onion crostini

All of them were delicious, although I thought the potsticker sauce was a little thick and sweet, so I am going to ask them to adjust that for us.

We will also have, but did not taste:

• Vietnamese summer rolls (goi cuon) with nuoc mam (fish sauce) and nuoc leo (peanut sauce) for dipping -- one of my favorite appetizers ever.
• Grilled chicken satays with chili garlic peanut sauce
• Possibly a crudite station, but we'll see
  

Ahead of time, we decided on two different salads:

• Arugula salad with lemongrass vinaigrette
• Insalata misto (mixed greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, roasted almonds, gorgonzola cheese) with a balsamic-based vinaigrette

At the tasting, we just tried the salad dressings with a little bit of fresh baby spinach. I ended up not liking either vinaigrette very much. The lemongrass one was very smooth but was missing something that I couldn't pinpoint, and the balsamic-based vinaigrette had WAY too much balsamic vinegar in it. And for me to say that something has too much vinegar... well, that takes a lot. We couldn't really decide what to do about the salads anyway; we are having a buffet dinner, but I like the idea of having a plated salad served at the table to start dinner off. With two salads, the best Michelle could suggest was to simply alternate the salads so every other person would get the same one. I didn't love that idea, but I still didn't like the idea of having the salad on the buffet itself -- you either need another plate, which is awkward to juggle, or you put salad on your dinner plate and leave less room for "real" food, which would annoy me.

So now we're thinking of just one salad, something along the lines of the insalata misto, with one dressing, probably a balsamic vinaigrette, as long as Chip can make it a little less... tart.

For the dinner buffet we will have:

• Grilled lemongrass chicken
• Seared tuna topped with a blend of fire-roasted Italian plum tomatoes, olives, capers, and basil
• Risotto Florentine (spinach)
• Spicy eggplant, asparagus, and broccoli in ginger sauce

Well, we ended up scratching the veggies in ginger sauce. You see, we had an initial attempt at Asian + Italian (a nod to my heritage and cuisines we love), which works well for a mixture of hors d'oeuvres or two different salads, but the ginger sauce just competed with everything else on the main dinner plate, and on top of that, I didn't like it.

So on the spot, Chip whipped up some extra sauteed veggies in a little olive oil and garlic, and it was scrumptious. Decision made!

The lemongrass chicken was amazingly succulent, moreso than any chicken breast I've ever had. It wasn't an authentic Thai lemongrass chicken, but it used lemongrass in a very subtle way that I appreciated. I actually don't much like the authentic dish, because I always feel it to be too dry and the lemongrass flavor too strong, so this was perfect.

And the tuna... DELICIOUS! It was a huge tuna steak smothered in tomatoes, olives, and capers. It was cooked well done, but we decided as a group that medium would be a good compromise between our personal preferences (medium rare) and the good of the group (well done) for the actual dinner. And while neither Eric nor I likes olives, we decided to be grownups and believe that they serve a purpose in the dish and leave them in. Aren't you proud of our maturity?

The risotto was probably my favorite thing (have I said that a million times already?), and carbs or no carbs, I will be eating a ton of it for dinner on May 24.

What's that? The picture I promised? OK:

I totally forgot to take any pictures while we were at the tasting, but Michelle and Chip sent us home with all of the leftovers, and I finally remembered to take a picture when we opened them back up at home. The tasting was enough for lunch for both of us, and the leftovers were a great snack a few hours later! On the left you can see the new version of the sauteed veggies, and on the main plate are the remains of the tuna (right next to the fork), the chicken (on the right side of the plate), the creamy risotto goodness, and a pile of tomato-olive-caper topping. I know it's not the most appetizing picture, but it honestly looks just as delicious as I remembered and I cannot wait for more!

So that's that; the deposit is put down, we're sending in the contract this week, and one more vendor is crossed off the list!