Weddingbee

Cake was something I REFUSED to go over budget on. If I couldn’t get it for under $500, we were going to get a big old Costco sheet cake. Okay not really, but our local supermarket Raley’s actually had a nice little selection of simple cakes that would really just “do the job.” And I was fine with that, after all, I’d already blown the budget on venue and photography, so I really had to stick to budget on elements that were less important to me.

Raley’s has got some great simple cakes for around $350 that serve 100-140, but they don’t deliver, and I just didn’t feel like dealing with (or putting someone in charge of) one more detail like that. I had set my budget at $500, so I thought I might as well give my venue’s recommended baker, Ingrid Fraser of Elegant Cakes (Amador City, CA) a try.

I knew for budget’s sake we had to go SIMPLE. But I’m never one for plain, so I scoured the web and found some cakes on theknot.com that would suffice:

But I wasn’t particularly wowed by any cakes I saw that I knew would be low on design cost. And I just HATE to blow $500 on something I don’t love. So, I took a stab at designing one myself:

Kind of fun. I know nothing about cakes, and it shows. Ingrid informed me that if you place fondant ribbons horizontally on a cake like this, they’ll slip down, especially on a hot day. And I really wanted a buttercream cake (mostly because its cheaper, partly because fondant scares me), so while it was a fun idea, unless I wanted white fondant and fondant ribbons, that idea was scrapped.

The night before our initial meeting with Ingrid, I stumbled across the Cakegirls website.

Wow! These are my kind of cakes! They’ve got a wide range of designs, but many with an understated elegance about them. I picked my favorite:

And Ingrid said she could replicate it with square tiers, while staying under budget. And of course, it being such a “simple” cake, she could. Success! Mr. Penguin got to choose the flavors, and of course he picked his favorite: Chocolate with fresh raspberries and raspberry jam. (I am not a big fan of cake so unless its 3 wheels of brie cheese stacked on top of each other, I probably wont eat much of it).

Here’s our budget breakdown:

3 Tier Buttercream frosted Chocolate cake with and Raspberry jam and fresh raspberries, serves 100: $4.50 per slice
Delivery and set up: $40
TOTAL: $490

Ingrid bakes out of her home in Amador City, which I love (because I work out of my home as well!). It keeps her overhead down and allows her to make fabulous cakes for under $5 a slice. She describes her cakes as “just sweet enough,” meaning that you’ll get a decadent “buttery” flavored cake, not an “oversweetened” one. Fabulous!

Ingrid Frasier
Elegant Cakes
Po Box 160

Amador City, CA 95601
(209) 267-0947

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