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One reason Mr. Cookie and I chose our venue was the inclusiveness of the package –meaning chairs, tables, linens, dishware, food, beverage, and cake are all included in the price. This meant less time and stress running around finding a rental company, caterer, and baker. Another reason that we chose the venue was their pastry chef. When we signed our venue contract, Ned Archibald, Executive Pastry Chef and Chocolate Magician of the Keystone Resort, was the exclusive cake baker for Ten Mile. I didn’t mind having to exclusively go with Ned because his work is fantastic.

About a month after we signed the contract, I got an email from our catering manager about the cake. Apparently with over 200+ weddings per year, Ned could not keep up with the demand and decided to not bake for Ten Mile. Now, our venue was on the hunt for a new baker and would get back to me shortly. Needless to say, I was disappointed but optimistic. A few weeks go by and I got another email from the catering manager saying that they had found a baker, Katie with Clint’s Bakery. I emailed Katie and we set-up a tasting consultation with Mr. Cookie and I in January.

To try to save time, gas, and money, we are really trying hard to limit our trips up to Breckenridge (which is about an hour and half drive from our house), so we pack our days with wedding planning activities. On this particular cold, sunny Saturday in January we had quite a day planned — skiing the mountain in the morning, cake tasting, meeting with our catering manager to lock in 2007 food prices, and more skiing in the afternoon.

At 6:00am we headed off to Breckenridge and as we turned onto I-70 we ran straight into bumper-to-bumper ski traffic. Three hours and two very frustrated Cookies later, we finally make it to Breckenridge. By this time we have missed skiing in the morning and were about to be late for our cake tasting, when Mr. Cookie hits a patch of ice going literally 5 miles per hour and runs into the back of a VW Bug in my mother’s car! We all pulled off to the side of the road, made sure everyone was ok, and then we started inspecting the cars. My mother’s car was fine, only the licence plate was bent, but the rear bumper of the Bug was broken and cracked. Ironically, the couple we hit was also engaged and getting married in Florida. They were really cool about the situation, and they eventually got a new bumper.

After swapping insurance cards, we rushed to our cake consultation. Clint’s is more of a coffee shop than an actual bakery, so there was a ton of people sipping on espresso and chomping on breakfast burritos during our entire consultation. Katie was a really nice, bubbly girl — who we later found our had just graduated from culinary school two years ago. She decided to go into cake baking after a few friends asked her to bake cakes for their weddings, and was now starting to build her business. Before the consultation, Katie and I had discussed a few options of cake we wanted to taste, and during the meeting I gave her our cake inspiration board along with a few other cake images to decide on a design.

From left to right: Row 1 take the cake, April Reed, The Cake Girls Row 2 April Reed and Erica O’Brien

Image from The Knot Colorado

We finally decided on this inspirational image for our cake. Please excuse the scan, but I gave the original image to Katie. The cake will be a three layer chocolate cake filled with real raspberry and raspberry preserves. The first and second layers will be separated with orange and red roses but the third will be sans flowers. The frosting will be a white fondant with tiffany blue royal icing detail, as well as, a thin brown ribbon on the bottom of each later.

After we decided what the cake looked like, Katie presented us with five different cakes to try –baked as adorable oversized cupcakes, however all the cakes were really dense. Because the cake was so dense, we asked if she could make it a little lighter. Immediately, a hurt look overcame her face. She told us that she had never had a problem with anyone liking her cake before, and would see what she could do. Mr. Cookie and I left feeling a little worried if she could pull off the cake, but with the exclusivity of Ten Mile she will bake over 60 cakes this summer alone. We are crossing are fingers that practice makes perfect.

On a lighter note, I found these adorable little salt and pepper bird shakers at Target for $5. Instead of a traditional cake topper, our florist will set the birds so they are peeping out of the flowers on the second layer.

Are you using a exclusive baker through your venue? Please share the good, bad, and ugly!