Weddingbee

I fell in love with the idea of a cupcake wedding dessert after seeing a few gorgeous cupcake designs at a wedding show last December. The striped fondant ribbon-topped creations shown below will be paired with a couple different custom versions of the famed Hostess cupcake inspired designs shown underneath. With the decorations decided upon, the next step was to schedule a tasting!

Image via Cakeworks
Imagine these with black and white striped bows. Adorable, eh?

Image via Deirdre Jean
Ours will say, “Miss Pom” on one flavor and “Mr. Pom” on another.

We chose three flavors to taste: one will be Mr. Pomegranate’s favorite, one will be my favorite, and the last, a shared favorite. Mr. Pom’s favorite dessert is Tiramisu, therefore we’d love to have a cupcake inspired by his favorite dessert. As I am the resident chocoholic, we’ll be having a Chocolate Raspberry rich, decadent flavored cake. Lastly, we both couldn’t imagine a wedding without some sort of Carrot Cake involved.

Image via Babycakes Bakery
Babycakes Bakery is a new cupcakery in the East Sacramento portion of town. The reviews haven been rolling in about this fabulous new venture -and they have been stellar. One of my favorite food blogger friends deemed Babycakes as his most favorite cupcakery in town - so of course, we booked our tasting immediately.

Image via Babycakes Bakery
This is an example of how pretty the Babycakes cupcakes are - we managed to devour our trials before photos even took place. Sorry folks, but we were hungry!

We began our appointment in waiting, as the preceding appointment finished up. There were many great inspirational books available to review, as well as a gallery book of past cakes designed by the bakery. Once our cupcake consultant finished with the other couple, Babycakes owner Kristine Bertram sat Mr. Pom and I down with two ice cold bottles of water, a few forks, lots of napkins and a plate full of four heaping-ly huge cupcakes with a side of frosting. Drool.

Our first taste was the Carrot Cake. It was delicious, moist and chock full of shredded carrot pieces. This rich cake was topped with a light, sweet, cream cheese frosting. This is a prime example as to why Babycakes has fabulous baked goods: the frosting is never overly sweet, yet has a perfect balance of creamy and light with touch of sugar. As the Mr. Pom put it, “it doesn’t taste fake.”

Starting at the top left, moving clockwise: Tiramisu, Chocolate Raspberry, a Chocolate Buttercream cup, Carrot Cake, and Vanilla Cake.

The second cake was the one I was the most excited to taste - our custom Tiramisu cake! Babycakes did a fantastic job on this one - it was comprised of soft vanilla cake, hollowed-out and drizzled with coffee syrup, then filled with a rich, chocolate ganache. It was frosted with a light vanilla buttercream and dusted with cocoa powder. You didn’t even MISS the mascarpone - the cake was so rich, the light buttercream complemented it perfectly.

Kristine also included a Vanilla cupcake for us to try - but we weren’t interested! It was tasty indeed, but so much less exciting than our complicated, fun, flavor choices. At this point, we were pretty much sold on our three picks - in fact Mr. Pom stated, “…man, I don’t even know which flavor to pick!” When I reminded him that we were planning on picking three, he sighed with relief.

Another view, different angle. Starting at the top left, moving clockwise: Carrot Cake, Vanilla Cake, Tiramisu, Chocolate Raspberry, a Chocolate Buttercream cup

The last cupcake we tasted was the Chocolate Raspberry. Babycakes chose a dense, rich chocolate cake, filled it with a yummy raspberry jam and topped it with a heavy chocolate ganache. It was heaven. Even Mr. Pom agreed that it was the most tasty of the four. Kristine offered us a taste of their chocolate buttercream frosting - in case the ganache was too rich for our taste. Ha! Not likely.

Babycakes Bakery was fabulous and we booked them the following week. Now I just need to decide how I plan to display all 150 of them!

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