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I’ve been waiting (not so) patiently for our cake tasting ever since we made the appointment back in October (or, to be honest, since we got engaged). I mean…it’s cake. It’s hard to go wrong.
Unless you’re like Foxy and don’t eat sweets, cake included. Needless to say, this was not his favorite wedding related task. (Not to mention, we combined it with a flower consultation on the same day—poor Foxy, he’s a trooper!) However, as luck would have it, Foxy Mama was able to make the drive down from NY to meet up with us again, as she did for our linens/room assignment meeting. Having her there was a total life saver.
But back to the cake: one of the awesome things about our venue is that said cake is included in the catering cost. They commission it out to a wonderful, little local place called Desserts by Rita; thank goodness, too, because I really didn’t feel like having to research local bakers and be continuously shocked at how much people can charge per slice or as a cake cutting fee. The easier, the better, I say! I was ready to get this party started.
First things first:
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I have a HUMONGOUS sweet tooth. I would probably be happiest if my diet consisted of flan or chocolate anything, so you can bet wedding cake was high up on my to do list.
There was no debate on what type of cake we wanted for our wedding. Even before being “officially” engaged I was enamored with the idea of doing cupcakes. It might be a popular in the wedding blogosphere but its very uncommon in weddings in my hometown.
Fad or not, I like the idea of having cupcakes for one very important reason….getting to have so many yummy flavors! Mr. Boa and I love tasting new sweets together and I wanted incorporate that sense of culinary adventure into our wedding cake selection. Having cupcakes allows us to choose as many flavors as we want rather than limiting ourselves to the number of tiers or sheet cakes.
In my search for inspiration I stuck to cakes with minimal embellishment, as the flavors were the highlight. I love the happy medium between the quirkiness of a cupcake and the formality of a traditional wedding cake.
How can you not love these?
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| Classic White |
I am a bad blogger.
I went to my cake tastings and did not take a single photo.
In my defense, I was really hungry and the cake was just begging to be eaten. So I ate it. Which means that I will not be able to distract you with photos of awesome cake in this post. (But that’s OK—I am sure I will find ridiculous images to share with you.)
I pretty much already knew who we were going to use for our wedding cake, because their cakes are just deeeeeelicious and we use them for most of our parties (they did our engagement cake, which made an appearance in this post)…buuuuuut I like to play it safe so we decided to meet with two different bakeries. On a lovely Saturday afternoon, my momma, Mr. Coyote, and I stopped by our preferred bakery.
Since getting engaged months ago, I haven’t actually “bought” anything for the wedding. I have paid deposits, but those deposits aren’t unnecessarily taking up space in my apartment. I need things unnecessarily taking space in my apartment! For the sake of this argument and eliminating small stuff from my to-do list, I set upon the quest for the perfect cake topper.
I knew I wanted a figurine cake topper, rather than a monogram or flowers. (When else can you have cute people on top of a cake?) And so began the great interweb search for the great cake topper.
Featured on Weddingbee
Unique Wedding Favors
“Add a memorable touch to your wedding with unique favors that match your theme.”
There’s no point in dragging this out. Yesterday, I wrote about trying to decide between cupcakes and mini cupcakes for our wedding. It all sounded so cute and fun, but we changed our minds. We want cake. Wait. I want cake.
This is one of those situations where Mr. Mink has been totally easy-going. He doesn’t care if we have cupcakes or a traditional cake. He just wants to get to the part where we have a couple tastings! Every time I started taking about cake and cupcakes, Mr. Mink would joke that we were going to have his mother’s red velvet cake for our wedding cake and we could smoosh my mother’s chocolate chip cookie fingers (almost shaped like biscotti) into the sides. I finally stopped talking and just looked at the inspiration pictures I saved to my Pinterest boards. Almost every image was of a cake.
I think I was swayed by two things. First, the pictures of couples cutting their cakes are appealing to me. I know we could cut a one tiered cake or a cupcake, but amidst the non-traditional decisions we’ve made, I like the idea of doing something traditional. Second, I love the variety of cake designs. Some of the cakes out there are works of art.
From Style Me Pretty / Cake by Tallant House / Photo by Red Box Pictures
I know really creative title there, right?? I wonder what this post is going to be about…
Uh, it’s going be about CAKE. More specifically? Wedding cake. And how delicious it is.
Let’s look at some cakes so we can drool over them and wish we were eating some right now:
Image via Pink Cake Box
I wish I was ballsy enough for this kind of wedding cake.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, Mr. Mink and I are pretty comfortable with embracing the non-traditional in our wedding planning process. We don’t set out to make odd decisions, but sometimes they feel right to us. There have been a few times when the sheer popularity of something has pushed us away from it, though. I think this might be happening with our dessert decision. Cupcakes are everywhere.
Long before people started standing in line at Magnolia Bakery, I loved cupcakes. I was thrilled when they became more popular. When they crossed over into weddings, I was thrilled. I still haven’t been to a wedding with cupcakes, but I feel like it’s inevitable. Dare I say they’re almost common now? I mean, it’s been almost 10 years since cupcakes made the cover of Martha Stewart Weddings…
Cover shot from a 2003 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings
When I discussed having cupcakes at our wedding with my sister-in-law, who is also a bridesmaid, she gently pointed out that eating a cupcake is sometimes a bit messy. I had pictured all the pretty, little cakes displayed, but never imagined the logistics of people eating their cupcakes.
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I have shared my love for ruffled wedding cakes, my admiration for Martha’s cake designs, and my decision (by that I of course mean “our decision” - I love you Mr. D!) to have an ombre wedding cake. Now I think it is time for a little something to top things off! Okay, that was a stretch…I’m talking, of course, about cake toppers!
What will be atop the mountain of frosting at our wedding? This:
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| Personal Photo |
Not only is this is vintage design, it actually is vintage (if you consider the 1970s vintage). And not only is it vintage, it has very personal meaning to me.
A few days ago, I read an article on The Salt, NPR’s food blog, that broke down the eating habits of the average American over the course of a year. I was shocked by the fact that the average American eats 630 pounds (!!!) of dairy per year—until I thought about how much frozen yogurt Mr. Mole and I eat during our weekly trips to Yogurtland, Pinkberry, and Menchie’s. Gah.
Needless to say, our dessert of choice is ice cream. In fact, I am normally ambivalent about cake—even wedding cake—unless it has ice cream melting on top. (Yellow cake + chocolate frosting + mint chocolate chip ice cream = amazing.) Or if the cake is actually an ice cream cake.
Be still, my heart / World’s largest ice cream cake / Image via National Post
When I was growing up, a Dairy Queen ice cream cake was always present at any celebration:
Hi, I haven’t blogged here in 800,000 years because wedding planning (invitation design, specifically) and life in general has driven me against the wall in the blogging department. I eat, sleep, work, and wedding plan, but now that my invitations are at the printer, I get to blog again. So, howdy. Again. 
**************
My wedding budget strategy has been to think of how much I think something should cost, double it, and hope I get a nice surprise when I request a quote from a potential wedding vendor. This has worked well for me, and so far, I get to feel like I’m saving tons of money on our wedding when my quotes are constantly coming back under budget. I loop Bossyboots into our updated wedding costs, and he thinks I’m a genius for saving us all this money.
Cue angels singing.
Recently, I said to myself “Self, you should book yourself a wedding cake. Your wedding is happening in two months, and people will expect cake. I know cake isn’t really your thing, but you are having a wedding, so just get a cake.”
Self is quite wise.
As many bees have revealed…I am not a big cake person. White cake is totally boring to me, most other cakes are a lot of meh, I enjoy carrot cake and yellow cake with chocolate icing. The only cake I REALLY love is German Chocolate cake. Not just any German Chocolate cake: Betty Crocker Super Moist.
$1.98, ladies.
(Source)
Don’t judge - $1.98 means more moolah for the fun stuff. My Rue La La addiction won’t enable itself.
With tummies still full from a massive array of appetizers, entrees, and desserts at my parents’ Christmas party, my sisters and I snuggled on the couch with a copy of Martha Stewart Wedding Cakes and got down to business.
We had flipped through the pages of this book many times before, yet the intricate detail and gorgeous artwork of the cakes still causes my jaw to drop each time. So let’s take a quick tour of some of the masterpieces that are featured among the pages of this amazing book.
I have always had a major weakness for eyelet, so this seems like a great place to start! Whenever Mama Dalmatian and I are shopping and we spot an eyelet piece on the racks, my response is always “I do love me some eyelet!” As it turns out, this prolific statement also applies to wedding cakes.
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| Image via MarthaStewartWeddings.com / Photo by Anna Williams |
Along with eyelet, I have also always been a fan of basket-weave patterns. And while I am generally not a huge fan of fruits in desserts (this is a nice little glimpse into my not-so-ideal eating habits), the berries in this add such nice, rich color.
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I must warn you: this may be my first post about wedding cakes, but it will most certainly not be my last. You see, I have a mouth full of sweet teeth (and miraculously enough not a single one of them has ever had a cavity!). Every member of my family is a huge fan of candies, cookies, cakes, and most of all: frosting. When we were little we used to express our desire for a little something sweet after a solid meal by explaining that our dinner shelf was full, but our dessert shelf was empty!
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| Did someone say dessert shelf? My hometown bakery / Image via NorthshoreUpdate.com |
Clearly, wedding cakes were one of the first things I started bookmarking for inspiration when we got engaged. When I look back on this mouth-watering section of my wedding folder, I notice a certain trend: ruffles! This is not too surprising, given I am a self-confessed ruffle-aholic. Here is a little sample of how this addiction translated into cake-spiration:
I am not a cake person. For some reason it’s just never been my thing. Even as a child I would pass on the birthday cake. Now show me some warm chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies, and we have a different story; however, in the past year or so I discovered something very curious: my distaste for cake comes to a screeching halt when cake becomes CUPcakes. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that cupcakes come in so many flavors: key lime, apple pie, salted caramel, carrot cake, red velvet, s’mores, banana split, peach cobbler. (I could fill a whole post, but for y’alls’ sakes, I’ll keep myself in check.)
Trying new flavors and cupcake shops has almost become a sport for Mr. Hawk and me. If we find a new shop in town, we pick out a half dozen to take home and feast on them rest of the week. (Correction: mine last a week. Mr. Hawk eats all of his within two days and then pouts until I share my half with him.) We even have our favorites cupcakes and shops ranked. (Moistness of cake, cake-to-icing ratio, and cupcake size are all considered.) It.Is.Serious.
Pearl’s Deep Dish Apple Pie—my absolute favorite! / Image via Foodspotting
So naturally, since cupcakes are somewhat of a large presence in our lives, they must be a part of the wedding-dessert menu. It makes me a little sad to be missing out on some gorgeous wedding cakes, but it just wouldn’t be the Hawk wedding without cupcakes.
As I told y’all before, Mr. PF has celiac disease, so that means no cake.
Picture via Gluten-Free Foodie
I thought about buying gluten-free cake mix and taking it with us to Mexico and then just making a small cake for us to cut and eat. I feel like that might be more trouble than it’s worth, and honestly, I haven’t tried any G-free cakes I actually liked.
After thinking about it for some time, I started to think that maybe I was being selfish not having a wedding cake just because Mr. PF can’t eat it.
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This is something that I am so SO excited about. It may be my favorite wedding detail to date. I am totally smitten.
I know there are TONS of cake toppers out there. I know that some people search and search and become totally overwhelmed by all of the absolutely adorable options. We (I) did not have this problem. The first time I was casually perusing Etsy for cake toppers I stumbled upon The Junk Bucket. These toppers were hands-down the cutest ones on the whole internet, and Mr. Aardvark loved (OK, maybe he just liked, but the fact that he had an opinion on a cake topper says something!) them too.
Eleanor was the sweetest lady and was always quick to answer my questions. She even gave me a HUGE discount (on top of the already super reasonable price) because there was a bit of a delay in finishing my topper! I have to say this has been one of my favorite things so far. Enough chit chat, bring on the pictures!
Pretty sure I didn’t order and uncured chicken franks…but happy to see she recycles!
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