Friday, July 23, 2010

This Texas Wedding: Cake Time!

Nice finger swipe there!

Man oh man, I love cake. The wedding cake was one of the very first things I was excited about when I started wedding planning. But holy cow y'all, wedding cakes are expensive! Robert and I went to one bridal show, it was madness, but we would look at some of the cakes and oooh and ahhh over them and then pick out a price list and then pick our jaws up off the ground. And lets be honest, sure the cake looks great, but how does it taste? That is all I care about, and some of the samples we had were not that great.

Pretty soon after we decided to have the wedding ourselves in our backyard I started thinking of logistics. Who was I going to get to cut the cake for everyone? Sure I could of asked one of my aunts or my bm's and they would of been more than happy to, but I did not want any of my guests to have to work during my wedding. After I asked Darcy for her help, I know I could asked her, but something else was still holding me back. If we did cake, that meant I had to get a whole nother set of plates and silverware, that meant that much more trash. And that was not making me happy. So I decided on cupcakes! I love cupcakes, so I was not to disappointed to give up a whole cake. Robert did insist that we have a small cake for us to cut for tradition.

So I started looking around for a local bakery we could either pick the cupcakes up from or have delivered. The first place I tried was Nagelin's Bakery, the oldest bakery in Texas. They had AMAZING red velvet cake and since I already knew I wanted at least red velvet I called them. Well turns out at the time they only did vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. So next I thought of using just a grocery store, but there was just something a little off putting about that to us. So I started looking around at the smaller towns around us.

Robert and I made those cake stands!

Jackpot! I found Sugar Shack Bakery in Wimberley, about the same distance from us as downtown New Braunfels. I called them and set up a time for Robert and I to go and do a tasting. Sugar Shack is run out of home by a grandmother/grandfather/granddaughter team. It was a little strange driving up to a house for a cake tasting, but they have a pretty industrial kitchen set up on the side of their house with it's own entrance. Sugar Shack got its start when the granddaughter was raising money to go on a mission trip and she and her grandmother made cakes for her to sell at a local coffee shop. She raised the money in record time! After she got back from her mission trip people kept asking for cakes and offering to pay for them, they decided to start up a business. Lemme tell you, they have something good going! If I remember correctly, the grandfathers mother was the cook at the Texas Governors mansion for years and passed on her recipes to her daughter in law.



So at the tasting we tasted all their cake flavors and frosting flavors we decided on the following:
  • Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting - duh
  • White Almond Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting - Chocolate Buttercream? AMAZING, I actually think I might of likes these more than my favored red velvet.
  • Italian Cream Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting for our cutting cake
  • Triple Chocolate - Sour Cream Espresso Chocolate Cake with Dark Chocolate Cream Cheese in center and Fudge Icing on outside for our 1st anniversary cake

We decided to get a separate anniversary cake because, one, we could not narrow it down, and two, we wanted something extra special on our anniversary! I am glad we decided on this because the Italian Cream cake we cut was gone in 2.5 seconds. I did not expect anyone to eat off of it, I assumed people would know that was what we were saving for our anniversary and just eat the cupcakes, well lemme tell you, I assumed wrong. People loved that freaking 5" round Italian Cream cake we had.


So we've talked about flavors, lets talk about decorating them. We did not want anything fancy, rustic and homemade looking the better. I did know that I wanted a little topper on the cupcakes. So, I sent the ladies at Sugar Shack our wedding swirl logo and asked if they would be able to recreate that in chocolate to put on top of the cupcakes. I think they turned out pretty good! And added that nice little bit of punch we needed.

Here is another picture of the cake table. I had mason jars with tags on them with my maids names for them to put their bouquets in and a vase for mine. I did not want them to just sit on tables rotting all night!


Now on to the cake cutting!

Robert and I never really discussed what our cake cutting etiquette would be, but I am pretty sure I threatened him if he smashed cake in my face.

 But at the same time I think I knew it was coming. Robert would never waste a chance to smash food all over me!

Even though he got the better of me, I got him pretty good too. I kept trying to step back to avoid him but kept stepping on my dress! I don't see how I did not rip it.

I think some of our guests, especially  the ladies, were a bit shocked. One ran up and gave me a napkin almost immediately. I think if I had spent a lot of money getting my makeup done I would of banned cake smashing, but I really did not mind, I was laughing pretty hard.

I obviously needed help cleaning it all off of me. Later in the evening I was talking to some one and looked down my dress and realized I had a chunk of cake sitting between my boobs!

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