Wedding Cake!

When Lindsay came to visit, she, Ken and I went on a wedding cake tasting.  It was not the glam experience we expected.  The bakery that was suggested to me was not a bakery, but a bakery counter inside a larger grocery store.

I announced myself at the bakery counter, and a young woman--nay, a girl, who was likely not a baker--came to assist us.  She was short, quiet, and did not respond to Ken's humor with the attitude he is accustomed to.

"We want a cake shaped like a dinosaur that breathes fire," Ken began with.

The girl remained deadpan.  Not even a laugh.

She took us to the "consultation room", a small, stark white office behind the registers, and began to consult us.

We looked through two photo albums, and I realized that we should have done some research.  We had no idea what our cake should look like, so we closed the books and put off the design aspect, and went ahead with the tasting.

We sampled cup-cake sized servings of six cakes with six fillings, and narrowed down the selection to our favorites.  We then told her the number of guests expected, and decided on a round (cheaper) versus square cake for economical reasons only.  Then I kindly let Ken pick his favorite flavor combinations.

Ms. Dispassionate suggested that we select different flavors for different layers.  Brilliant!  Here I had thought we would order a second sheet cake of a different flavor, but of course! just switch up the layers!

And here they are:

• Almond Poppy Seed Cake with Lemon Filling
• Banana Cake with Bavarian Creme Filling (my choice)
• Hazelnut Cake with Raspberry Filling

**Start thinking now about what you are going to want to eat.

We still hadn't decided on what the cake would look like, aside from white and round, so Ken suggested we take a look at the examples by the bakery.  Or just go with the original dinosaur plan.

There weren't a lot of cakes on display, but we did find one we both agreed on:

We'll have 3 cakes of each flavor (the bottom tier is actually three separate cakes, so there are 10 cakes in all), plus one "surprise" cake, which will be kept secret to all but the bakers.  We are expecting a lot of guests and a lot of drinking, but everyone will be allotted about two pounds of cake, so they will sober up before leaving the reception.

No, I'm kidding.  We are going with the dinosaur.