Why You Need A Cake Professional

There is a reason why people who are not professional cake bakers have significantly (so I thought) lower prices than professionals. When last my fiance and I were in Houston, we arranged to have two cake tastings, one with Who Made the Cake, and the other with a woman that works with my sister.

1. My sister called me the week before to tell me that "Susie" had given her a cake that day instead, because she had forgotten which weekend we were coming into town. I see this as a bad thing (though lateness has been a trend http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com/2007/11/engagement-photo-session.html ); you wouldn't really want your wedding cake showing up a week early, or worse, a week late.

2. The first cake was covered in scrollwork. To the point where you couldn't see the actual cake.

3. We were only able to taste one cake, which is a downer, but I understand that since she's not making multiple cakes every week, she doesn't have time to make a tasting cake of every flavor. --My bridezilla self thought she would want to make multiple flavors, but it was too much to do.

4. The cake was not as good as the professional cake. I am sure this is not the case with all "make-it-at-home" bakers, but it was with ours. We had asked to taste a raspberry filling in the cake, and when I saw the filling, I knew what she had done. The filling had the consistency of the jelly that comes in the squeeze bottle. I have had cakes where people use preserves as the filling, and they are quite tasty, but jelly just doesn't work.

Careful how you say that...

Well, there was a bit of funniness that happened last weekend when we were in for the cake-tasting sessions (one left to tell, probably later this weekend). My fiance and I went to dinner with the whole family, and while we were there, we had a few glasses of our beverages of choice, and my dad decided he would ask my fiance what he thought about the cake.

So. Again, we are in a restaurant. They have seated us in a side room with 4 or 5 other tables. And we are drinking. He decided he wanted to imitate Franc from the Steve Martin version of the bride. So he said, "'Ow did you like the caaake?" Except it sounded like he was saying a word that started with "c" and ends in "ock."

Cake Tasting Round 2

Last week I was able to go to Houston to meet with the professional wedding cake baker who has an amazing reputation. After many phone calls to the bakery (http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com/2008/01/do-you-actually-make-cakes.html), I was finally able to get an appointment for Thursday morning. Luckily my sister was able to take a long lunch from work, so that she could come with my mother and I to the cake consultation.


Our appointment was scheduled for 11:15 in the morning, and despite a few "near catastrophes" with the driving directions (watch out for the driveway Mom), we made it to the shop around 11:10. Then we waited for twenty five minutes for the bride and mother in front of us to finish their appointment, which started at 10:15. I really hope that they were late, if only that I don't think that anyone should spend more than an hour discussing the design for the wedding cake. The real problem is that there aren't any chairs in the "outer chamber" where you wait to talk to the baker, just tables of sample cakes, so the three of us had to stand around for twenty minutes.

After we went in to the baker's office, everything went swimmingly. We looked at books with pictures of beautiful cakes, but most importantly we got to taste! All of the cakes were delicious, especially the butter raspberry cake with raspberry fillng and buttercream icing. I could eat that cake all day, I mean, I wouldn't fit into my dress, but I could eat that cake all day. The baker was gracious enough to let me take my two favorite pieces with me so that my fiance could taste them when he got into town the next afternoon.