Tasting Cake is Fun!

I love cake tastings.  It's fun to prepare for, fun to experience and even more fun to have a firm cake order at the end of the day.

I prepared another eight flavor combo tray for today's cake tasting.  We had four flavors of cake paired as follows with yummy buttercream flavors...

Left to right:
Lightly Lemon with vanilla butter cream and raspberry butter cream
Orange Delight cake with vanilla butter cream and orange butter cream
Spiced Heaven cake with cream cheese butter cream and orange butter cream
Buttery Yellow cake with vanilla butter cream and raspberry butter cream

The couple was adventurous, and came up with a fantastic flavor combination for their three-tiered bridal cake. 

I always provide a few things at a cake tasting.  If you have a tasting scheduled you can expect a full menu, a complete price list for the flavors you sample and your choice of tea or coffee with your cake. 

I also always have a handful of coffee beans on hand, so cake-tasters can cleanse thier pallate between flavors.  Sniffing coffee beans is an easy way to reset your sense of taste and smell.  Nice department stores will offer that service at perfume counters as well. 

Stay tuned tomorrow for my third and final post in my series: Elements of a Cake Tasting. 

Make sure you call or email to schedule an event for yourself!



Elements of a Cake Tasting, Part II

As you'll recall, the first element of a successful cake tasting is trusting your baker and trying new flavors. 

Second (not in importance just in the order I thought of it):  Come prepared.

Theme and color are the most important ideas you need in your head.  Bring swatches of bridesmaid dress fabric, ribbons from the bouquet and ideas about what flowers you will use - bring your laptop. 

I guarantee you, if you google "pink cake" in google images, you will immediately have more ideas at your fingertips than you can count.  There's some amazing talent out there.  Find it. 

Print pictures, pin it on Pinterest (WHAT?  You're not on Pinterest???  Go...get an account and then come back in a few hours after you have become the newest addict...also, follow my boards, cuz I'm awesome and I pin gorgeous cake.) 

Come to your tasting with all your ideas and your baker/decorator will help you sort through and find the things that will make the perfect cake. 

If you came to me and said, "I want a steam punk cake."  I would have no idea what you mean.  But, if you came to me with a color scheme in mind an a picture like, say, this amazing one:

credit

...well, I'd be right on track with you.  And as a side note, I would weep for joy if someone ordered a cake this awesome.  It would make me quiver with delight in anticipation of the project. 

Also, be open to new ideas.  Maybe this baker has a talent for sugar flowers *ahem* or is really good with some intricate piping you hadn't thought of before.  Use their talents and ideas too. 

Talking design while you're sampling flavors is a huge times saver.  Why have two meetings when you could have one?  And if you're wowed by the tasting, you can start working on the final design and sign a contract to reserve your date right then and there.  Yes, that means crossing off something on your to-do list.  Even better!

Cake Tasting Element #2: Bring your ideas and be open to new ones!

Best Buttercream 2.0

I've been experimenting in my kitchen.  It's a little dangerous.  It's a little crazy.  It's a lot messy.

Project numero uno on my list has been conforming what I do to Indiana's cottage laws...those are the laws that allow you to sell baked goods made in your home for profit.  I have a double plus good test kitchen at my disposal, but frankly, it's a lot of driving and a lot more overhead.  And mamma needs to make some bank.

The major issue for me is the butter cream I make.  It's an itailan merangue butter cream, which is basically a lot of egg whites, beaten and cooked slowly with boiling sugar at the soft ball stage.  It's divine. 

But ye olde health department frowns on the use of eggs, thus making it pretty much a requirement for me to be in an up to code kichen.  The rest of my menu falls perfectly within the regs, so it's kindof important for me to find a way to keep the divine while loosing the egg.

traditional itialian meringue butter cream, with real egg whites

Don't know why I didn't think of this before: HELLO, MERINGUE POWDER!

new and improved with meringue powder

Dang!  I always have a giant tub of this laying around for royal icing and gum paste glue, so why not use it like it was intended and make some icing out of it?  Well, I did it.  And it's awesome.  Dare I say, it's even slightly more awesome than the real egg version, and also quite a bit easier to make. 

Same glorious sheen, same lightly sweet flavor, same gorgeous consistency...and for whatever reason, it's also slightly whiter, which makes decorating that much easier.  We have a winner! 

left: with meringue powder, right: with real egg whites
I can see the difference, I swear.

And Bake Lore just got one step closer to a full 2012 calendar. 

Elements of a Cake Tasting

So, you are planning your wedding, and you're making a short list of bakers to try out.  What are the essential things you need to know and learn from your cake tasting? 

Welcome to my short and completely non-exhaustive series on cake tastings! 

First things first: if you have found a baker by reputation, trust his/her ideas. 

Try flavors you can' find at the grocery store.  Don't like lemon?  If it's the baker's trademark flavor, try it anyway.  You might be missing out on something amazing your guests will be talking about for weeks after you get hitched.

I'm prepping a tasting today for a couple that involves four flavors - Bake Lore's classic buttery yellow cake, lightly lemon cake, orange delight cake and spiced heaven cake. 

I'm also working to keep prices down and make the bottom line as palatable as the product I make.  The buttery yellow cake batter lends itself to new flavors so well, blending perfectly with the additional flavors to make a dependably moist and tender crumb.

From Left: lightly lemon, spiced heaven, orange delight and buttery yellow cakes

Adding real vanilla buttercream to any of these would automatically make it a hit, but I'll be soaking each in a flavored syrup and creating one additional buttercream flavor for each cake. 

These aren't your typical "wedding white or chocolate" flavors.  This is a twist on the traditional that will give wedding guests a tiny taste of how happy thier hosts are as they celebrate your marriage!

Cake Tasting Element #1: Trust your baker and try new flavors.

Studly Groom's Cake

It looks like Bake Lore is finally going to get some space at a bridal show.  My registration isn't final yet, but I'm already prepping things for my table. 

First on the list: a chocolate stud cake for the groom.  Ladies, let's be honest, the wedding day is all about us.  The least we can do is remind the groom that he is, in fact, the studliest man in our lives and what better way to do that than with chocolate?

Studly Groom's Cake

This is actually a dummy.  It's made out of cereal treat, and covered with royal icing so it will harden and stay pretty - er - I mean manly - for a long, long time. 

But the real thing would be a double chocolate cake, soaked in a sweet liqueur syrup and covered in rich chocolate buttercream, or ganache...and of course finished with chocolate studs, the mighty chocolate chip!

So brides, don't forget your stud.  He needs some chocolate on your big day, and if you're lucky, he'll share a bite with you too!

Accidental Baking

I baked a lot of bread yesterday.  It was fun, and it smelled great.

But I lacked the foresight I needed to complete my fourth loaf of bread.  That is, I forgot I had given the extra pans I had on hand back to my mother.  Tsk Tsk.

Panic ensued when I punched down the big doughy balloons only to realize there was no where for the final loaf to take shape and bake. 

So, I made accidentally on purpose cinnamon rolls!  TADA!

I had one for breakfast today, the equivalent of two slices of toast.  What a great way to wake up.  Coffee in hand, healthy and delcious cinnamon roll in the other...I'll take that any day. 

I used my usual soaking method with this recipe - basically a way of releasing the nutrition locked up in the whole wheat and making it taste that much better.  While I'm not offering bread and rolls here at Bake Lore anymore, I still enjoy making them for my family.  Perhaps one day when I can get the profit margin a bit healthier, I might consider returnign it t the menue. 

Until then, I will just suggest that you do some research into Sue Gregg's cooking methods.  I use her bread recipe and it's the best I've ever tasted, bar none. 

Why yes!  That is another new cake pedestal.  How kind of you to notice;).

And yes, they are square...because I used my super awesome Fat Daddio square cupcake pan.  For some reason, I love square baked goods.

Do you have a tried and true cinnamon roll recipe in your house?  What do you do to make it healthier for your family?

Sidetrack: Being Robbed

The holidays were rough on our little corner of existence. 

Two break-ins...that's right...old school, rob-your-house-while-you-sleep kind of break-ins.  One on Christmas Eve night, and the other on New Year's Eve.

If they come back on my birthday, I will have to shoot someone.  Why couldn't it have been a good story?  You know...ninjas broke down my door looking for the stone of stealth on my back porch...or pirates attacked and our house was in their wake of pillaging and theft...but some meth-head (presumably...I mean, I love rural Indiana, but come on...) who just thought it would be fun?  Come ON!

But I digress...

That kind of stress can really throw you for a loop and keep you otherwise occupied when you might be...I don't know...blogging. 

I'm officially over it now, and I'm ready to renew my passion for my business.  I have high hopes that I'll have a booth set up at my very first bridal show by the end of the month, and if that happens and goes well, we might be blogging a whole lot more...and maybe considering moving forward on some of those amazing plans I've been making. 

Stay tuned...Bake Lore is returning to awesomeness with vigor and determination. 

Also, if you are the person who broke into my house, you are banned forever from eating my amazing cake.  FORever. 

That is all.