We Found a Baker! (We Think)

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Tom and I met with a baker yesterday and we had an absolute ball. Tom and I have been spending our evenings looking at pictures of wedding cakes online as of late, and the baker was more than excited to see our leading contenders. Our primary inspiration was the cake that I have pictured to the left. We absolutely LOVE the star fish, the simplicity, the clean lines, and the "seaweed" piping on the sides. My only change was that I wanted sugar shells in place of real ones. The baker was completely willing to work with us on this, and even had some fondant shells on hand to show us. We want the cake to be frosted in ivory butter cream, so she suggested decorating the shells with pearl powder to make them stand out against the cake.

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The next step was figuring out how many layers of cake we would need to feed all of our guests. The baker was attempting to do the math in her head, but then opted to pull out the actual cake pans so that we could get a visual. Tom and I were originally set on having a square cake because we really liked the clean lines. While the baker was digging out her square pans, she pulled out a set of hexagons. Tom immediately commented, "Those are different." We eventually asked the baker to stack the hexagon pans just to get an idea of how they would look. Hexagons stack like a traditional round wedding cake, but have the clean lines of a square. We loved it! So we changed our idea a bit, The baker was right along with it. We want to have our tiers stacked off center like the picture to the right.

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The picture to the left is another one of our inspirations, we loved the rope border between tiers, and the baker is going to add that detail to our cake. 

It turns out, to feed 150 people, we would need a 4 tier cake (awesome) but even then, that would only feed 136 people. The baker suggested a simple sheet cake for the remaining 14 people, I asked if she could decorate it and we could have a groom's cake. She was right on board with that idea. So, we are having two cakes! The only thing left to do was to pick the flavors. Tom and I are both a fan of lemon cake, so we really did not have to take much time to pick. We also decided to use butter cream frosting instead of fondant, which the baker also recommended because it would further emphasize the clean lines of our hexagons. The wedding cake will be lemon cake with an almond butter cream, and the groom's cake will be lemon cake with a chocolate fudge butter cream.

All that is left to do now is tastings and a deposit. Another check! We now have the showpiece for our reception!