Bride-to-be Blogger Stephanie: My Cake Tasting!

Stephanie and the moms at the Bredenbeck's cake tasting!

In following with the theme of delicious food making me unreasonably happy (re: last week’s menu tasting blog), my wedding-cake tasting at Bredenbeck’s Bakery on Wednesday morning was a blast!

With me, I brought my mom and my mother-in-law-to-be. And we were all up to the challenge of sampling delectable cakes. It’s a hard job, but somebody’s gotta do it. I opted for no breakfast to prepare myself for sufficient cake eating.

Once we arrived, Brendenbeck’s escorted us upstairs to a room filled with gorgeous wedding cake samples. We began by discussing the look of the cake. We paged through their albums, scanned the room, and then provided printouts of cake images I had found on Pinterest.

I was not set on a specific vision before entering the bakery. We talked through the options. We showed our invitation as a means of possible inspiration. But in the end, it was one of the Pinterest photos that seemed to be drawing me in the most: a cake with a subtle ombre effect and spiraling flowers.

While to some degree I wanted to try to incorporate design elements from the invitation in some way, ultimately, it was the more floral design that was catching my eye. And flowers are certainly going to be a focal point of the reception, so I’m thinking it makes sense for the cake to be floral—or at least that’s how I’m explaining it to myself.

Now, onto the fun stuff: the bakery next brought out a tray filled with small wedges of different pound cakes and dollops of fillings. As it was set down on the table, the smell was irresistible. I was ready to go!

There were six cake options: sour cream pound, orange peach pound, almond pound, chocolate chip pound, lemon pound, and pumpkin pound – all of which were outrageously delicious. Fillings were chocolate, buttercream, Butterfinger, raspberry, caramel, and Nutella—merely the mention of the latter two had my mouth watering.

Not surprisingly, I was the first to dig in. I went from left to right sampling small pieces of each cake and attempting to try each filling combination. I was in love with the caramel and Nutella.

After lots of oohing and ahhing with each and every bite, it was time to make a decision. We were struggling to come up with a single combination from so many incredible options. Brendenbeck’s then pointed out to us that because of our guest count, we will likely have to have a five layer wedding cake; and if we wanted, we could do a different flavor and filling per layer.

While we worried that all guests won’t necessarily get the same flavor, we loved the concept of being able to do multiple combinations and not have to narrow it down to one.

So this is the heavenly creation we came up with: First layer: chocolate chip pound with caramel icing filling; second: sour cream pound with Nutella-icing filling; third: orange peach pound with buttercream filling; fourth: lemon pound with raspberry filling; and the fifth: a repeat of sour cream pound with Nutella.

I’m pretty thrilled about our concoction! I’m hoping guests are going to love it. I’m particularly excited about the first layer. My mom thought I was a little crazy thinking that the caramel would go well with the chocolate chip, but it is fantastic!

All in all, we achieved another checkmark. Woo! But most importantly, it was fun and nearly entirely stress-free—which I completely and utterly appreciated it. I can’t wait to taste the cake on our wedding day—I am going to make all efforts to seek it out!

Did you end up mixing and matching flavors with your wedding cake, or did you go with one solid combination for the entire thing?

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