Since we got engaged the idea of having an engagement party floated around in my head. Many gracious family members offered their houses for the party as well so I started to ponder the idea more and more plus many of my friends pointed out it's a great way to get gifts and money for the wedding. Wait, people give money? Heck yeah!
So my FMIL offered her house to us and she would cook for everyone. My FI is Italian so they cook for everything. It's yummy! We set a date for the beginning of January and I'm very excited.
I recently blogged about the baker we are thinking of using for our wedding cake. After watching the Cake Boss on TLC one Sunday afternoon I got the idea to contact Kelly at Sweet Rewards to see if she could create an engagement cake for our party. I informed here that we are looking to use her for our wedding cake and would like to take this opportunity to try her first for our engagement party. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on the cake and spoke to her about a few ideas. She was so prompt to get back to me with a few ideas and we ended up choosing a two-tier cake with hand drawn damask designs with a big FAT engagement ring on top of the cake. Since my FI hates chocolate we decided to go with vanilla cake and raspberry preserve and raspberry mousse filling. Y-U-M-M-Y!
This was my little surprise to my FI since I love to surprise him with stuff. I picked up the cake the day of the party and it was gorgeous. I was super excited for everyone to marvel at this beautiful creation. The lady told me to keep the cake in the garage until we are ready to serve so it will keep the fondant nice. So I showed my FI the cake before our guests arrived and he was blown away and then instantly asked, "how much did you spend on this?!" HA HA! Well ummm....so I fibbed and told him it was $20 less than what I actually spent because I didn't want him to get upset. I mean it's my money anyways so why should he care?
I was beyond excited to show everyone the cake and after dinner was cleared off and the coffee was brewing I decided to move the cake into the dining room so everyone could ooohh and ahhh. And boy did they! Everyone was whipping out their camera phones and asking me where I got this from. I was patting myself on the back if I do say so myself. =)
Well I shouldn't have patted myself on the back just yet because when it came time to cut the cake and eat it, well that was another story. We started serving the cake to our guests and it was really cold and the cake was kind of hard to eat with a fork. I was super embarrassed! The batter was extremely dense as well and I was disappointed as well as my FI. Everyone tried to cheer me up and suggest that it just needed to stay at room temperature next time. Next time??? Yeah right!
After the part we decided to keep the cake in the enclosed porch section of their house. I took home a HUGE part of the bottom tier and decided I would bring it into work for others to eat since my co-workers are always happy to eat free food. I warned everyone though and decided to get a piece myself since I was hungry. WAIT! What is this? The cake was so moist and delicious it was AMAZING! It melted in my mouth after every single bite.
I texted my FI and told him all about the cake and he was shocked. I wish I had saved a piece for him to try but everyone devoured the cake within a matter of minutes!
(all pictures are from my personal camera)
I'm glad we were able to test out her cakes prior to our wedding because we could have had the same problem for our at home reception and that would have been more disappointing for us. We have decided to stick with her and when we go for the tasting for the wedding cake we can mention our feedback on the first cake and make sure to avoid the same problem. I would recommend using your baker if you can for your engagement party (if you have one) so you can really experience the cakes instead of a couple slices that they choose.
Have you worked with your baker prior to your wedding? Did you have better luck?
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