Let them eat (cup)cakes!

This weekend my family, Matt and I began what will surely be my most favorite part of planning our wedding -- tasting cakes!

In a perfect world, I'd make cupcakes from my own recipes for our wedding reception.  I am very particular about baked goods, and it would mean so much to me to share my passion for them with our closest friends and family!  Buuuuuuuuut, my mom and dad convinced me that I'll have a few other things on my mind, so it'd be best to leave that task to the professionals.

To make sure we were extra thorough, I may have created an evaluation sheet for the cupcakes.  Mainly because I thought it'd make the whole experience that much more fun (my family is so indulgent of my type A tendencies), but also because I want to have reminders of what I thought regarding each tasting.  It's not like this is some Food Network competition and we have 10 different flavors at our disposal.

First up was the red velvet.  Unfortunately this was underwhelming.  The flavor of the cake was pretty good, but the frosting a) wasn't the quintessential cream cheese variety (the tragedy!), and b) was made with shortening and left an unpleasant oily film on the roofs of our mouths.  Gross!  And after spotting our red tongues, we decided that our guests may not appreciate the makeover.  That being said... we still ate it!

Onto the next one - white cake with the same American buttercream.  This was both my dad and my favorite as far as the cake was concerned, but it was a bit dry.

Chocolate to the rescue!  Right?  Wrong.  Super mild chocolate flavor, so much so that my dad said if he'd been blindfolded he wouldn't have been able to identify it as chocolate.  Major sad face.  Chocolate should always be detectable :)  And again, regarding the icing, Matt's comment said it all: "Icing... eh."

Last was the yellow cupcake.  Split four ways for each cupcake aficionado.  This was a bit of a mystery for us, since the bakery told us it was a standard vanilla yellow cake, but we all agreed it had a lemon flavor to it. Not enough lemon to truly call it a lemon cupcake, but enough that it left your palate totally confused.

Four cupcakes later, we penned our final thoughts regarding what we'd sampled and were happily not stuffed to the gills.  Four cupcakes split four ways = 1 cupcake per person.  Completely reasonable :)

The verdict? We all agreed that our minds were 100% decided regarding this particular bakery -- thumbs down.  We were really bummed because we wanted to like it so much, mainly due to the proximity to the country club where the reception will be.  But, onward and upward.

One down, nine or so to go :)  Hopefully Matt has recovered from the brief sugar high.  I'm off to enjoy this surprise day off since the water main in our office building broke and we were sent home.  Have a fantastic Monday!

If you're married, how many cakes did you test?  Was it easy or difficult for you?

One Year Ago: Brown sugar toffee