As many of you may know, I went through a little cake-decorating phase about a year ago and it was wonderful, but entirely too stressful for me so I moved on. See some of those pretties on my old blog here! Anyway, when I thought about what I wanted my wedding cake to look like, I surprisingly had not.a.clue. Funny how that is -- the things that I have so much experience in (cake decorating, design) have been the things that have been the hardest yet. The reason? Probably the fact that I know the possibilities are endless and I can't decide which path to take.
So I started pinning. Yep. Months ago. :) Luckily, too, because by the time we needed to start looking at bakeries I had quite a gallery of beautiful cake inspiration floating around the web. And you know what happened? I began seeing a little pattern happening...
1. Flowers Cascade; Photo by Janelle Dedini 2. YUM Cake; Photo by Jen Lynne Photography 3. Pinwheel Fun; Photo by Ashley Rose Photography 4. Chevron and Flowers; Photo by Nancy Ray Photography
If you don't see the pattern I'm talking about, I'll let you in on it. All the cakes are simple, white tiered cakes with accents placed on AFTER the cake is finished. Which is good, because my cakes landed in the "simple" categories of all the bakeries we visited. And simple cakes = simple money aka cheaper! Hooray!
So after I figured out some cakes I wanted to show off, let's just say that John and I were super dreading trying out some of the BEST bakeries in Little Rock -- NOT! We were pumped to get our hands on some sweets and figure out which bakery would be the best choice for our big day.
The first bakery we went to is a new place in town called Sweet Love. Let me tell you, it is amazing! And adorable -- definitely the cutest bakery in town. Hands DOWN! When we walked in, we were overcome with beautiful smells drifting towards us in all directions and I could hardly stand it. Kelli Marks, the owner, sat down with us and a few of her cake flavors and we went.to.town. It was kind of embarrassing but whatev. And WOWZA, it was delish! My favorite had to be the lemon cake with blueberry lemon cream cheese icing. It tasted like summer and happiness. And I couldn't pick one negative thing about the entire consultation. Except maybe that the strawberry cake wasn't artificially pink. Which, depending on the person, could be good or bad. Personally, I like the pink splash of color but at the same time, she makes it all so naturally that it makes sense to be normal colored!
The next bakery on our list was Blue Cake Company. I've had their cakes before and they've been rockin', but we were a little disappointed in our tasting. Not that the cake was bad! It was actually really REALLY good -- just a little....off? The thing that stood out to us the most were that they gave us each an ice-cold bottle of water. It was so appreciated since trying a bunch of cake can leave you super thirsty! But their white chocolate icing totally left me saddened (I was so excited to try it but they forgot and had accidentally mixed it with a strawberry icing. When we tried that, it just tasted like pure butter, which would totally melt in our outdoor reception in July). I'm not trying to be negative though -- just honest! I was totally diggin' their strawberry cake + cream cheese icing. HOLY CRAP, it was good! And the owner sent me a personal thank-you note which really touched my heart (she remembered me from when I took a decorating class awhile back). BIG bonus points for that!
The last bakery we went to was the infamous Mickey's, which we kind of just went to on a whim. I've always heard it is the most expensive bakery in town so I went in knowing we probably wouldn't be able to afford their prices. But if someone was willing to give us free awesome cake, who were we to argue? We sat down in the back and waited... and waited... and waited... for someone to come sit with us in the consultation room. At one point we had to ask a random employee for water since the cakes were drying our mouths out and they handed us the most awkward cups -- like little teepees -- that you couldn't put down. We thought that was strange. BUT their cake? Man, their cake was melt in your mouth good. John and I almost didn't even notice that we were alone for so long it was soooo good. And when a consultant did finally join us after 15 minutes, she was the.nicest.woman.ever. Seriously, I was kind of in love with her. Our favorite flavor we tried at Mickey's had to be the yellow cake + chocolate buttercream icing. It was swoon-worthy. It all was, actually.
So. Which bakery did we choose?
Well. We decided to go with MICKEY'S! We loved their cake so much, we couldn't decide on one favorite and decided we loved three equally. So the flavors will be white cake + white buttercream icing, strawberry cake + cream cheese icing, and of course the yellow cake + chocolate buttercream I mentioned before. And you know what one of the best parts about Mickey's was? They came in MUCH LOWER than we expected. The price they gave us + the swoon-worthy flavors made our decision so easy and we are so excited!
Anyway, I know that was a lot of text and not a lot of pictures (sorry dudes) but hopefully this shed some great light onto some of our best bakeries in Little Rock. I honestly love them all and am sure I'll be visiting all of them many, many times over the years :)
So now here's a big question: what kind of cake are you going to want? We need to choose which tier is which so it's actually really important -- if no one likes strawberry cake, for example, we'll put that towards the top, with a smaller piece of cake. The most popular kind of cake needs to go at the bottom since that will feed the most people. Catch my drift? Anyway, leave a comment with you're personal vote on which one you'd want and help me out here!
3 comments:
I vote for white or yellow cake!
The white IS pretty goood.... :) Thanks for the comment!
White!
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