Cookies and Candids

It took six cakes, seven frostings, two fillings, and several over-full tummies to make a decision. But we finally chose the cake flavor for my friends’ upcoming August wedding. I’m not going to reveal the winning combination yet, though! You’ll have to stay tuned for upcoming recipes and descriptions, and of course photographs of the completed wedding cake. I do have some photos from the tasting process for you, so you can start salivating in advance of receiving the recipes!

Here is a delightful and light Almond Cake, with Blackberry Filling, and frosted with Honey-Vanilla Buttercream Icing. The Honey-Vanilla flavor ended up being too sweet, but the almond cake is one of my favorites and was definitely in the final rundown of cake flavors and textures!

Earl Grey Cake with Blackberry Filling, with two different frostings on top. On the left, you can see the Orange Blossom Buttercream with the blue flowers surrounding the edge of the cake, and on the right with the purple bougainvillea flowers is Lemon Buttercream. We ended up liking the Lemon Buttercream on the Almond Cake…

But, we couldn’t make the most educated decision without more cakes! Since we had ended up liking different icings with different cakes than we had originally paired together, we decided to change our tasting system the second time around. I baked four different cakes and made four frostings, and we left the cakes unfrosted – everyone took a scoop of each frosting and a slice of each cake, and tried each flavor combination possible. A little bit of this, spread on a little bit of that, and tasted in one mouthful, we discovered a little bit of heaven.

Clockwise, starting at the top left corner, we made: Fluffy Yellow Cake, Toasted Almond Cake (was more like a sticky torte than what we had envisioned), the same Fluffy Yellow Cake with freshly grated ginger mixed into the batter, Cardamom Spice Cake:

Clockwise from the top left corner, I made four creamy frostings and one fresh filling:

Vanilla Bean Buttercream, Cream Cheese Icing, Raspberry Jam Filling, Freshly-Picked-Blackberry (thanks neighbors!) Buttercream Frosting, and Spicy Ginger Buttercream Frosting:

Doesn’t the blackberry frosting have the most beautiful pink color? It also had a nicely tart taste that complimented the sweet buttercream base. The ginger buttercream was also surprisingly popular, and very refreshing and delicious! We had a complex tallying system to decide what flavor combinations we liked best, but in the end, chose something different than how the stars had seemingly aligned:

Stay tuned to see the winning combination of cakes and frostings, as I will be baking the cake for an August 1st wedding. I’ll post pictures and recipes afterwords! And before that, of course, I’ll be baking more yummy treats, and will tell you about those as they appear in my kitchen.