One Word: CAKE!

Mr. Cupcake and I had the pleasure of attending a cake tasting this weekend. We had been to one previously with another baker, and weren't highly impressed with the cake itself or the baker's portfolio (filled with lots of columns, cascading flowers, and overall most things I despise about traditional wedding cakes). It was actually even difficult to tell what the cake really tasted like, because the slivers he gave us were so thin that you couldn't get a real gauge on the texture.

At my mom's wedding back in February, we had an absolutely heavenly lemon pound cake with lemon curd, lemon buttercream, and fondant from Sweet Jazmine's in Berwyn, PA. My mom had gone with Sweet Jazmine's blindly, without even tasting their cake, because a friend so enthusiastically recommended them. The cake was so beyond delicious that I can't even come up with a better word to truly express it's deliciousness. It also looked completely adorable:

Photo by Alison Conklin

I have had fondant from other bakeries that was gummy and thick and not very tasty, but even Sweet Jasmine's fondant is excellent. It was a thin layer of fondant OVER a layer of buttercream, so you still got the sweetness of the buttercream along with the smooth look of the fondant. (And, personally, I like fondant, but for anyone who doesn't, it was easy enough to eat around the fondant and still taste the sublime buttercream icing. The best of both worlds!)

So after our first unimpressive tasting elsewhere, and still dreaming about that lemon pound cake, Mr. Cupcake and I made ourselves an appointment for a tasting at Sweet Jazmine's. When calling for an appointment they actually informed me that they had put a cap on wedding cakes for our date, but since I raved so much about my mom's cake they would make an exception for me. Hooray! (Remember that complimenting a vendor may help you out in this kind of situation!)

Mr. Cupcake and I were very excited for our tasting this weekend. I just wanted to get some more of that lemon cake in my mouth, but I was also excited to try some other flavors. The outside of Sweet Jazmine's is not super flashy or regal looking considering its glowing reputation, but the purple and green signify that it is definitely not your average bakery.


We arrived to a nice woman behind the counter, Courtney, congratulating us on our impending wedding, and she set us up at a little table for our tasting. She gave us a form to fill out and brought us some water, and told us to help ourselves to some complimentary coffee (Mr. Cupcake was pretty much sold at this point, being a coffee fiend.) Courtney also welcomed us to look through the many photo albums filled with their artistic creations. Everything we saw was much more representative of our taste and what we were looking for visually.

Then, Courtney brought us some cake samples. Also known as heaven on a plate. I love you, Courtney.


As you can see the slices are HUGE. We had no problem decreasing the size of the slices. (Mr. Cupcake had to remind me that it was a "cake tasting," not a "cake eating." We didn't have to finish everything. Teehee.)


The verdict: we are still 100% gung-ho about the Lemon Poundcake (if you can't tell by its lack of appearance on the plate), but I also became quite smitten with the Vanilla Cheesecake with Raspberry (also conspicuously missing from the last shot). This is actually three layers of vanilla cake with one generous layer of cheesecake (as you can tell in the first photo), one layer of raspberry filling, and topped off with a layer of vanilla buttercream. We might have to do one tier of the Vanilla Cheesecake with Raspberry to accommodate the other tiers of Lemon Poundcake.

Everything else was also completely delicious. Cinnfully Southern has sweet potatoes in it, and kind of tasted like a hybrid of spice cake and carrot cake. It was amazing, but not my favorite, as I'm not the biggest fan of spice cake. The Marble Poundcake infused with Kahlua was very tasty but very rich, and Mr. Cupcake and I decided that there will be enough alcohol at the wedding — we don't also need to slip it into the cake :-) Finally, the Chocolate Decadence was, indeed, decadent, but extremely rich and perhaps too rich for some people. Not me, but some people.

After tasting all the flavors, one of of the bakers, Brooke, came to talk to us. I immediately liked her (because we happen to share the same first name) and she helpfully answered some questions for us. She told us that we didn't have to decide on a design until about a month before the wedding, but they could definitely create something like the photos we had to show her. Mr. Cupcake and I both love this cake from Papillon (which I found thanks to Miss Milkshake).

Ours would likely have teal ribbon instead of brown, and real white flowers on top

We also love the unexpected proportions of this one, with the taller middle tier:

From the talented April Reed

Brooke said it would be no problem to create something like a hybrid of these two cakes, so we happily put down our deposit and the search for a baker is now DONE! We could not be more excited about our Sweet Jazmine's creation and we can't wait until our guests taste it.

Has finding a baker been as exciting and fun for you?