Berrylicious!

This weekend, we picked out our cake! Our cake is actually included in our catering fee so we didn't have to shop for bakers. We went straight to the bakery that does cakes for our venue. The way it works is, if you want a simple butter cream cake decorated with flowers from your florist, there's no extra cost. But if you want fondant or a special design, you pay for an upgrade.

I think fondant cakes with intricate designs and sugar flowers are really pretty but we didn't want to pay $300+ to upgrade to a fondant cake. We also didn't want to go with the simple butter cream cake with flowers. With our budget in mind, we had another idea. Since it isn't going to look like a piece of art, we decided to let it look like, well...cake! After looking online for inspiration, I found the perfect edible cake decoration--berries!

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How yummy does this cake look?! Raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, oh my!

The thing is, I'm not even a big cake person. I mean, I enjoy a tasty piece of cake or cupcake when it's placed in front of me. But if I'm at a restaurant about to order dessert, nine times out of ten, I'll go for something with fruit--pie, tart, crisp, etc. I love me some pie and warm, sugary crust. Steve's the same way so it makes sense for our cake to feature fruit.

I also thought it would be fun to have some sort of topper, so I went to Etsy to find an affordable option. After some searching, I found these cute cake flags.

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For $25, we get three customized flags. One will say "Just Married," another will have our last initial in a berry red color and the last will have that purple design, but in yellow.

We showed our baker the cake inspiration photo and flags and he's going to re-create it for us for small upgrade ($150). I love how it kind of looks homemade and something you want to actually eat, instead of just stare at. Then we were given a big plate of cakey goodness to figure out what flavors we wanted.

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The cakes were: red velvet, carrot, marble, vanilla and chocolate
The fillings included: cream cheese frosting, pineapple, cannoli filling, strawberry, raspberry, pineapple, chocolate mouse, custard and whipped cream

Everything was delicious! The baker left Steve, my mom and I with spoons to dig in and I think we all expected to take some cake home. Not so much...the plate was almost wiped clean by the time we were finished! I especially liked the raspberry and strawberry fillings, as well as the cannoli filling and the custard. We ultimately decided to get the chocolate cake with the strawberry filling, which will tie in with the berries on the outside of the cake and should be a crowd-pleaser. Who doesn't love chocolate and strawberries?

We've had so many appointments lately and this was probably my favorite one! And now I'm looking forward to our cake :)