Wedding Cake Tasting

I am making a wedding cake for a wedding this spring. I know the bride and she asked me to make the cake. As this is a proper business request (even though it was a friend) not a favor I felt I should give her and the groom a proper cake tasting--plus the groom had never tasted my food. They were pretty sure they wanted white cake, but they really didn't have much of an idea other than that. So I made 2 types of cake and 6 flavors of buttercream for them to try.

The white cake was the same delicious (Martha Stewart) white cake I used for my cousin's anniversary cake. The chocolate cake was a new-ish recipe from the newest Martha Stewart cookbook.

The buttercream was my usual American-style buttercream (butter and powdered sugar). I flavored them as follows:

• Orange=orange extract (and a tiny bit of gel food coloring)
• Raspberry=high quality, seedless raspberry jam
• Vanilla bean=vanilla bean paste and vanilla powder
• Pistachio=pistachio butter
• Chocolate-hazelnut=cocoa powder and hazelnut butter
• Chocolate=melted dark chocolate

They were all delicious! My favorite was the chocolate-hazelnut, but the pistachio was amazing, and of course the raspberry is always nice (and so pretty). The vanilla is rather well vanilla, but I do like the flecks of vanilla bean from the paste. The orange was fine, but not quite as orange-y as I'd have liked (it's a product of the extract which is a little less orange-y than I'd like). The chocolate was, of course, lovely but it's rather boring.

I tried to make the combinations interesting but not too odd. My favorite was the chocolate and white cakes with raspberry and vanilla bean buttercreams. All the rest had white cake. Tied in second were the chocolate-hazelnut and vanilla bean and the raspberry and pistachio. But the pistachio, chocolate, and orange was pretty great as well.

The happy couple was torn between my two second choices but liked the idea of three flavors. So we decided to do a layer of pistachio, raspberry, and vanilla bean. Their favorite bits of their two favorites and the idea of 3 flavors. They also decided on look/decoration, but I'm not telling you about that right now.

Now all I have to do is make a larger version for their big day!