Cake Tasting at Nine Cakes Bakery

This past Saturday my mom and my sister drove up to New York to join us for our cake tasting at Nine Cakes Bakery.  I have to say, this has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of wedding planning so far, and Betsy Thorleifson (the baker and owner) far surpassed my expectations.

When we arrived, I was surprised to see several plates of unfrosted mini cupcakes, with bowls of butter cream frosting that we could mix and match.  I have never been to a cake tasting before, but this was much more than I thought we would be able to try. In my head I had pictured tiny nibbles of sliced up cake.

I forgot to take pictures at the begining. by the time i took this picture we had already eaten half of what was there.

We found Nine Cakes when my sister noticed a tiny blurb about it while perusing bridal magazines.  What attracted me to seriously pursue this option was the unique and amazingly sophisticated flavors in their seasonally rotating menu.  I am a huge lover of floral and tea flavors, and Betsy’s menu was full of choices like almond rose water or earl grey.  In the end we decided on our favorites and plan to have two different cupcakes served at our wedding.  One is an orange blossom cake with lavender frosting, and the other will be an almond flavored cake with a strawberry rosewater frosting.  What I really loved about every flavor offered is that it was nice and subtle and didn’t feel like you were eating soap, so the cake and frosting flavors were not overwhelming when combined.  I also loved that the buttercream frosting was not too sweet yet thick and creamy and the top of the cake had a light crispiness while still being slightly moist on the inside (not gooey moist).

Joe and I posing with Betsy, our baker.

Betsy was also a delight to work with.  She was super sweet, and easy to talk to.  At one point, Joe and I were debating about which frosting we preferred, the rosewater or the strawberry.  She came up with the idea to combine the two.  It was such a great suggestion that we ended up deciding to use it!  I also brought my finished cake topper for her to see, along with some print outs with inspiration, and she reacted really positively towards it.  I feel like she totally understood my aesthetic, not that she needed to change hers much, I love almost all of the pictures on her website.  This ultimately makes me feel really confident about hiring her for our wedding.  Oh check out her tiered cakes too, we are only ordering cupcakes, but her tiered cakes are super cute too!

The only sad part is, I’ve heard that the bride and groom tend to be too busy at the wedding to really enjoy the food.  But I made my mom and sister promise to save us a few cupcakes to take home with us (this is in addition to the cake that you freeze for a year).   Since she makes all of her cakes to order, this will be the last time we get to taste the yumminess until we hire her for some other event who knows when!

All of us, very happy with what we’ve just tasted

My mom and my sister. I loved that they could join us for this since they are both down in Maryland and dont get to be as involved as they would like…especially since Nicole has a passion for cupcakes and frosting.

The aftermath!

Oh and speaking of my cake topper, I finally finished it!  Take a look at the pictures below.  I’m so happy with it!

The base if very Anthropologie/Jcrew/EmersonMade inspired and follows that arts and crafts, vintagey feel of the whole wedding.