High on Sugar
Originally published on Meidän Häät website.
We have chosen our wedding cake bakery and it is… The Art of Cakes! They gave us a cake tasting in Kirkkonummi in the fall and in the end we decided we don’t even need to go try any other places. The Art of Cakes was recommended for their skill in sugar flowers, which we knew we wanted, and the price was reasonable so it was the perfect package for us!
For the tasting we could choose 4 different cakes and 8 different fillings. We chose vanilla, carrot, lemon and strawberry cakes. For the fillings we had a few requests and the rest we let Sonja choose. As one of our wedding theme colors is peach (=persikka) – also in the name of the blog, we asked for peach- sparkling wine filling in addition to the strawberry-sparkling wine filling found on the list online.
Eerikki hates chocolate (strange, I know!) so we asked Sonja to exclude all the chocolaty options. Okay, I’m not the biggest chocolate fan either but in small amounts every once in a while I think it can be good. Anyway, we aimed for a fresh summery wedding cake that the groom would definitely enjoy!
In the end, the choice on flavors was quite easy. We both liked the peach-sparkling wine filling and we also loved the passionfruit filling. After discussing it with Sonja, we decided to put two layers of the peach one as it has a more subtle flavor, and one layer of the passionfruit filling. We tried this combination with different cake options and decided on the lemon cake.
Since neither one of us is big on desserts and hardly ever eats cakes, we were both a bit nauseous after the tasting. Even though we knew almost immediately our favorites, we wanted to try them all and try different kinds of combinations to be sure. I told Eerikki that the next time I’m eating cake, it’ll be in our wedding..
We had a vision for what the cake would look like already before going to the tasting but that you won’t see until after the wedding. We gotta leave something as a surprise after all… 😀
So we went to one tasting but before that I looked into several bakeries and contacted many of them as well. Here are some tips based on our experience to help you find your wedding cake bakery.
We started by thinking what we wanted the cake to look like. It also makes a huge difference how large a wedding you’re having as the prices varied from 5 to 12 euros a person. These price estimates were for a layered wedding cake with decorations in the greater Helsinki region. A lot of bakeries offered real flowers instead of sugar flowers, which makes sense as that saves a lot of time and effort from the baker. Sonja (with a degree in biology) from the Art of Cakes didn’t recommend that, however, as she said that real flowers are full of chemicals.
Once we had made up our minds on what the cake should look like, we contacted several bakeries and asked for a quote. The offers we got varied by more than 400 euros so I highly recommend asking around for prices! I was also surprised that this was one of the few things you don’t need to book immediately. When I contacted a few places in the summer already, they asked me to get back to them in the fall. So this might be something you can still book a bit later.
If you have several celiacs or vegans among your guests (or among yourselves), you might want to find a cake that is suitable for them as well. At least Say it With a Cake makes gluten-free wedding cakes but I bet a lot of places are able to make one upon request.
I also recommend that if you have a flavor in mind that’s not on the bakery’s list, then ask if they can make it for you. At least we’re really happy to have our peach theme represented in the wedding cake flavor too!
I hope these tips will be of help, good luck in your search! 🙂