Several of my coworkers and I headed to Dexter’s, a cute restaurant in Thornton Park, for make-your-own sandwiches! (You may read about my past lunches at Dexter’s here and here.)
I ordered a roast beef sandwich on whole wheat bread with all the veggies and Dijon mustard. I didn’t snap a picture of my meal, so please enjoy this replica from a past lunch at Dexter’s when I ordered a turkey sandwich!
Replace the Turkey with Roast Beef in Your Mind!
The whole wheat bread at Dexter’s is delicious and has lots of seeds throughout the slices which gives it a nutty texture that I adore.
A Peek Inside
I ate every last bite! 😀
Though I typically prefer to each lunch at my desk to save moo-lah, it was really nice to get out of the office and chat it up this afternoon!
Wedding Cake
I am unbelievably excited for this weekend!
Ryan and I have some seriously fun wedding-related appointments on the agenda, one of which is tasting and selecting the design of our wedding cake!
There are so many different cake designs to choose from. One thing Ryan and I know for sure is that we want a tiered cake with only white icing. I think cakes with colored icing can be adorable, but we both prefer a simple, color-free look.
I would love to incorporate some beautiful flowers from our florist into the cake, preferably on the top, as I think flowers on a wedding cake can add a pop of color and a romantic, feminine look which appeals to me.
I am pretty much obsessed with Jessica’s wedding cake…
The "How Sweet It Is" Wedding Cake
Isn’t it amazing? (Aside from looking breathtakingly beautiful, it also had a chocolate fudge center. Heaven.)
Though Ryan and I were asked to select several cake flavors to try during our tasting this weekend, we selected only one (red velvet cake) and told the pastry chefs to “surprise us” with the other flavors by selecting popular flavors people seem to enjoy.
I’m excited to see what they have in store!
Blowing Out the Candles on My Red Velvet Birthday Cake
Side note: If you are a red velvet cake fan like we are, definitely try making these red velvet cake brownies. SO tasty!
Question of the Afternoon
- What was the flavor (or flavors) of your wedding cake?
- If you’re not married, what flavor wedding cake would you like for your big day?
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Ok not only was I in love with how my cake looked, I loved the flavor! It was chocolate with chocolate fudge filled, white chocolate icing and white chocolate curls. See… THAT is why I still have some in my freezer!!
i am seriously in love with it. i printed out a picture of it to bring to our tasting! 😀 LOVE LOVE LOVE it.
I’m not gonna lie. When I saw that cake on How Sweet, I immediately book marked it for my wedding. I’m not even engaged! But I am obsessed with it!
This cake is pretty awesome looking! So unique too. 🙂 And i’m pretty sure red velvet will be my wedding cake flavor (some day).
I love buttercream, thats what we had at our wedding. We got married at South Beach Miami on the ocean at sunrise. The beginning of a new day, new start. We were all barefoot and everyone wore white. My flowers were orchids and starbursts. what a beautiful day!
I love red velvet cake and will be making the brownies ASAP!!
I just got married in May and had 3 flavors of cake (why choose just one?)
-Red velvet with cream cheese filling
-Pink lemonade with a citrus filling
-Almond with bavarian cream filling.
I loved all of them. My cake lady suggested the almond one for our “feeding” since it is a white cake and wouldn’t stain my dress. This turned out to be fantastic advice since my new hubby shoved it lovingly in my face.
I just found your site a few days ago and I love it! I ordered carba nada noodles and they are tasty! Thanks for sharing!
aren’t they amazing? i love carba nada!
that pink lemonade flavor sounds so neat! ryan loved lemon cake & i’m sure that would be right up his alley (& mine too b/c of the color 😉 ).
I went to a wedding once where the cake was coconut with whipped cream filling and coconut vanilla buttercream frosting. It was a summer wedding, so it was perfectly light and the coconut flavor was just subtle enough that you could taste it but it didn’t overwhelm. I could have eaten half the cake.
i LOVE coconut. that sounds fantastic.
Hands down, BEST part of wedding planning!
We actually had a 4 layer tiered cake, but only 1 layer was “real” – the rest were fake, and we had sheet cakes in the back. It was A LOT cheaper! Our flavors were:
-yellow cake w/ caramel mousse filling
-sour cream w/ cake with raspberry filling
-spice cake w/ cream cheese frosting/filling
-kahlua fudge cake w/ oreo cream mousse and chocolate buttercream
We had a “slicing station” where guests could go up and pick which flavor they like…because nothing is worse than getting a slice of cake at a wedding, then looking across the room and seeing someone else with a better flavor! 😉
oreo cream mousse??????? ryan would pass out. he is unnaturally obsessed with oreos.
Haha, so are we. Which is why we asked our baker to make it for us. It was out of this world!!!
Already a wedding planner in training. This is a great tip for brides who don’t want to blow a budget on a cake.
A good rule of thumb is that you want your cake to be between $3-5 per slice (not including your cake cutting fee). I tasted some cakes that were $12 per slice, soooo not worth it!
I need to find a husband first, but I’d like Jessica’s cake, too. 🙂
hahaha – a cake like that is worth the wait!
Hmm good question. I’m not married, but I would love both coconut cake and carrot cake with mini Tiramisu’s. And I would have one of each. 🙂
I think the cake itself will be just a white cake (since my parents, who are planning my shindig in Brazil, didn’t ask for me to pick a flavor of cake, just of filling), but it’ll have dulce de leche filling, since I just LOVE it.
The first time I’ll be trying my cake will be on my wedding day (100 days to go!), I can’t wait!
I LOVED our wedding cake for multiple reasons:
1. No fondant so it actually ALL tasted good
2. It was made the night before and did not spend *any* time in the freezer so it was super moist
3. It was made by a woman who does this as her passion not her main job
4. All ingerdients were fresh, natural, and self-created
5. Flavors were marble (her specialty..I was wary because I am not a huge fan of chocolate cake); and lemon cake with a lemon ganache filling..soooo freakin’ heavenly.
5. She did all her designs in buttercream frosting on the outside of the cake and they were vines and grapes since we got married in a vineyard
Cake tasting rocks!
you need to post a pic on your blog!
We didn’t have a wedding cake. We fed each other chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. It was messy and delicious! 🙂
Holy moly Jessica’s wedding cake is OUT OF THIS WORLD beautiful!!
Your bday cake looks yummy, red velvet is the best! <33
We had chocolate cake with cannoli filling (with mini choc chips) and buttercream on the outside. It was soooo goooddd mmm
you gotta do a tasty one…nate’s groom’s cake was actually a huge pile of chocolate chip cookies! my cookie monster knows what he likes 🙂
That’s a gorgeous cake! I love red velvet, too.
My husband was most excited about the cake tasting part of wedding planning that he ate so much he threw up that night.
Jessica’s cake is so elegant and lovely, I’d be afraid to slice into it if I didn’t love sweets so much!
We opted for a dessert buffet instead and it was unbelievable! It looked like Candyland exploded at our reception! It was YUMMY!
Red velvet is for sure delicious, and I also LOVE carrot cake – not sure if that’s wedding-appropriate, though 😉
Glad you had a nice lunch, and all this super exciting wedding stuff is making me smile – I cannot wait to hear more about it!! Hooray cake!
We had 5 different cakes at our wedding. We opted for cakes from an asian bakery so the cakes weren’t as sweet as a traditional cake but we like them better. People raved about them and loved how they got a choice.
My boyfriend and I always say we want carrot cake at our wedding…but maybe a layer of red velvet also for the non-nut fans out there!
chocolate mud cake would be my choice 🙂
have a look here for inspirations: http://www.sedonacakes.com/
we had cupcakes at our wedding, which i loved! we got married a year ago and i know the cupcake craze was even earlier than that but i loved it because i didn’t want a cookie cutter wedding…
we had 3 flavors-
chocolate chip with white buttercream frosting and mini choc chips,
confetti (a la funfetti- with green & purple sprinkles which were our main colors) with green & purple sprinkles on buttercream for the topping, and lemon w/ raspberry filling topped w/ buttercream & iridescent sugar sprinkles
it was delish! and we had a mini 2 tiered cake for cutting… one layer was lemon & raspberry, the other (for freezing) was marble. the bakery suggested a simpler flavor for freezing… but it still wasn’t amazing a year later. guess i don’t like year old cake! 🙂
We did three different cakes all with raspberry filling – chocolate, lemon and french vanilla. From what I heard, the cake was delicious. I didn’t actually eat my piece of cake – only the bite at the cake cutting. (I was so busy dancing and mingling that the staff had cleared the slice waiting for me.) My friend had a chocolate chip cake, and it was SO good. Have fun!
Cake testing was probably the most fun part of the planning process for our wedding. We had a 4 tier cake with each layer being a different flavor: vanilla with chocolate filling, chocolate with strawberry filling, marble with vanilla filling and carrot with cream cheese filling. Yum! Now I want cake!! 🙂
Ohhhh, what a beautiful cake!!
When I get married…I want a white cake with coconut flavoring. I also think that almond bavarian sounds delicious as well. The cake; of course, has to be white with white frosting! The cake itself will be tired and I want small cupcakes surrounding the wedding cake…YUM!!!
Our cake was similar to what you guys are looking for. It was a huge 4 tiered round cake with all white frosting, and had about 3 inches of fresh floral between each tier and on the top. Beautiful!! You can see a picture if you search “Wedding” on my blog.
We had white cake with alternating layers of strawberry and raspberry buttercream frosting.
I went the traditional almond wedding cake flavor, but each tier had a different filling–chocolate, strawberry, lemon, and buttercream. I
Red velvet? Enough said, I think I just mentally put my name on the top of your wedding guestlist. I’ve been in love with Jessica’s cake (does ‘cake’ even justify what it is?, I think art is more appropriate.) from the minute I saw it. My sister got married a month or so back and what they did was really interesting actually. They were trying to save some money, so they chose a smaller cake (red velvet too, actually!) to cut and eat themselves and served different flavored cupcakes for everyone at the wedding. Just a LOT less messy, expensive and a little creative!
I’m just slightly obsessed with cakes, cupcakes, and watching the decorating of both on the food network. So, that being said, I can’t wait to pick out a wedding cake!!! I have no idea what flavor I’ll pick but I’m leaning toward red velvet. So good. I’m thinking maybe gluten free, though, if possible.
Can’t wait for you to make a decision! Exciting!
We had a traditional Italian Dessert called millefoile, which means 1,000 layers of tiny crepes and cremes. It was very fitting since we did a destination wedding in Italy.
There was only one bakery for me to order from so I couldn’t be super choosey but I did insist on NO fondant, yuck! In the end I designed my own cake and it came out great (even the bakery owner said I did a good job, yay!).
Yellow cake, buttercream icing, lemon curd and fresh blackberries as filling. Soooooo good.
Mine was all white (off white) with little tiny (edible) pearls on it, and orchids on top. I loved it… simple, but elegant. (You can find a picture of it on this post, but I have a better one if you want me to email it to you. http://tropicalhappiness.blogspot.com/2010/05/one-year-ago-our-wedding.html )
As for flavors, I had three tiers and each had a different flavor. Top was vanilla with vanilla creme- my favorite. And then one was chocolate with raspberry filling, and I am totally blanking on the third flavor. Eeek, I can’t believe I forgot. I’ll try to remember… 🙂
I went to a wedding a few weeks ago where they had two flavors… one was pumpkin, the other was peanut butter!!
That wedding cake is beautiful! I love how embellished it is but it isn’t over the top.
I had maple walnut flavored cake with cream cheese frosting (the kind you get with carrot cake). It was absolutely delicious. I got married in Vermont during maple sugaring season so it was the perfect flavor.
First, that cake is unbelievable! So fluffy and fun while still elegant as all get-out.
Our cakes were *to die for* – I was practically fainting when we had the toppers on our one year anniversary. The “main” cake was white chocolate cake covered in white chocolate buttercream, with chocolate mousse in between the layers, and each layer soaked in either baileys, khalua, or amaretto. The grooms cake was four layers of dark chocolate cake, with milk chocolate mousse, brandy-soaked cherries, and dark chocolate buttercream.
I just did my cake-tasting last weekend 🙂 We decided on:
*roasted banana cake with vanilla scented cream cheese frosting
*chocolate beet cake with cream cheese frosting
*Tahitian vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream
I’m still thinking about the design but I have a picture of a contender on my blog 🙂
Ours was vanilla with strawberry & chocolate with raspberry. Super yummy 🙂
We had chocolate cake with cannoli filling and whip cream icing. It was delicious and it looked like a sand castle http://photo1.walgreens.com/walgreens/slideshow/AlbumID=51030991/PictureID=1513560355/a=30535291_30535291/
We are very similar to you in that we are choosing chocolate cake with peanut butter filling . . . . and then we don’t care! I always joke about it. When people ask what flavors, I reply “get your vote in now!”
Mmmm, cake. Ours was vanilla cake with a touch of lemon with raspberry creme (and I mean real raspberries IN the creme) filling between the layers. And then the best buttercream frosting I’d ever had…like the kind that crunches a little when you eat it because of the granules of sugar. Hold on, I need to wipe the drool off my keyboard…!
I actually have no idea what flavor my cake was. It was white (I hate chocolate cake), so…white-flavored? lol. But it was seriously the tastiest cake I have ever eaten and so beautiful. Even going cheap with a Wal-Mart cake didn’t stop it from being totally great!
Our flavor was Key Lime with key lime curd filling and a Butter Cream frosting…ahh so good, it is my favorite dessert to this day! The rest of the cakes were chocolate cherry black forest and an easy vanilla with raspberry filling.
I loveeeee Carrot cake, but don’t know if I’d do it for a wedding cake. There are too many choices, I could never decide!
Confession: I have never had red velvet cake! But those brownies you linked to look delicious and makes me want to try it!!
Chelsea
My husband and I got married at The Wynn in Las Vegas. We had just our very closest friends and near family members, so it was a party of just 50.
For dinner, we went to this amazing restaurant in the Wynn called Stratta. I’ll skip dinner since it’s a lot 🙂 but I decided to do individual servings of cheesecake (my favorite) topped with fresh berries served with champagne.
I definitely am not a “big wedding” person and I liked to do my wedding a different way. The individual cheesecakes (they were circles, not slices) were beautiful and delicious and I am glad I did it that way!
I don’t think i’ve ever had red velvet cake! Maybe i should make yours?!
oooh you’re missing out! put this on your to-do list immediately!
I would do a carrot or lemon cake, I think…. But red velvet is a great choice because most people love it! That cake with the flowers on top is beautiful. Great idea to incorporate flowers into the decoration!
Tasting cake has been my favorite wedding task so far! We are doing a simple champagne color with blue ribbon and our monogram.
Best part is 4 flavors:
White with Strawberry filling
Key lime with Cream Cheese filling
Chocolate with Coconut filling
Banana with Carmel filling
Have fun this weekend!
white cake + strawberry filling is one of my favs!
I had two wedding cakes, on my wedding day and one on the day of my reception!
The first one was vanilla cake with an almond creme filling and marzipan frosting. It was covered with pure white fondant and decorated with calla lillies.
The second one was also vanilla cake with just a simple white frosting between the layers and on the cake. It ws decorated with baby pink gerber daisies.
Don’t forget to order a groom’s cake with something really goofy and off the wall!
My husband is a dessert freak and wanted to pick out the wedding cake. I’m very go-with-the-flow so I was fine with that. He picked out a chocolate cake w/ chocolate mousse filling, chocolate icing, and a chocolate roses 🙂