Tuesday was the first day of the WeddSplosion Cake Tasting.  It was an intense few days of cooking for me. O.o

For the first day of Cake Tasting, I had three flavors prepared:

• Strawberries & Cream (strawberry cake with vanilla frosting)
• Peaches & Cream (vanilla cake with peach frosting & peach filling, hint of bourbon)
• Mocha Marble (mocha/vanilla marble cake with vanilla or mocha frosting, hint of Kaluah)

There were ups and downs with all three of these recipes, but I gave myself solace knowing that even if these didn’t look perfect, I have plenty of time to practice baking them until they do.

So we’ll start where I started: Strawberries & Cream.  Apologies for all the pictures…I was so busy baking and laughing that I just didn’t have the opportunity to take good ones.

I started with this recipe because I’d already made the strawberry cake several times; its one I trust, understand, and know will taste good.  It came out fairly nicely, though a touch too try because I baked it for the same amount of time, but with less batter (I forgot to compensate – I used a few spoonfuls for the cupcakes).

It’s actually a good thing I started with this cake because it helped boost my baking morale – not only did the cake turn out well as expected, but I had my first real serious success with the swiss meringue buttercream.

The first time I made the SMB it was a success, sure…but it took me literally about half of the day to get it to gel together.  My timidity and lack of experience with the frosting made me very hesitant to make changes, and it simply took forever to finish.  This time I made sure both the meringue and the butter were at neutral temperatures, and I splurged and bought nicer butter instead of Publix brand.  That combination of choices led to an excellent SMB.

Consensus: The favorite!  Cake would be better if it was a little sweeter and/or strawberrier (Yes.  Strawberrier).

The second cake I whipped out was the Peaches & Cream:

Because my friends showed up a bit early I was still in the whipping process of the SMB when they sat down ready to eat (I was a bit behind in general >.>).  Unfortunately I was unable to get the peach SMB frosting to come together very well…I think I need to work on my proportions.  It could be I just didn’t whip it long enough…it could be I just added too many peach preserves.  This will be something I have to work on.

The cake itself turned out well, though, and the preserves in the middle of the cake were very good.  I also added Makers Mark between the layers to give it a little southern kick.  Though next time I need to make sure my silicone brush is clean…spooning it onto the cake definitely made some slices significantly stronger than others.

Consensus: Pretty good.  The SMB – strange texture aside – was a bit too peachy and the bourbon needed to be a little better distributed.

The last cake I presented to them was the Mocha Marble cake…which alas, never actually got completed.  I blame it on the unexpectedly excellent time they made on the highway. >.>

This, however, wasn’t a big deal.  After tasting the cupcake portion while waiting for the peach frosting to be beaten into submission, I was alerted to the fact that the male portion of this pairing actually doesn’t care for coffee.  Naturally, this was his female counterpart’s favorite.  Go figure.

But being super-mature to-be-hitched pairing they are, they decided to put a lid on the mocha cake, since the other two flavors were very acceptable.

Consensus: 50/50 delicious/meh.  Permanently shelved for other flavors.

So thusly went the first cake tasting I’ve ever hosted.  It didn’t go nearly as smoothly as I’d planned, but luckily we all seemed to have a good time anyway, and we made some headway on the flavors in which they’re interested.  Next Tuesday I’ll be re-baking the Strawberry and Peach cakes to improve upon them and further narrow down their choice.  The Tuesday after that….well…you’ll have to wait and see what happens on that Tuesday.

As usual, I love any and all thoughts people have.  I’ll eventually post recipes for these once I have them worked out.