Not Beige This Time

Would you look at that?!?!? For my 30th birthday about a month ago, my sister made me the most incredible cake.




I kept looking at it and I just couldn't believe this beautiful thing was for ME!!! Lil' old me! It was almost too pretty to eat.

But don't you worry. Eat it we did. And if you think this thing looks incredible, you should have tasted it.

Heaven. on. a. fork.

Except when I would put the fork down and just lick my plate.

My sister's design was inspired by my wedding cake:


Or perhaps I should say, the way my wedding cake was supposed to have looked. Which is not what you see above.

Don't get me wrong, I think my wedding cake turned out pretty, it's just that I had envisioned something different and even getting what I got was like pulling teeth.

Originally, we weren't even going to have a cake because I don't like cake that much and M doesn't even eat sugar. Seemed silly to spend the money. But my dad seemed to think it was important to follow tradition. (Cue Tevye: "Tradi-tion! TRADITION!") Well, he was footing the bill, so I wasn't going to argue. However, if I was having cake, I was determined that it would be as yummy as possible. At least to me, because I'm selfish like that. Which meant chocolate - none of that white crap.

I went to a bakery my mom had heard good things about and we taste tested their stuff. They had a delicious chocolate cake and chocolate buttercream that I decided to go with. So when it was time to sit down and actually give them my order, I thought it would be easy. In the end, it was a good thing the cake wasn't very important to me.

I told the bakery I wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing. Right off the bat, they questioned whether I REALLY wanted chocolate frosting and not white. And I said definitely.

Then they asked what decoration I wanted on it. I told them my wedding kind of had a stylistic theme of bands or stripes, so I wanted each tier to have a band around it about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way up. Then they wanted to know what color I wanted that in. And I said chocolate. Same as the rest of the cake. They thought I was insane. (Do you? To me I think something can be monochromatic and still be pretty because of texture or varying heights, right?) I told them I wanted it all chocolate. They said it wouldn't show up. I said it would show enough. And I told them we would be adding a few fresh flowers ourselves. They were still dubious and suggested what if the frosting was chocolate and they made the band out of a darker chocolate? I thought that sounded okay so I agreed. I didn't know that would mean they would frost the cake with something they waved near some chocolate so it was just a dirty beige color. I wanted CHOCOLATE. I had pictured a subtle contrast of the regular chocolate buttercream I had just taste-tested and a darker chocolate accent.

Then they asked what else I wanted on the cake. I said nothing. They were appalled. I was repulsed by the very suggestion of a gaudy frilly cake. I like me my streamlined. Tailored. Simple. They told me I HAD to have something or it would be too boring. I said I didn't like a lot of decoration. Then they told me fine, but they wouldn't be able to get the edges on the bands smooth enough so they had to pipe the edges. So I told them fine, make it a straight line then. They again looked at me like I was crazy.

If I had actually cared much about this cake, then I SO would have walked out on them and found someone else. But whatever. In the end the cake was pretty good - a lot better than something non-chocolate. And it was pretty enough, even if it wasn't the tower of chocolate decadence that I had envisioned.


But 8 years later, my sister's cake was perfect. I have the best sister EVER!!!