Let Them Eat Cake

Went to a cake tasting last night to try and figure out exactly what on earth we're going to do about the whole thing. I was surprised to realise once we started talking that I really didn't have a good clear idea about what I wanted. I had collections of pictures where I thought to myself, "that looks nice" and I could articulate why it looked nice, most of the time, but I hadn't really said anything more specific than "something black and white with square tiers." Hmm.

Luckily, the woman we talked to was, as Sebastian put it, able to take our vaguest ideas and translate them into something that made sense. She looked at all my pictures and my invitation pieces and was able to come up with several different ideas that all appealed to some aspect of the vague chimera of a cake that has been floating around in my mind since I first started planning the wedding. The cake samples we got to munch on during the consultation tasted great as well. After weeks of fleeting thoughts about coconut and vanilla and fruit and other Victoria-sponge-like concoctions, I think I fell most in love with the carrot cake and this lovely, thick, fudgey chocolate cake. We may have to do a combination of the two - have the cake feature layers of each. Yum.

It's funny, because as much as I plan and we put together invitations and do research online and chat with our parents, I feel the most like a bride-to-be when Sebastian and I go out to places like Moss Bros or the cake bakers and talk to people who don't know us at all that we need to engage their services for our wedding. There's something about going into a place of business armed with my notebooks and contracts and artwork that carries more weight than just an email of enquiry. It feels more official and immediate.

Unfortunately, some caramel snacks and the cake samples weren't enough to stop us from the dreaded phenomenon of "hungry grocery shopping" and evil against which I have been warned by my mother throughout my life. Shopping when hungry, as we've affirmed on several occasions, just leads to a shopping trolley full of crisps and cookies and other salty, greasy, sugary, or otherwise fattening pre-packaged foods. Ingredients for good, wholesome, healthy dishes don't suffice when Shopping While Hungry (SWH). Crisps and oven chips supplant potatoes, peas, and carrots; chicken tenders and meat-fest pizzas are far more enticing than the components for a home-cooked chicken pot pie. When the £1 bags of Doritos started to increase in their appeal by the second, I knew I should have showed less restraint in fully testing the range of cake samples on our little plate. Needless to say, we came back and bemoaned our failure not to shop when hungry - especially when we'd known it was a distinct possibility beforehand. Ah well, we'll be better prepared next time.