Friday, October 10, 2008

cake, part two: cupcakes achieved....?

Originally, the plan of attack for our cupcakes was the downtown coffee house called Aromas. They have delicious cake, they're close to our venue, and we went to a wedding in February that had their cupcakes and they were awesome. And huuuuuuge. One Aromas' cupcake can easily feed two people, which gives the added advantage of not ordering as many cupcakes. They were also the cheapest option, tied with Cupcake Island, who also has delicious cupcakes but isn't as close to our venue and their cupcakes aren't quite as big.
So let's go with Aroma's. Cupcakes achieved. Or so we thought.
Well, no, actually. It turns out that Aroma's (the coffee house) wants to sell Aroma's (the bakery). And if you buy a bakery, the last thing you'd want to do is have to fulfill some silly order that they made before they belonged to you. So all the talks we had had with these people regarding pricing and delivery and flavors...gone. They can't do our cupcakes. And this blow came...last week.
Needless to say I was FREAKING OUT. We had chosen this bakery because they were the cheapest, best option. Was I going to have to drop half a g on shitty cupcakes? Would anyone still be available for our date? I went back to Hastings last weekend and I spent a lot of time with my mom trying to work out if we could conceivably make our own cupcakes. We could, but it would give me an ulcer or two. Probably some panic attacks, too. So what to do?


Well, you get in a boat, and you point that boat towards Cupcake Island.
This is Ed and his business partner Shirley (Edit: Not his wife. Thanks Mike!). These are their cupcakes. They own Cupcake Island, quite possibly the cutest cupcake shop ever. They saved our asses. They are my new favorites.
We went to Cupcake Island last night. They arranged a meeting for us even though they would've usually been closed at that time. We also had cake samples. We banged out a contract right then and there, no backing out, no "maybe's." Their cake really is superior to Aroma's, the cupcakes are just a little smaller, so we ordered more than we were originally planning.
We also ended up ordering an actual cake. We had been considering a small cake to display our rad cake toppers from Paul Pape Designs (BTW Paul: I will email you dress pictures tonight...probably) and also because I like the idea of cutting an actual cake. This cake probably won't be sliced up at the reception unless it looks like they're still ravenous after dinner, candy and cake. It'll be something along the lines of this:
Only without the bands of frosting. Just like a mini wedding cake. To showcase the topper.
The conversation was interesting, because he asked what we wanted on the cake and I said, frosting. He asked if we wanted ribbons, or flowers, or frosting flowers. I said no, cake should just be cake. With frosting. No fondant, ever. He convinced me to put a little extra frosting froo on it. Some ivory bands or something, I don't remember. But as I said in my last cake post, I think just frosting is pretty. No froo, please. Just delicious, delicious cake.

We'll be having vanilla, chocolate, and pumpkin spice cupcakes. The wedding cake will be red velvet. We went over all the flavor options (so many! all sounding wicked good) and Greg mentioned that he liked their mocha flavored cupcakes. I thought they sounded good, but I didn't know if they'd have the wide appeal (especially to the little kids) and also...um..chocolate was cheaper. The chocolate was also one of the samples he gave us, and it was delicious. So chocolate it was.
As we were walking out, though, Ed said "Oh, you guys said you liked our mocha cupcakes?"
And we said "Yeah, they're awesome, just not for our wedding, I guess"
And then he went to the fridge. I thought, awesome! Free cupcake!
But he didn't give us a free cupcake. He gave us A DOZEN FREE CUPCAKES. Mocha ones. With cream cheese frosting. And chocolate chips.
I ate four. Then I sent them to Greg's work so I would be able to fit into my dress.

Did I mention Ed is my favorite?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh man! i thought you guys already knew about aroma's--i heard about that a month ago. i'm a bad bad bridesmaid!

Unknown said...

no, they told us they were selling, but said they could probably do the cupcakes anyway since we didn't really need that many. only recently did they back out of that.

Anonymous said...

ah-ah.

its pretty much fate that greg and i hated actf and decided to take a journey to the magical cupcake island instead of rehearsing.

Anonymous said...

Ed is the best..and their cupcakes are fantastic! He also did Keira's Birthday cake for us in May! BTW, that is not his wife Shirley, just his business partner. His wife, Lois teaches math at Westside. Glad to hear things worked out!