4th Quarter 2009

Bridal Show Newsletter

Dawn Becker
tryingcake@yahoo.com
714-618-5923
Cypress, California

By Appointment Only

This season's highlights

Holidays and Hard Times
Eating Holiday Cake
Quick and Easy Dessert

In Every Issue

Planning Your Cake

Hiring The Right Vendor

Keeping Your Sanity

Holidays and Hard Times

Halloween and Thanksgiving have come and gone.  This means Christmas has to be just around the corner. In this tight economy, this can be a stressful time for the best of families. Keep it fun and keep your eye on the meaning of the season. Regardless of your religious affiliation, Thanksgiving and Christmas means spending time with those who mean the most to us. It really isn't about how much we spend. Use the hard times to refocus on what is important. Instead of expensive gifts practice sacrificial giving.

Sacrificial Giving is the kind that is done at great personal cost to yourself. We give without suffering loss all the time. When we donate items to the Salvation Army we feel no loss because we want to dispose of these items anyway. Strictly speaking, in the words of author Randy Alcorn, this is not giving at all but 'selective disposal'. This kind of giving is fine (it is certainly better than throwing old clothes or money away), but there is nothing distinctively "giving" about it. Sacrificial Giving means you have physically sacrificed something to give to someone else. For the gift to have meaning, it has to have meant something for you to have given it. So this year, I challenge each of you to give something of yourself. Give gift certificates such as one Saturday night of babysitting each month in 2010 to your sister who never gets a night out, washing your dad's car once a month, cleaning out, packing up and hauling away your mom's over packed garage. You get the idea. And really, shouldn't we always give in this manner?

In 2010 my gift to my contracted brides will be a gift certificate for one free table cake serving up to 20 people. This can be used for a birthday, anniversary, Baby's first birthday, retirement party, Sunday dinner, you name it!!

Enjoy your holidays. Make them memorable this year.

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Having Your Cake and Eating It, Too

Holidays - family comes together and this always involves food. Wonderful, warm comfort food always comes to mind this time of year. Carbs Galore!! Go ahead, enjoy yourself. Just don't go crazy. Have that slice of cake. Just make sure it is an actual proper size of cake and not a chunk. A true serving of a 4" high cake is 1" wide by 2" deep. Therefore in a typical double layer 8" round cake, you should be able to serve 24 people. A single layer 9'13 cake will serve 20 people. Use the cutting guide provided here to cut your 8" round or 9'13 cakes. And remember - cake was not meant to be eaten every day.

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Book a free tasting with Everything Plus The Cake today!!

Quick and Easy Dessert

This is a super easy recipe and your friends will think you worked for hours. You can bake fresh pound cake or feel free to cheat and use fresh or frozen store bought.

Ingredients
1 pound cake cut into small cubes
3 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup powdered sugar
3/4 teaspoon rum (imitation is OK if you don't want the alcohol - or use vanilla extract)
3 tablespoons water
1/2 cup raspberry or strawberry jam
2-3 containers ready made vanilla pudding cups
6 cups or glasses (champagne glasses are nice)
Fresh raspberries or strawberries for garnish

Heat butter in a microwave until melted. Whisk in sugar, rum and water until you have a smooth sauce. Heat jam in a different bowl until just runny. Place a small teaspoonful of jam in the bottom of the cup. Slightly pack down 1 layer of cake into each cup. Drizzle with 1 teaspoon jam, then 1/2 teaspoon rum sauce. Evenly distribute the remainder of the cake into each cup. Pour remaining jam over each cake cup then drizzle remaining rum sauce over each cup. Spoon 2-3 tablespoons pudding over each cup. Top with berries. You You may also add a sprig of mint for a touch of green garnish.

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Planning Your Cake
Whether you hire Everything Plus the Cake or another decorator, here are some points to consider when designing your cake.

Know ahead of time what amount of money you can budget toward your cake and that will help the decorator help you choose wisely from the designs offered.

The taste, flavor and texture of the cake itself is the most important decision you will make when you order your cake. However, not all flavors can support the weight of being a bottom tier. For example, carrot cake is best suited as a top layer and should not be used as a bottom layer on a heavy cake.

You will see many pictures of cakes in magazines and in the decorator's portfolio. Please note that the magazine cakes are not actual cakes. These are 'dummy' cakes made from Styrofoam and plaster icing. This is why they are 'perfect.' Your decorator will do her best to make the cake in the picture

If you are planning an outdoor wedding, remember - flies love sweets, heat melts most icings, high humidity will turn even gumpaste/fondant flowers limp, chocolate curls will melt and fresh flowers will wilt in prolonged exposure to the elements. Rain and wind can cause havoc such as collapsing tents and blowing tablecloths right off of the tables. Consider using a dummy cake outside and sheet cakes in the kitchen.

Fresh Flowers to go on a cake have possibly been treated with insecticides and pesticides (besides the chemicals they are inserted into to keep them fresh longer before they reach your florist). Some flowers and greenery might be harmful if ingested so select carefully.

If you expect the cake decorator to come close to the colors you are using in the wedding you must take a swatch of fabric to the artist at least 3 inches square, preferably solid color in each swatch. Dark colors are difficult to achieve the right shade and color in icing.

Each Tier is guaranteed a certain number of servings when cut and served by a professional. If you choose to not hire the services of a professional cake cutter (a restaurant or hotel employee is not necessarily a professional cake cutter) you will get less servings per tier than promised.

Be considerate of your guests. Seeds, coconut and nuts in fruit fillings can be very difficult for many people and should usually be avoided in a wedding cake. This also applies to odd flavors of cake.

When picking an ornament for your cake, consider the weight. Icing and cake are soft. Very heavy ornaments must have some extra support in the cake. If you do select a heavy ornament and it should fall from the top it can do damage to tiers as gravity pulls it downward. Your decorator needs to know in advance what you will be placing on top of the cake.

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Hiring the Right Vendor for YOU!!
Every person is different. What worked for the gal down the street may or may not work for you. Look for the right personality as well as talents. Are you more a country girl at heart? Then don't seek out a wedding planner who only understands ballrooms and tiaras. Would you die before being caught in cowboy boots? Maybe the tiara planner is for you!

At Everything Plus the Cake we are down home people. We provide elegant occasions without the pomp and circumstance. We will speak with you in real life terms. We enjoy what we do and therefore do it well. We also enjoy everything from a backyard hoe-down to a full orchestra ball. We believe every bride deserve a pretty wedding and that is our goal at every turn. Through creativity and well-thought out planning, you will get the wedding of your dreams.

Budget-minded? So are we! Talk to us.... give us a chance with a consultation. You'd be amazed at what you can afford!!

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Keeping Your Sanity during the Wedding Planning process
We are very dependent on human nature, hot weather, cold weather, rain, snow, illness, good health, and so on. You are planning the most wonderful, memorable day of your life. Yet, even with all the advanced, well-thought planning, something will go wrong. There are many people/services pulling together to make your day as great as it can be. No one is out to hurt or ruin your day. When a mistake is made, the service provider will remember it long after you have forgotten. The professionals you have hired only want to uphold the good reputations that caused you seek them out to begin with. If a mistake is made, don't let it control the whole day. Just chalk it up to memories. What seems upsetting today will probably be a funny memory years from now. We do not live in Utopia and no one person is perfect. Try to remember what is really important. At the end of the day, did that mistake (no matter how little or how grand) keep you from becoming married? The bottom line, at the end of the day you are still just as married as if nothing went wrong and the world is perfect. Don't lose sight of the real reason you're here. Do you want to remember your wedding day as the day you got married and were joyous, or the day you cried and became angry because the music wasn't just right, the DJ didn't play the right song, the caterer served chicken legs instead of wings, or the cake has lavender flowers instead of purple? It's your day. It will ultimately be as joyous as you choose it to be.

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