Let's bake some cake!

Wedding cakes. There's an expense! The other day I was reviewing a website that makes cakes and the price was listed at $4.00 a SERVING! Averaging at $500 a cake, there are tons of ways to cut back and still have some delicious cake at your wedding.

I'll start by linking some pictures of my personal favorites!

This charming cake is actually for a wedding that was held at the 7F Lodge which is where Justin and I are planning to have our wedding! I love the details of this cake and how it plays into their wedding theme. There is something very sweet about this cake.

Cupcakes are a very popular way to build up cakes nowadays, I love the chalkboard signs detailing out which type of cupcake is on each tier.

This is one of the most gorgeous wedding cakes I have seen. I love the ribbon frosting and the delicate roses. Even though this is a very simple cake, it still has a lot of personality. It's almost too pretty to cut.

I love the little wooden toppers that seem to be trending right now to put on top of cakes. Oftentimes people paint them to look just like the bride and groom. These are sold all over Etsy or you can DIY and buy the figurines from Michael's or Hobby Lobby. (Tutorial on this later!)

Lastly, some couples decide to nix the wedding cake altogether and just have a couple small cakes that add to the style of their wedding. I love this sweets table and how the colors play into their theme.

I've heard one of the best ways to save money on the wedding cake is to have fewer layers and have a sheet cake that you serve to guests. I personally love having a top tier as the cake and the bottom tiers filled with cupcakes. That being said, cupcakes can be just as expensive as getting a wedding cake, so I did some research and found out you can have vanilla and chocolate cupcakes made at a local grocery store for much cheaper! Sam's club sells cupcakes 30 for $15 and they taste just as good. HEB is another place that makes really great cakes and they sell cupcakes at 12 for $6.00. These places also let you choose your color and type of frosting. I am considering getting chocolate and white cupcakes from one of these places and then buying more "gourmet" flavors from a cupcake shop or baking them myself.

As for the top tier of the cake, I thought it would be really fun to try making it myself so I started looking into tutorials on cake decorating. I found this really awesome tutorial from "i am baker" on frosting roses that is super easy and looks great! I used a standard cake mix from the grocery store and baked 2-8" cakes. To level them for stacking I pressed down on the cakes (while they were still in the pan) with a clean towel until they were both flat on top since they originally looked like pie tops! I then put them in the fridge for an hour or so and took them out of their pans to layer them. I used a thin layer of frosting to seal the layers and crumbs then put it in the freezer for several hours. After the cake was thoroughly frozen, I decorated it cake with this buttercream frosting recipe which was DELICIOUS! It turned out to be a bit more difficult to make the frosting than I thought because my mixer wasn't very friendly, but eventually I got the ingredients all blended together. 

After decorating it with the rose tutorial, this is how my cake turned out:

Not too bad for a first try! Of course if I use this for the wedding cake, I will probably make it two-tiers and make 4-8" cakes for the bottom layer to make it even thicker and 4-6" cakes for the top layer.

I'd love to hear about your wedding cake ideas-please comment below!

Thanks for reading and Happy Monday!