In continuation with MarriedInMilwaukee.com’s Dessert Month features, we take a spin on the traditional wedding cake and talked with Debbie Pagel from Eat Cake in Milwaukee. Not only does Eat Cake make some amazingly unique wedding cakes, they taste fantastic too!
About Eat Cake
While Eat Cake officially opened their doors on Vliet Street in 2003, Debbie the owner had been designing cakes long before then. They are one of the first cake shops in town to use fondant, taking the art and creativity of wedding cakes to a whole other level and pushing gravity to its limits.
Unique Cake Tasting Options
Debbie had quite a few pieces of advice for couples looking for their wedding cake. Her first was to focus on the taste and flavor of the cake. Eat Cake’s tastings are really unique and allow you to try over a hundred of cake, frosting and filling flavor combinations in one sitting. My personal fav – banana cake with ganache filing; yum! Check out this image of the tasting set up and you can see how easy it is to try all the different flavors. If you’re looking for a unique flavor, don’t hesitate to ask if it’s a possibility. A recent concoction – huckleberry filling.
Cake Design
Haven’t had time to do your Pinterest research on cake design? No worries. Come in with a rough idea of a theme and watch Debbie’s creativity begin to work. As your theme starts to take shape closer to your wedding date, you can always follow up a month or two before to make sure just the right colors and design elements are in place to tie in with your wedding theme. Color swatches are always a good thing to get the perfect color match.
To Fondant or Not to Fondant
Debbie feels fondant has gotten a bad rap. While it isn’t as tasty as chocolate ganache in my opinion, if you fall in love with a design that requires fondant, don’t let that steer you. The cake’s tasty buttercream lies just beneath the surface and won’t affect the overall flavor of the cake.
Save the Top Tier
I found this piece of advice the most useful from Debbie – save the top tier. I know some couples eat it on their first anniversary, but I just couldn’t do it. But nothing says you can’t eat it the next morning. Now why didn’t I think of that! Saving it also allows you the option to wrap it up good and tight the next day and freeze some of it just in case you get that itch a year later. You never know!
Debbie is extremely laid back with her clients and truly is a cake artist. Check out Eat Cake’s website for more info.
Special thanks to KB Image Photography for capturing images from the cake tasting.
