After all these years in dessert catering, I still feel that wedding cakes are my most exciting and fulfilling work. I’m happy to focus on the creativity and confidence I have with only offering my personal-joy in cakes that are single-tier, and beautifully-unstacked. To me, a wedding cake is like a separate little treasure and memory, so making them taste amazing with custom-flavors on the inside, is just as important as making them unique or simply beautiful on the outside.
I regularly update this featured blog post so it can be current for those interested in my work. It’s good to see if I’m the right fit for what they might like to enjoy on their big day. It shares the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ we do this. So, let’s dive into my wedding cakes!
As I enter into my 12th year of serving San Diego County while doing business as Mili’s Sweets, it feels good to be trusted to deliver what I do best. True dedication has led to word of mouth referrals and happy clients to help this one-woman-owned business keep thriving. And I am grateful.
I am extremely passionate about flavors and textures created with buttercream, whipped cream, and frosting. It’s my preferred medium. This is my art: cakes that are covered in frosting, with real butter and cream, or made vegan, because I believe no one should compromise on taste or style for their special day.
When couples choose me and my little team to make their cake(s), they will decide how their wedding cake will play a role in their reception celebration. There really are no rules to this. Wedding cake is all about personal preference. I’m all about keeping my sweethearts in the zone of no regrets, so that everyone is happy, and within-budget.
The first step after I’m contacted, is to encourage the potential client to review Mili’s Sweets current full menu. Here we have our details of style, size, and pricing of the cakes we offer. If they already have ideas for their cake wishes with notes and/or photo references, I reply about them. If I can make it happen and I’m available on their date, we will schedule a first phone call as an initial consultation. If the client prefers a tiered wedding cake, or in a technique that we won’t be able to accomplish, I simply refer them to other bakeries and vendors. I am a big fan of good cake, and there is plenty of work to go around in town. I truly want my clients to enjoy exactly what they want, even if it is not through my small business.
If it is an important tradition to pass a slice of cake to every guest, then they should absolutely invest in making that happen. We accommodate this by offering three base sizes of circular cakes: 6″, 8″ and 10″ that can be set and arranged together. Single-tiered simply means that the cakes are stand-alone, and are not stacked on top of one another. Each stand-alone cake, can have as few as two custom cake layers, with as many as four. Most wedding cakes are selected with three layers because of the height and the cost-benefit per-slice.
Options start at a single cutting-cake that the newlyweds can have all to themselves (especially when eloping or having a dinner party as a reception) and/or have a variety of desserts for their guests, including custom-packaged, take-away dessert favors.
Color and added-texture have come into play for my current wedding cake requests through 2022. Here I create a custom color palette by-hand, using buttercream and simple food coloring.
Adding color allows for more dimension and a more unique centerpiece for the cake-cutting ceremony. It is a timeless choice that can look beautiful for either a clean and modern style, as well as a more rustic or organic-feel.
This is the fun part for me – when my expertise and creativity is trusted to create something that is one of a kind. Many times color and style decisions of the client are based on a photo reference they provide, or a glance at my past work, and sometimes the final design is based on the flowers being used to set the tone for the reception.
Buttercream is my favorite! Classily-made with real butter and cream is a breeze, cream cheese frosting is just as nice, and vegan frosting takes a little more skill to perfect when decorating, but is still like a dream. I prefer the look, taste, freshness, and real ingredients, which is why I stopped working with fondant all-together.
Finishing techniques that are constant favorites for weddings tend to be ribbed, smooth, or clean with some texture. For muted or bold colors, there is often times no need to add food coloring because nature has to offer the most beautiful and natural color with our use of real fruits and berries.
Cakes and flavors are always completely custom made. Recipes can be customized to suit the tastes of the client, based on flavors or ingredient preferences. As long as there are no nuts involved, I can create just about anything – within my own expertise and recipe-development. My extensive menu of flavors can be exciting to some and intimidating to others. If they don’t know what they want, they can give me some ideas, and we can work out a tasting package and they can select from there. When there are no ideas yet, I know what questions to ask at our initial phone consultation to make the process fun and easy.
Many of our first-time customers do not know that all our products are made completely free of peanuts and tree nuts. It is important to me that if there is food allergy, are gluten free, or they are vegan and want no animal products at all, that they can still enjoy a beautiful dessert without any compromise. The one option I cannot provide when it comes to custom-recipe wedding cakes are keto-based or sugar-free recipes, because it’s not my expertise, and what I offer has to be up to my personal high-taste and quality standards. For a lower-sugar request, naked-style or using whipped cream as a cover are my suggestions.
I feel fortunate to have fulfilled a dream of mine, to also have a small business as a floral designer (named Glorified Hobby), because I have access to really gorgeous blooms, and have gained the experience to expertly place and arrange flowers. Dealing with flowers brings me too much joy not to pursue them! More than ever, customers are ordering flowers used on their cakes directly from me. I do this work in smaller-scale orders. Sometimes the chosen wedding florist vendor will provide me with clippings in advance, and other times, I create wedding cakes with no florals at all as they are set by our team as a blank slate.
Claire Ptak of Violet Bakery put unstacked, buttercream-covered wedding cakes in the limelight years ago, when she created and displayed her work of mostly unstacked tiers for Megan and Harry’s royal wedding. I do not compare my work to others in the industry, but like her final product, wedding cakes are like art: a sought-after, subjective, personal choice of expression.
A few other notes on why I choose to not offer tiered cakes: 1) There is a lack of space in my current commercial kitchen facility. 2) I don’t like using plastic when it’s not necessary, as it is bad for the environment, and not the best choice for touching food. Stacked-tier cakes require plastic tubes inside the cake, to hold up the structure. Even without plastic, these tubes take several servings away from a cake’s slice-potential. 3) I am much more confident about delivering and setting single-tiered cakes, and stacking tiers on-site isn’t a perfect option.
The wedding cake ceremony has been a marriage-tradition, celebrated for thousands of years. Thank goodness this first-act uniting married couples has changed to what it is today! Wedding cake history is really fascinating (to me), because I always like to dive into understanding why and how people do things, and how cake has always been present at weddings, but their look will always evolve.
Thank you for taking the time to learn more about my wedding cakes. Please let me know if you have any questions, and you’re always welcome to see Mili’s Sweets reviews on Wedding Wire. In the background know that a main motivator to starting this business was after my son became allergic to peanuts and tree nuts as a baby. He deserves the best care and products. My clients deserve the same. You can learn a little more about me and my background by clicking my bio.
Take care,
