We have a planning meeting with our cake baker on Sunday, I'm pondering flavors and would appreciate some input. She works out of her home, so she doesn't have a list of cake and filling flavors like a bakery would, and one thing we'll talk about is which flavors we want to have for our tasting.
We'll have a groom's cake and a three-tiered round cake. The groom's cake is chocolate with peanut butter frosting and chocolate-peanut butter ganache over it. For the other cake, I had thought of doing one tier in almond or hazelnut with a raspberry filling (or maaaaybe vanilla bean with cherry preserves).
We're going for a simple, elegant, gently classical Greek look in the decor, including Ionic columns, which FI really likes. The cake design is intended to look like graduated "slices" of a column, with an Ionic capital and ivy (symbolizing friendship and fidelity) winding up it. So when I asked what flavors he was interested in for the cake, he said "well, what are columns made of? Marble! So it needs to be marble cake!" So it sounds like at least one tier will be marble!
So my questions are:
1.) Is there enough variety with those three flavors? "Marble" usually means yellow/white and chocolate ... what do "y'all" think of chocolate filling for that tier? Or is that too much chocolate (I'm not sure that phrase even belongs in the English language, but for the general public)? Would a cream or plain buttercream filling make for broader appeal? Should we explore a lemon "marble" tier instead of the yellow/chocolate?
I wasn't planning on having the third tier cut, but FI isn't really crazy about the idea of saving it, so we might be able to use it for a small offering of yet another flavor.
2.) Any other flavors suggestions for a "marbled" cake?
2.) We're doing an hors d'ouevres reception (2 pm ceremony) so the cake will play a bigger role than it might with a full dinner and cocktail hour ... is planning two slices per person sound right? Which flavor would you suggest for the smaller (middle) tier?