Tell me what's your flavour?
It's absolutely freezing here in Leyland today! We keep having hail storms - so I'm glad today is a baking day and I get to hang around in a toasty kitchen! Fingers crossed the weather warms up a bit tomorrow as that's when I fill and crumb coat my cakes - chilly air is not good for crumb coating! The buttercream sets really quickly and tears chunks off the cake. Anyway - I'll worry about that tomorrow!
Today I'm doing another batch of vanilla sponges! When I was setting up my website last year I was having a bit of a flap about what flavours to list. One of the things I struggle with is indecisiveness! A trait of a typical Libran I believe! So I didn't want to have a huge list of flavours that overwhelmed people (plus, as part of my teacher training I learned that people tend to only read the first few bullet points before getting bored - something to bear in mind if you want people to browse through your website and make a decision to place an order!) I wanted to keep my flavours page snappy and avoid being too long winded. After some research I decided to go with 4 flavours for my regular sponges and 2 'luxury' offerings. I was hoping that would satisfy most customers. I'm always open to baking whatever flavour you like - just ask! I even baked a Dr Pepper cake once - although the flavour ended up being very subtle. Pop doesn't make for a strong flavour in a cake - if I were to to this again I'd try Amaretto flavouring!
After all my worrying, however, I have to say that 95% of every cake ordered is vanilla! I would have put money on chocolate being the top choice! But vanilla is the run away leader of the pack. Lots of people mention how their favourite is carrot/lemon/chocolate - but as the cake will need to feed a large number of guests/children people always end up opting for the safest choice. Which is fine by me - and probably a good thing as I'm more inclined to sneak some of the cake leftovers from the other flavours!
So what would you do? If you're buying a cake would you please the masses or please yourself? I think I'd have to go for 2 tiers so I could get my self-indulgent lemon tier as well as trusty vanilla!
L xx
