Wedding Blog

I didn’t really have much of a choice in my cake vendor. My reception venue requires that we use their services or else they impose an additional $4/slice cutting fee. Luckily that was never an issue, since my cake artist is the uber amazing, two-time Food Network Challenge Champion, (and maybe three-time champion… hint hint… if you watch the Award Cakes show on April 8th) Marina Sousa of Just Cake. I’d been waiting on pins and needles to go to our cake tasting and see if the cakes tasted as good as they looked, and I was even more impressed after I left!

We (my parents and Mr. Lemon) visited her little shop in the seaside town of Capitola (near Santa Cruz) on Sunday, and waded through the piles of cake pictures to see what we liked while we feasted on the oh so delicious samples. Unfortunately, Mr. Lemon and I suddenly realized that we were each had COMPLETELY different ideas about what we wanted in a cake. He seemed to gravitate toward round cakes, especially the unique designs and “topsy turvy”/Mad Hatter style cakes like these:

I, on the other hand, was in love with square, clean and modern cakes:

So… it was time for a compromise. Mr. Lemon got his topsy turvy cake shape, and I got my modern design with an indented fondant pattern with an extra bit of color on the cake.

Here’s the masterpiece that she sketched out for us during our meeting:

The flavors were equally as difficult to select… my Dad couldn’t stop raving about each flavor, and he usually passes on eating any sort of cake. We decided on Chocolate with mint cookies and cream and chocolate ganache for the main cake, and Meyer Lemon with lemon mousse, lemon curd and fresh berries for our extra sheet cake servings. Trust me when I say that all the flavors were amazing… I gobbled up every last bite of the serving plate… and I just caught myself drooling here at my computer recalling the tastes.

I just knew cake tasting was going to be my favorite part of the planning process!