Wedding Blog

Last month we made it down to Coral Gables for our cake tasting at Ana Paz Cakes. Having grown up in Miami most of my life, I have heard of Ana Paz quite often: her cakes are reputed to be the best in South Florida. Also, they were already the company being used by our reception site as part of our package, so there wasn’t even the option of not going with them anyway.

Ana Paz was featured in an episode of Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? not long ago, and in fact, the very first person we saw when we walked in the door was the same wedding coordinator the girl featured in that episode had used, helping out another couple.

Here’s what we were first presented with:

Their two basic flavors are chocolate cake with chocolate fudge and vanilla moist cake (where “moist” = rum). We both found the “moistness” a bit much, and asked if we could perhaps taste something else featuring their fillings, or any other variations.

Here they brought us samples of red velvet, vanilla cake with raspberry and vanilla cake with Bavarian cream. I’ve never had red velvet before. It left a funny after-taste. Is this always the case?

Here is Mr. Petunia tasting the chocolate cake

Here’s what we left: the fruit filled cake. Mr. Petunia doesn’t like fruit fillings — period. I thought I would, as I normally do, but I actually didn’t care for it either.

Altogether, I have to say that we were not WOW-ed by the taste, per se (I think the problem was the build-up of their reputation).

We opted to go mostly with the chocolate and fudge cake, surprisingly to both of us. We just thought the vanilla cakes were too wet (though many in my Cuban family would have loved it!) and the red velvet left a funny aftertaste.

They did thankfully recommend that we at least get the bottom tier in vanilla: not everyone likes/can eat chocolate, + they pointed out that you don’t want to serve each other the chocolate cake and have pictures taken with chocolate all over your teeth. Point taken!

We have asked them to base our design on this cake I saw featured at Brides.com

I then saw that Mrs. Bell Pepper also had this cake! Yay!

We did request a different look for the bottom tier though. It’s true we are going to Paris on our honeymoon, but I didn’t really want the Eiffel Towers on the cake itself.

Best of all, the service at Ana Paz was amazing. The woman who helped us was just terribly sweet and funny. The upgrade to fondant, from butter cream, which was part of our hotel package, ended up costing less than what we had budgeted (always a good thing!). The total price was $375 for a cake for one hundred people. We are also paying $50 for the cake platform rental (they do require a $300 refundable deposit). Also, Ana Paz’s daughter, who runs Gables Linen, helped us with tablecloths, napkins, seat cushions and more, and gave us a great quote for the linens: we hadn’t even counted on discussing this with them!

All in all, it was a great experience, though we had wished the taste aspect had been better.

What’s more important to you: how the cake looks or how it tastes?