Sunday, February 6, 2011

A Cake Is Born

You might remember from my tasting exploits in Chicago at Cream Cake Company and Bittersweet that I am quite enamored with cake.  Enough to lie about where and when I was getting married just to get free cake.  Yeah, I feel kind of bad, but not bad enough to regret it.

You might also recall that once Daniel and I decided to get married in NorCal, the question of where we would get our cake was answered for us.  There was no way we were going to give up getting our cake at Katrina Rozelle.

So when we were last in the Bay Area, we stopped by Katrina Rozelle for our cake tasting.  I dearly wish I had not felt like I was going to die while we were there.  I might actually have gotten some pictures if I hadn't been so delirious.  But even though my ability to smell was essentially nonexistent at the time, it was still some of the best cake I have ever tasted.

It was both very easy and very difficult for us to choose a flavor.  All of the cakes were so freaking amazing that it was hard to turn them down.  It felt...wrong to deny any of them.  Nonetheless, there were two that immediately stood out to both of us, and one that dominated even those two.  Imagine luscious devil's food cake (chocolate for those of you who are not as obsessed as I am) with a filling that perfectly blends chocolate and caramel, topped with rich chocolate ganache-like frosting.  Good as god, sweet as sin.  The perfect balance.  Especially for us, since Daniel is as great a lover of caramel as I am of chocolate.  From the first taste, we knew this was the cake for us.  The perfect blend of the things we love.  And so our cake will be the Erica Torte.

Choosing the inside was easy, but the outside required more time.  We've been looking at cake styles for a while, and we had an idea of what we wanted.  Though our tastes do not entirely coincide, we both like fresh flowers, particularly orchids.  Daniel doesn't like roses for the cake, and I didn't really mind our cake's flowers differing from the other arrangements, so we decided to go with these flowers:

Martha Stewart may be a bit crazy, but she sure does have taste.

They work with our colors while still standing out, and these flowers are just different.  We like them.

As for the arrangement, I originally was really set on something like this:


Ignore the different sized layers.  I like flowers on top and then small groups of flowers on alternating sides of the lower layers.  However, that just didn't feel right with orchids.  As we looked through pictures, we were both pretty taken with cascades of orchids, especially on smaller cakes (and with our $3.50/slice cake-cutting fee, we're going to have to have a small cake) like this:


We both want a round cake and hate those little beady things around the edges, but other than that, we liked this one a lot.  In the end, we decided to format our cake like this:


Imagine this as a two-tiered, much smaller cake with our orchids and a thin blue ribbon of marzipan instead of the dreaded beads, and that's our cake.  I rather like it.  It would have been nice to have a bigger cake, at least a three-tiered one, but I guess with all of the other food we're going to have, it's not really necessary anyway.  It'll be cute, and it will taste amazing, so we're happy.

But I must leave you with the image that we couldn't afford and that looks totally different from all of the other cakes I like, but that I completely and utterly fell in love with anyway:


Imagine it all round, three-tiered with the vines covering the whole thing.  Le sigh.  It is so beautiful.

Anyway, do you love cake as much as I do, or did you decide to go a different route with dessert?  I'd love to see pictures of your cake or ones that you found particularly appealing.

3 comments:

  1. I so wish we did a cake so we could choose a design! These are so pretty. Love, love, love orchids on cakes!

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  2. Mmm. I can't wait to eat more Katrina Rozelle cake. Like right now. :)

    I hope they were as helpful for you guys as they were for us. Are they doing the flower arranging or are you? We added our own cake topper and flowers, and while it was a little scary, it was also much cheaper than having them do it. Just a thought. Ugh. The restaurant charges you for cake-cutting? Is there anyway you could do it yourselves and not pay that fee?

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  3. Oh how I remember the impromptu cake tasting. We went in on a whim and went out with a whine. All the flavors (except coffee) were good. I remember the orange filling being really good, the carrot cake being amazing, and even the lemon filling being spectacular. I highly recommend doing the flowers yourself (especially as it would be easier to transport) along with the cake topper. Also remember that a "cake slice" is just a convenient way of measuring the size of the cake. You can cut it as big or as small as you want. I've found that there'll always be extra cake left over. Word from the wise: don't try and eat it all after the reception. It makes for a slightly sick sleep. Make sure the leftovers can be put into a fridge that night. We luckily had a mini-fridge in our hotel room that we emptied of all the normal mini-fridge things (soda cans, candy, etc) but we still had to finagle the cake in there.

    Speaking of cutting the cake, practice beforehand. The positioning is trickier than it seems. Decide if you want to do the "cake in the face" beforehand, and if not, refuse to yield to the inevitable pressure. Remember that you guys just cut the first slice. OMG, Daniel, are you going to cut it with Sting?!? cuz that would be awesome. Nicole, you could even use a HP wand for the other side of the slice. OMG OMG OMG...

    Cutting the whole cake is an endeavor and should not be attempted by the Bride and Groom. Make sure to delegate the task to someone, preferably with experience.

    I can't believe it: you went the whole post without saying "piece of cake." I'm almost offended. To make up for it, I'll have to add it to the comments. So, pretend you wrote this:


    Choosing Katrina Rozelle was a piece of cake!


    okay, that's better.

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