CAKE

So... Haven't been blogging much. Partly because as many of these wedding details fall into place, we realize how much we want you all to be surprised! This morning seemed absolutely blog-worthy though. Mom and I met up at the Lenin statue in Fremont (seemed as good a rendevous point as any) and had breakfast, then headed in to Flying Apron bakery to meet with baker extraordinaire, Jennifer.

In keeping with our general wedding philosophy, we wanted our cake to come from a place that we felt good about supporting---a business or entity that believed in and practiced sustainability and community. (Particularly since asking our loved ones to travel all the way out to the peninsula creates a pretty sizable carbon footprint at the outset.) As the economy collapses further into the recession locally, nationally, and globally, this has only become more important to us.

We're doing pretty good on that front so far. The Olympic Park Institute will use all the money we spend on the site rental, cabin rental, and wedding meal to support their environmental education programs. My dress, (which is the dress my mother wore when she married my Dad!) is being re-created by an awesome, down-to-earth local seamstress, Darcy Martin-Lenay (Fragile Fit Alterations). We're getting veggie-dogs for a campfire hot dog roast from the Field Roast Company here in Seattle, and will most likely order our beer from the company I work for, Elliot Bay Brewing, which composts all its food waste, buys windpower credits, runs its company vehicles on biodiesel, brews organic beer, and gives its senior servers health benefits.

Boo-yah.

Flying Apron fits right in.... their pastries are "created with your good health in mind. Made using the finest organic ingredients; whole grain wheat free flours and organic non hydrogenated oils." They sell their pastries at the Seattle farmers markets, which is how Ryan and I discovered them.

Ma and I were told to help ourselves to coffee and make ourselves comfortable... there was good music playing, and the coffee was strong and dark. Jennifer brought us sample after sample, each baked into a perfect cupcake, iced and still warm from the oven. Lemon Poppyseed. Dark Chocolate. Chai. Carrot cake. Apricot Bliss. Coconut. Maple Pecan.
We were overwhelmed.

Most cakes, and wedding cakes in particular, are insanely sweet, covered with icing soooo sweet and thick and substantial it coats your tongue and chokes you, and all you can think about is the seventeen cups of powdered sugar paste you're imbibing. The cakes themselves are just something to chew on under the icing. I've never been a huge fan.

Most wedding cake tasting, as I understand it, consists of bakers thawing out samples of wedding cakes baked months prior, heating them up briefly, and tossing them on a plate.
Which is understandable, right? Nobody bakes wedding cake samples fresh, do they?

Flying Apron does. The cupcakes Jennifer brought us, one by one as they came out of the oven and were frosted, were moist and simple and exquisitely flavored, so that each bite kept unrolling in your mouth. You didn't want to pick up your fork and go for the next taste... you just wanted to set it down and lean back in your chair and take your time trying to name all the spices. The icings were desserts in and of themselves, neither too sweet nor too unnervingly... frosted.
we sipped our coffee, nibbled at cakes, and tried hopelessly to rate them on some sort of scale. Once we realized we were rating every single cake 10 out of 10, we gave up.

what a delicious, perfect experience.
turns out planning a wedding doesn't actually have to involve pretending to be someone I'm not.