January 23, 2012 – WeddingWire, the nation's leading wedding Marketplace, is excited to announce Cake Cathedral has been selected to receive the prestigious WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ 2012 for Wedding Cake! The esteemed annual awards program recognizes the top local wedding vendors from the WeddingWire Network who demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism within the wedding industry. While many industry awards are selected by the organization, Cake Cathedral was selected based on its stellar reviews from past newlywed clients. Cake Cathedral is recognized as part of the top five percent of wedding professionals in the WeddingWire local vendor community, comprised of over 200,000 wedding professionals throughout the United States and Canada. The Bride’s Choice Award recognizes the best local wedding vendors across 20 service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers, based on their overall professional achievements throughout the past year. “WeddingWire is thrilled to honor the success of the top-rated wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community,” said Timothy Chi, CEO, WeddingWire. “Since the launch of the Bride’s Choice Awards™ program four years ago, thousands of outstanding wedding professionals have been recognized by the bridal community for their supreme service and dedication to the wedding industry. It is with great pleasure that we congratulate Cake Cathedral for their continued professionalism and commitment to enriching the wedding planning experience for engaged couples.” We are happy to announce that Cake Cathedral is one of the very best Wedding Cake professionals within the WeddingWire Network, which includes leading wedding planning sites WeddingWire, Project Wedding, Brides.com, Martha Stewart Weddings, and Weddingbee.

Today's wedding cake and groom's cake went to the beautiful Peacock Farms in Arroyo Grande. Since the groom works for Caltrans, he wanted a cake shaped like a traffic cone...and that tasted like spice cake with cream cheese buttercream. The wedding cake was lemon with a layer each of lemon buttercream and raspberry buttercream. The sheet cakes were white velvet; one with passionfruit buttercream and the other with raspberry buttercream. The cymbidium orchids were made from sugarpaste.

This 21st birthday cake was for a young man who....you guessed it...plays water polo. He and his teammates were in San Luis Obispo playing against Cal Poly. I don't know who won, but the cake was a big hit! (Or perhaps I should say 'made a big splash'.....groan!!!) All the figures were made from modeling chocolate and the 'water' was piping gel that was tinted blue.

Cake Cathedral attended the Family Care Network's annual fundraising event at Cypress Ridge on Sunday, Sept. 18th. It was a fantastic day. Three-hundred guests got to sample some of the Central Coast's fabulous wines and cuisine. Along with some of our most popular cake and filling samples, Cake Cathedral introduced a couple of new items.....Limoncello cakes with lemon buttercream (a sophisticated, adult dessert) and Red Velvet and Cream Cheese cake pops, covered with white chocolate and colored sprinkles (that appeal to the kid in all of us). Both were a huge hit and there wasn't a single crumb left by the end of the event!

This past weekend I created a cake for a wonderful couple who got married in the beautiful seaside town of Cayucos. The bride requested a cascade of sugar flowers, all in various shades of pink, to match the real flowers used at her wedding. The three tiers (white velvet cake with hazelnut buttercream and covered in Italian meringue buttercream) had separators between them, creating more height to the overall cake. Many, many hours went into creating the sugar flowers, but I loved the final outcome!

The rock band, Stone Temple Pilots, played out at Avila Beach Resort yesterday. Their guitarist, Dean DeLeo, is celebrating his 50th birthday tomorrow. They requested a simple cake to be presented on stage at the concert. The cake (chocolate rum with chocolate buttercream) had an edible image of Dean when he was a little boy....playing with a giant bazooka! They just don't make toy guns like that any more! Happy birthday Dean!

This weekend Cake Cathedral made it's first "Extreme" cake! The wedding theme was "Vintage Travel" so the design for the cake was inspired by the theme...the result? A vintage suitcase (red velvet cake with cream cheese buttercream), a hatbox (white velvet cake with raspberry buttercream) complete with sugar flowers and pearl necklace, and the extreme element...a vintage globe that actually spun! The globe part was styrofoam covered with fondant details. My awesome fiance made the cake board and all the elements to make the globe spin. Super fun! Congrats to Talia and Sterling!