C is for Cake

Jakob & I managed to squeeze in a cake tasting this morning between my manager's meeting at 9am and work at 1pm. Luckily, the bakery we went to has five locations in the Denver area. Cakes by Karen is a little more expensive than the other bakeries we've tried, and their delivery charge to Estes Park is the highest, but one of their flavors intrigued me, so I had to try it.
While driving home from work tonight, I realized that I've been telling you about the results of our cake tastings, but if you've never been to one, you may not know what to expect. In our experience, this is what typically goes on. Sometimes you're asked to look at the list of available flavors and choose the ones you'd like to try. At the tasting itself, cakes are brought out - often in the form of cupcakes. You are given time to taste the options and talk among yourselves before the baker or consultant discusses the nitty-gritty: pricing, servings, flavors, and decor. You are given the opportunity to ask any questions you may have. One thing I like to do is see photos of cakes actually decorated by the person who will be doing our cake. It's nice to look through a book of ideas, but if the person who will be decorating YOUR cake is unable to execute those designs properly, it's just a waste of time. And while, yes, I want our wedding cake to be delicious, I also want it to be beautiful.

Unlike our previous tastings, Cakes by Karen actually baked us an entire little cake in each of the flavors we chose to test out. A slice of each type was cut for each of us:

Strawberry cake with pineapple filling & champagne cake with strawberry filling.

Lemon cake with raspberry filling, white cake with cherry filling.

First up is strawberry cake with pineapple filling. Jakob LOVES pineapple, so I figured we should have at least one cake with pineapple something. He was a bit apprehensive about strawberry (pink) cake but after we tasted it, we really liked it, and he said he could get over the unconventional color in exchange for pineapple filling.
According to the person I spoke to from Cakes by Karen, champagne cake with strawberry filling is their most popular cake. Not so much for us. There wasn't anything particularly spectacular about it -in fact, something about the combo reminded us of Pez - great for candy, but kinda weird for cake.
The lemon cake with raspberry filling was totally for me. I love lemon cake as much as he loves pineapple. Originally I wanted to try the lemon cake with lemon filling, but was told that may be too much lemon. Too much lemon?? There's no such thing! So since I like raspberry, we tried it that way, and it was incredible! The sweetness of the raspberry was the perfect juxtaposition to the lemony goodness of the cake! We've found a winner!
Last but not least is the white cake with cherry filling. Both of us really liked it - the lightness of the cake didn't compete with the cherry flavor, which was a real cherry, not maraschino taste. In the end, we crossed this one off the list - both of us really like cherries, but we recognize not everyone does.
Bonus points for Cakes by Karen - although we did not get to keep the rest of the cakes (yes, greedy little ol' me was hoping), we were offered a piece of each to take home. Needless to say, I gladly accepted.