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The countdown timer at Cryptic Studios reached zero at midnight, and the official Star Trek Online page is now up. Soon, you can boldly go where no man has gone before with thousands of other Star Trek-loving buddies in Cryptic’s newly announced massively multiplayer online game… whenever it comes out. Considering their upcoming release, Champions Online, isn’t going to be out until spring of ‘09, my guess is STO isn’t going to be out until early 2010. But hey, those shirts we got in Vegas make a lot more sense now:

I’m not a fan of Star Trek. TNG was decent, but it was one of those shows I only watched if nothing was on and I really wanted to watch TV. I am intrigued by this game though, since the Star Trek universe is so elaborate and in depth for something fictional. We’ll see how it goes. They’ll be revealing more info August 10th at the official Star Trek convention in Las Vegas.

New thing I learned today: The Vulcan religion/philosophy is called IDIC, which stands for “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”.

The next three bakeries we tried were fairly close to Cupertino, with a couple in downtown Los Gatos and one literally down the street from our reception venue. For the reviews, I decided to take off the portions rating from the bakeries. It seemed unfair, since I was rating more as better, when it doesn’t really matter as long as you get an idea of what their cakes are like. Plus more isn’t always better, especially if you don’t like the cake. I always feel bad leaving leftovers, but believe it or not, sometimes you can only take so much cake… especially if you’ve just had lunch and your fiancé doesn’t like sweets.

Also, in case you’re curious about Kelvin’s point of view, so far he says all my grades are too high :P

Bakery 4 - Icing on the Cake
Icing on the Cake is another Yelp favorite. Located on a downtown Los Gatos corner close to 17, Icing on the Cake also sells ready made individual desserts and dessert cakes at their counter. Like their website says, they hold cake tastings every 1st and 3rd Saturdays on a first-come-first-serve basis. Kelvin and I dropped by on a Saturday afternoon to check out their cakes.

They were pretty busy when we arrived, even with several salesladies working behind the display of cakes. There are counters to the side, and I noticed a couple looking over wedding binders with one of the sales girls. I waited for them to be done, but it looks like they weren’t going to be anytime soon, so instead I bugged a random lady (totally forgot her name) behind the counter. Once she knew I was here for cake tasting, she immediately came over to the side to start our consultation, so I guess you just ask any sales rep to help you out with cake tasting.

A couple already doing their cake consultation

At the counter, she started taking notes on the quote sheet, asking us the typical questions (date, location, # of people, etc.). The bottom of the quote sheet has all the cake and filling flavors, which she went over with us. She asked us to put number next to combinations of cake, filling, and frosting we wanted to try. For example, if we wanted to try chocolate cake with mocha buttercream, we’d put a “1″ next to both “chocolate cake” and “mocha buttercream”. Then if we wanted to try white cake with chocolate fudge, we’d put a “2″ next to “classic white” and “chocolate fudge”. We picked five combinations, which were mostly white or chocolate cakes with various fillings, all with white butter cream frosting. She then ran off to the back to make the combinations we selected, while we looked at binders of their past works. I think this is an excellent cake tasting methodology; you basically build your own cake sample.

We checked out their binders, and I wasn’t particularly impressed. They only do buttercream cakes, so no super fancy designs that require fondant. We’re kinda iffy on fondant anyway, but their buttercream cakes didn’t look particularly great either. While it’s hard to get buttercream to be completely smooth, their buttercream cakes weren’t as smooth as other bakeries we’ve seen, and Kelvin particularly disliked that since he’s majorly bothered by uneven surfaces. They also don’t do shapes of cake other than round. So if you’re looking for a super fancy or very individualized cake, this probably isn’t the place to get it. However, whatever simple designs they do do, it’ll be covered in the cake cost.

The saleslady came back out with the samples, explained each sample, and left us to try them on our own, which I appreciate. It’s less anxious to try cake without someone from the bakery watching you. Another thing I appreciated was that she came back and gave us water as we were trying cake. And we really needed the water, cuz their cakes are really sweet. REALLY sweet. It’s the kind of cakes I always thought were popular in America, with the sugary frosting and stuff. Once I started regularly buying cakes from local bakeries that were pretty light, I thought maybe it was a misconception I had. But after reading the 150+ raves of the place on Yelp, maybe I was right after all. The cakes seemed pretty fresh, as the cake was fluffy, but Kelvin still felt the cake was “gritty” (whatever that means) and didn’t like the texture. I don’t remember the cake flavor, as I felt it was overwhelmed by the fillings and frosting. Kelvin hate sweets cuz “they make my teeth hurt”, and he said these samples were making his teeth hurt. We didn’t try what she said were their two most popular flavors (banana and apple spice) since Kelvin would never like them, but I wonder if they were any better at calming down the sugary taste.

Once we finished, she went over prices with us. She gave us numbers for a 90-person cake and 110-person cake (they really count every square inch on that cake, I guess) for our 100 person reception on the quote sheet, which we got to keep for our own reference. She told us we were welcome to come back again to either do more cake tasting or move on to the next step. The lady overall was good about questions and service, and I really like how they organize their cake tastings. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stand their super sweet cakes, so this place definitely will not be an option for us. Before actually trying any cake, I had contemplated getting a dessert cake for Anna’s b-day or getting Kelvin a delicious-looking mint chip cupcake, but I obviously changed my mind after the cake tasting. Clearly, this place lives up to its name of “Icing on the Cake”.

Service and organization (at tasting and through communication): A
Presentation (based off photos): C
Taste: C- (I feel like giving something lower would mean they “don’t pass” as a bakery :P )
Favorite flavors: None.
Price: Starts at ~$7.40 a slice for 110 people, but it was more like $7.60 for 90 people, so maybe it varies with size. Delivery fee to Cupertino is $80.

Bakery 5 - La Patisserie
Unlike the previous bakeries, we have had cake from La Patisserie before… several times actually. Sandra recommended this bakery to me a while back, and we haven’t stopped going since. I was expecting good cake based on our past experiences, but who knows how their cake samples would be. La Patisserie was the first place I called for a cake tasting, tho they couldn’t schedule me on a weekend until a couple weeks later. My mother joined Kelvin and me for our cake tasting appointment with Mojgan (I’m still not sure how to pronounce this; I kept thinking her name was Marjan from how she was pronouncing it) on a nice Sunday afternoon.

We sat at regular cafe seating, and after she got our basic information, the first thing we were presented with was three binders of cake pictures. She gave us prices upfront ($5.75 a slice for buttercream, and $6.75 a slice for fondant), and I was taken aback since I wasn’t expecting their prices to be so reasonable. Looking at their binders, their cakes had pretty decent presentation, as most were very clean and smooth. Mojgan was present for much of our album browsing time, so she’d give us descriptions of some of the cakes we were looking at. I was really surprised at some of the buttercream cakes they had pictures of; I would have sworn they were fondant from their smoothness. Similar to previous cake tastings, I pointed to several decorations and asked for cost, and most of the time, she’d say it’s included in the cost. Fondant ribbons? Scrolling? Beading? Square cakes? All covered. The only thing I remember that she said cost extra was a giant fondant ribbon decoration (you can see a couple examples of it on the website) and fondant flowers. Even though she told me fondant flowers cost extra, she said pointed out that the sakura flowers we saw in a couple pictures were covered in the cake price. I asked if they could imitate any cake I wanted, she said they could and to send any pictures of cakes I like, but she kept it real by saying, “Don’t bring us a picture of a castle, because we’re not going to do that.”

Then to the tasting. Mojgan brought out a plate with four circular samples, and it was even accented with a little bit of chocolate frosting. Along with the nice presentation, La Patisserie was also the second bakery to let us taste their fondant. Extra bonus points awarded for letting us try 3 kinds of waxy frosting: regular fondant, chocolate, and white chocolate. Despite the three different flavors, they all tasted like gross sugar wax, and we didn’t eat much of them. The fourth sample without any fondant instead had a buttercream flower. It’s nice how we could taste the various cake decorations. The samples had a larger ratio of mousse filling to cake, and Mojgan explained to us this was to make sure we could taste the filling. In the actual wedding cake, there’d be more cake. She left us alone to try the samples. All their samples we tasted were yummy, just like the dessert cakes we’ve had from them before. Everything had the right amount of sweetness, but still rich and creamy with obvious flavors. Kelvin even liked some of the fruit flavors, and he generally hates fruity stuff. This was the first time my mother had their cakes, and she also liked the samples. We scarfed everything up, with exception of the fondant pieces.

Mojgan came back again for some final questions. There wasn’t a sample contract for us to take home; the quote sheet didn’t have any information on it aside from whatever she wrote down. However, we asked her about all the usual deposits and fees, and she wrote every detail on the back of the quote sheet for our reference. We found out that, for some reason, La Patisserie has the most expensive delivery fee, even though they’re only 1.5 miles down the street from our reception venue! Like 3 times more than average! It sort of put a damper on the reasonable cake price, so I’m hoping we can negotiate this down. They also have a $250 deposit for using their cake stand that is refunded when the stand is returned. I’m not sure if we have to use it… I sure hope not. There was a cake flavors menu in one of the binders that would have been nice to take home, as their website only has pre-made dessert cakes listed. However, she said I could email her for it, and I eventually did do that and got a copy through email. So not much in terms of documents to take home with you, but the cake tasting itself was A+ in our book. Even with the ridiculous delivery fee, the overall price is still comparable to other bakeries. La Patisserie would be the obvious frontrunner at this point if it weren’t for the delivery fee. I hope they can do something about that… I know Kelvin is pretty convinced to book here regardless.

Service and organization (at tasting and through communication): B
Presentation (based off photos): A-
Taste: A
Favorite flavors: I liked all of them. Kelvin definitely liked the chocolate cake with chocolate mousse best, as he ate most of that sample.
Price: Starts at $5.75 a slice. Delivery fee to Cupertino is $150 (OMGWTFBBQ).

Bakery 6 - Fleur de Cocoa
I accidentally scheduled my Fleur de Cocoa appointment right after the La Patisserie one because I thought La Patisserie was the next Sunday. Thankfully, I didn’t schedule the same time, and La Patisserie didn’t take very long, so there wasn’t any rush. I contacted Nicola of Fleur de Cocoa through email to arrange the appointment. I also had to select the cakes I wanted to try beforehand. They only have four samples for you to try, and you can only try two of them for free. (Extra samples are $5.65.)

We arrived at Fleur de Cocoa a few minutes early, and the place was freaking packed. (In fact, I even ran into an old high school classmate.) The storefront sells individual desserts, cafe beverages, and a few lunch items. Apparently, business is good. I was eventually able to let somebody behind the counter know I was here for a cake tasting, and Nicola came over and greeted me. She asked if I was the 2:30PM appointment (I was the 3PM), and she seemed disappointed I wasn’t them, as that means she got a no-show. She handed me a giant album to look at pictures of their cakes, but there was no place to sit down because they were so busy. In fact, there wasn’t any place to stand without blocking somebody from something. Eventually, table cleared towards the back, and we rushed over to claim it.

It was a lot easier to look at the album sitting down, and their cakes were very nice looking. Nicola came over to talk to us, though we weren’t presented with any information sheets. She had a quote sheet for herself to write down our basic information, but nothing for us to take home. Instead, she grabbed a cafe menu to write all the main contract details like deposits and prices. Going through the binder and asking about the costs of design details, I didn’t really get a good idea of how much things cost. I felt a lot of the answers to my questions were vague; I think she prefers to know a final design before throwing out numbers for design elements, especially since she doesn’t make the cakes (her husband does). The cake per slice was the priciest so far, so if we got a cake here, any additional cost for design wouldn’t be an option anyway.

The cake tasting comprises of two individual desserts from their counters, hence the $5.65 additional cost for tastings outside of the two given samples. We chose their signature Satin cake and their Fleur de Vanille. Both were very… mousse-y. Their wedding flyer states their cakes are heavily mousse based, but I expected a little more cake. I’m pretty sure Nicola also told me that the actual wedding cakes would have more cake, but I’m confused now since their flyer does state their cakes are mostly mousse, so maybe I misunderstood her. My cake desires are more traditional, I guess; I really wasn’t digging this mousse stuff. Even though it was mostly mousse, it was still incredibly sweet. My mother and I had a hard time finishing off the desserts (felt bad wasting it), and Kelvin of course wouldn’t have more than a small taste of either. Quality and freshness for the samples were very good, and I can see other people liking this sort of cake (and willing to pay a premium for it); it just wasn’t for us.

After we finished the samples, there wasn’t really much more to ask Nicola, so our cake tasting was finished pretty early. This place was very pricey, and we didn’t like their cake, so Fleur de Cocoa won’t be an option for us.

Service and organization (at tasting and through communication): B-
Presentation (based off photos): A-
Taste: C+
Favorite flavors: None.
Price: Starts at $8 a slice. She forgot to write down the delivery fee to Cupertino on my cafe menu, but I believe it was $75.

New thing I learned today: “Fleur” is French for “flower”.

I picked it up from a UPS hub a few days ago, and it looks pretty good! And yes, I got it online.

I visited five bridal salons in my dress search, and even though I found a dress I liked at one of the salons, I ended up buying it online. I know it’s kind of a jerkhole thing to shop for dresses in person for service and not buy from them, but I was too tempted by the significantly cheaper price from buying online. I originally found my dress at Trudy’s Bridal, but Trudy’s has this strict no-price-matching-no-discount policy. So the dress was full retail at Trudy’s, and the only other store near me that carries the brand I was looking for (Rin’s Bridal) couldn’t find the dress model in their records to give me a quote. My brick & mortar choices were limited.

I looked at several online stores recommended on the boards at The Knot and contacted them through email. I found my dress 30-40% cheaper online. I went with the least expensive, which was Lee Phillips Bridal. The owner of the store, Stacey, was very quick, responsive, and friendly with emails. You won’t see many stores listing their prices upfront on a website; you have to email or call them. The bridal gown industry places a lot of restrictions on stores that carry their brands. By limiting the stores that sell their products and forbidding discounts, gown brands maintain a strong control on their gowns prices and perceived value, along with service quality. Some online stores are not authorized retailers that have a direct relationship with these strict brands, and they bypass these restrictions by being a middle man for other stores that are authorized retailers. I guess authorized retailers are willing to risk their relationships with certain brands through increased bulk of sales. Anyway, I think Lee Phillips Bridal operates something like this, as they’re not an authorized retailer of the brand I like. Because they do business this way, they won’t divulge brands they offer and prices on their website until you contact them. It seems kinda sketchy, but nothing illegal, based on what I’ve read online.

Even with Stacey’s great email communication, ordering online is pretty nerve-wracking. You have to do all your measurements yourself and hope you do it correctly and the size charts are accurate, pay for the entire total upfront, hear nothing about your important and expensive purchase for months, and cross your fingers that nothing is wrong with your dress when you get it, as your options are limited with an unauthorized online store. I took my chances based on previous Knottie experiences, and it worked out great. I ordered it March 21st, and I was quoted a delivery time of August 25th, so the dress came an entire month early. The order also came with a complimentary dress bag for storage. Thank goodness too; I don’t know how else I was going to fit that giant mass of lace and tulle into the closet.

I highly recommend Lee Phillips Bridal. The dress I got was authentic and at an awesome price. So far, everything looks good. I can get into the dress no problem. (My waist was the size-limiting factor, and it was borderline for the size I chose. I was little extra worried this month cuz of all the cake I’ve been eating…) It still needs a lot of alterations for height and bust, as expected. We’ll see if I find any issues later on, but it seems unlikely at this point.

I didn’t realize until I went to Cake Expressions that there is this giant shopping complex near Curtner and 87 with a Best Buy, Target, AND Toys’R'Us in the same place. All they need is a Circuit City, and it’d be video game clearance heaven. I haven’t had much luck with clearances lately, so I don’t pay much attention to the numerous clearance threads on Cheap Ass Gamer. Especially the Toys’R'Us one, since the TRU closest to here is craptacular. Today, I had to pick up a package at the UPS hub in that area, so I took the opportunity to go shopping at this giant complex Kelvin wouldn’t let me go to last time. This TRU is kinda weird, in that EVERY game is behind glass. If you want to look at any game, you need to ask an associate. A pain in the ass, but as a result, their game section is not a warzone since nobody touches it. I easily found some stuff I wanted:

Before this purchase, I had the God of War game that came with my PSP (and the SuperBad movie UMD, if that counts), Exit (I saw it on clearance a while back and was intrigued, but it’s meh), and Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel… which isn’t really a game. So I more than doubled my PSP collection. There are a couple sales going on right now aside from general clearancing: 1) Buy 1 PS(2,3,P) game get another half off for this week, and 2) 20% off all clearance games until 8/16. I remember reading about the first one on CAG, totally missed the second dealio during my CAG browsings. If I had remembered, I would have looked more carefully at other platforms. And if you don’t have Zack & Wiki or Resident Evil 4 for the Wii, you might be able to find copies at TRU right now for $8. (They clearanced out last month, so RE4 may be hard to find at this point, Z&W still possible.) Anyways, details of my haul:

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions - $19.99 (recently dropped in price at all retail chains from $39.99)
Patapon - $9.99 (retails $19.99, half off from sale)
Jeanne D’Arc - $7.98 (clearanced to $9.98 + 20% off)
Parappa the Rapper - $3.99 (clearanced to $9.98 + 20% off + half off)
= $45.41

Plus I still had around $14 leftover from the Mario Galaxy gift card. Now I just need to find Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, LocoRoco, and Lumines and I’ll be set for my PSP collection…

I hate wedding planning, but I’m not going to lie… I’m going to try as many cake tastings as I possibly can. I loves me cakes. Wedding cake consultations are generally free of charge, and they should be if they want you to buy hundreds of dollars of cake from them. Kelvin’s not a fan of sweets, so he’s not loving this like I am. (He’s actually trying to keep me from going to more… I don’t know what his problem is.) We stuck to bakeries that were local (mainly South Bay) and were recommended by Yelp or wedding review sites. We still don’t have a design settled on, so these bakery gave us quotes with no particular design in mind, though I tried to ask about what sorts of designs and details in their albums would cost how much extra. Here are my personal impressions of the places we tried:

Bakery 1: Satura Cakes in Palo Alto
I scheduled an appointment with Satura Cakes through email, which was super easy since they are very good at responding to email. I’ve heard rave reviews of this place; my mother’s coworker insisted Satura had the best cakes for Asian tastes. The bakery is located in the middle of downtown Palo Alto, and it has cafe seating and sells drinks and individual desserts, as well as (of course) cakes. My mother, Kelvin, and I met with Anne (who also did most of the email correspondence) on a nice sunny Saturday afternoon.

We sat at a couple of the cafe tables inside. Anne had us look through binders of their previous work as she prepared the cake samples for us. Looking at their binder, they seemed to have decent presentation. Kelvin has pretty strict criteria for presentation (smoothness is very important to him), and he seemed okay with what he sat. Anne came back with a HUGE platter of desserts; apparently their cake tasting mostly consists of using their individual desserts, not sliced sheet cake samples. This being our first cake tasting, it was very intimidating. They even packed all the leftovers to take home! (If you taste here, you might want to consider bringing a couple friends.)

Anne had us taste the samples in a very specific order (from lightest to heaviest), which was an excellent idea. Their cakes were overall good, though not spectacular as I had hoped. Their specialty, strawberry shortcake, was very good, and it was very fresh. The other cakes varied in freshness, but Anne admitted some cakes may have dried out from sitting out as individual desserts. (The strawberry shortcake, she said, was freshly sliced.) The dryness was obvious in a couple of the cakes we tried, which was disappointing. I’m surprised they would serve it like this; what if no one had commented on the dryness, would the potential buyer even realize that the actual cake they get for their wedding would be better? Also, their heavy cakes were really, really heavy, which surprised me since I thought this bakery was catered towards Asian tastes. Their red velvet cake was much too sweet. (I can tell you from eating many Sugar Butter Flour red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting that red velvet doesn’t have to be insanely sweet.) The chocolate ones towards the end were basically brownies. I’m glad they force this order of tasting. There’s no way I would have enjoyed the strawberry shortcake as much if I had just eaten the chocolate cake. Not all their chocolate cakes are like that tho; we had a couple lighter chocolate pieces in the middle that were much better.

Anne was super nice the entire tasting, offering us drinks and open to questions. Not being the baker herself, Anne couldn’t give us size estimates without consulting the pastry chefs first, but she was able to give some estimates as to what certain design elements would cost. As with all the bakeries we tried, nothing is definite until we show them exactly what we want. Anne mentioned that their pastry chefs can emulate anything, so if we saw something we liked, we should send them a picture. Satura Cakes was also the most organized, giving us a folder with a sample contract plus some wedding planning tips on paper. (In fact, I’m still using the folder to hold all the other cake tasting info I got.) Anne said she’d email us with a quote as soon as she could, and indeed she did email us the next day. They offer a 5% discount when you book with them within a week of consultation.

Service and organization (at tasting and through communication): A
Presentation (based off photos): B
Taste: B+
Favorite flavors: Strawberry Shortcake, Chocolate Cake with Caramel Mocha Cream, and Green Tea Cake with Vanilla Bean Cream (the tea flavor is really light).
Price: Starts at $6 a slice, delivery fee to Cupertino is $50

Bakery 2: Margaret’s French Bakery
Margaret’s French Bakery is another highly recommended establishment on Yelp. Their blog (written by Margaret’s son) is a spectacular cake blog. They only do cakes by order, so their bakery is in the middle of some warehouse-y area near downtown Campbell. Since they were so close to where we worked, we came for a consultation during lunchtime on a Friday afternoon. Kelvin and I met with Margaret herself, who I contacted through email and she arranged an appointment with me over the phone.

The cake tasting takes place in their small office, since they don’t really have a storefront. Wedding cakes is clearly their business, as they have pamphlets for other wedding services in the area. As we went through the binder of pictures, Margaret brought out a platter with 8 teeny-tiny slices of cakes on it. (Because it was a pretty intimate setting and Margaret was there the whole time, I didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures of the samples.) After Satura, I was kind of surprised at how small they were, but it was probably more what I was expecting if I hadn’t gone to Satura. And the cakes didn’t taste that great. I felt maybe the sample size might have affected the quality, as the pieces were kind of dry. (Kelvin described them as “gritty”.) She said the pieces were baked the day before, which kind of surprised me since they weren’t that soft. (Tip: Always ask about when the samples are made, and when the cake for your wedding day will be made. It’s typical for cakes to be made days before your wedding, especially if your cake has a complicated design.) I’m guessing perhaps they weren’t cut that day or the samples weren’t sealed away in the fridge well enough? I don’t know. Kelvin was pretty unresponsive, which was annoying. It’d be nice if he could make it less obvious in front of the owner his distaste. Even with the small sample size, we didn’t finish the samples. I usually can, but I think maybe I felt weird acting like a pig in front of Margaret. I asked her which flavor was her most popular, and she said everything on the platter was most popular, which I thought was kind of weird. Carrot cake? Seriously? (Admittedly, their carrot cake was pretty yummy and moist, even with the sample size.)

Margaret is directly involved in the cake-making, which makes it easy to ask her about approximate costs for certain design elements. I went through their binder and pointed out random stuff to ask about pricing. Pretty much everything cost extra (Tip: Did you know that non-circular cake shapes, like square, will often cost you extra? This was the case with most bakeries I spoke to.), except for small side frosting decorations like dots. Looking at their album and blog pictures, their cakes are absolutely immaculate. Gorgeous, gorgeous cakes, with even their butter cream cakes looking totally flawless. She gave us a copy of the quote she gave us, which was also the contract, along with a list of all the flavors they offer, including many we didn’t taste.

Service and organization (at tasting and through communication): B+
Presentation (based off photos): A+
Taste: C
Favorite flavors: I thought their Princess Cake and Strawberry Grand Marnier were decent. Kelvin only liked the carrot cake… which is too bad since he doesn’t really like carrot cake.
Price: Starts at $6.50 a slice, delivery fee to Cupertino is $50

Bakery 3: Cake Expressions
Cake Expressions also has some decent Yelp reviews, and they came highly recommended from the couple who had that crazy awesome Lego cake I mentioned about a while back. They also only do cake special orders, so no storefront with desserts. They’re located in some random building in another warehouse-y district, this time in East San Jose. The building is easy to miss, but they usually have a real estate-looking sign that says “Cakes” by the driveway. I made an appointment over the phone with them for a Saturday afternoon, and this appointment was bumped early at their request later on, tho the woman I met with, Robin, wasn’t aware that they had successfully made this change. My mom joined Kelvin and me for this trip.

Their tasting area is a small room that isn’t very well ventilated, so it was still warm even with the portable air conditioner running. There’s two tables with chairs, a bunch of binders with pictures of cakes, a wall of model cakes, and a large TV showing the same couple cutting cake, with footage rotating every whole minute. Robin had us look at binders as she prepared cakes, probably slicing them from sheet cakes. As we waited, the very nice grand cake master of Cake Expressions, Cero, was passing through the tasting room and introduced himself to us, which was cool. Robin came back out with a platter of decent sized samples (which looked huge after going to Margaret’s) and a “map” describing the cakes on plate. She didn’t care what order we ate it, so we just went at it. And it was hella good. All the cakes were fluffy and moist, and none of the flavors were heavy. I love, LOVE their Chocolate Raspberry Truffle cake, which is a dense chocolate cake with raspberry puree in it, giving it an interesting texture. Very chocolately, but just right on the sweetness. Overall, we loved all the samples; the whole thing was immediately gobbled up. They’re also the only place to offer a mousse outer frosting, which was different. I didn’t really get a good idea of the difference between the mousse and buttercream because I was so enthralled by the cake, but I happened to like all the mousse covered cakes better, so I’m guessing maybe it’s not as sweet. Cake Expressions also had samples of fondant, the super thick waxy frosting that most complicated cake designs use (usually costs $1.00 per slice extra at most bakeries), so we got to taste fondant for the first time. (It’s gross. It’s basically sugar wax. If we get fondant, make sure to peel it off the cake before you eat it.) Kudos to Cake Expressions for thinking to do that.

I asked Robin when the cakes were made, and she gave me some sort of vague answer like “they were made this week”. This leads me to think that the cakes were a few days old, which is amazing since they taste so fresh. But then I thought, maybe Robin is tricking me into thinking the samples are old, leading me to think their cakes last a while when actually the sample were made that day. Stupid Robin and her mind games! Anyway, she said they usually make their cakes a few days before: one day to make the cake, one day to fill the cake, and how ever many days it takes to frost and decorate it. She confirmed the cake on the day of the wedding would have same texture.

I went through some designs we liked in the binder and got some estimates to what things cost. They have an incredibly reasonable starting price at $3.99 a slice, but just about everything you can think of is extra. Specialty cake flavors (like the Chocolate Raspberry Truffle) and specialty cake fillings (fresh fruit) cost extra, as is using mousse instead of buttercream. I think this was the only bakery where some flavors of cake cost more than others. Design elements cost extra, of course, but generally they seemed to cost less than Margaret’s. Overall, the cost was still lower than the other places we’ve visited, which was great since we actually like their cake. Also, Cero seems to be excellent at making complicated designs, so if you’re design is crazy, Cake Expressions is probably a good option. Kelvin, however, wasn’t fond of their presentation; he didn’t feel any of the cakes he saw were smooth enough. Despite this, he agreed he liked Cake Expressions best so far, as taste is the most important factor in the end. They also have very customizable flavors. One filling they have listed is Chocolate Mint Cookies & Cream, which made Kelvin perk up since he loves mint chocolate stuff, but then he realized it had Oreo, which he doesn’t like. Robin saw this and made sure to mention they could put any kind of candy in the Oreo’s stead, which I thought was a great idea… except I don’t want to make our entire wedding party eat mint chocolate stuff. (I know my mom definitely hates mint.) Still, the fact the option is there is really nice.

Similar to Margaret’s, Robin gave us a quote/contract sheet along with a list of flavors. The list separates regular flavors from specialty, so you know what flavors will cost you more. It also mentions which flavors of filling they recommend with each cake type. Very informative. I wish we had gotten the cake map though, so I could remember what I ate. Robin was friendly and open to questions the entire time, which made the cake tasting very pleasant. We even got a personal recommendation for the place while we were waiting. A customer waiting for her cake was in the tasting room the entire time, and she raved about them. People were also walking in and out, picking up special occasion cakes, so business was okay with them. This place was definitely the front-runner in our cake search after we tasted them. My mom is definitely one “with Asian taste”, and she really liked this place, after being surprisingly disappointed with Satura.

Service and organization (at tasting and through communication): A-
Presentation (based off photos): B
Taste: A
Favorite flavors: Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, definitely. The regular White cake and Red Velvet cake were favorites, too. (I didn’t like their cream cheese frosting tho. Too sweet.) Kelvin liked the Tiramisu, but for some reason I really didn’t like it here, even tho I generally like Tiramisu.
Price: Starts at $3.99 a slice, delivery fee to Cupertino is $45

More cake tasting to come…

New thing I learned today: Fondant really is just sugar and water.

… in games: Metal Gear Solid 4.

… in movies: The Dark Knight.

… in television: Avatar: The Last Airbender series finale.

No wonder I can’t get anything done.

I’m pretty sure this is my “Best Movie of 2008″. Thankfully, it was so good, morons at the theater didn’t have time heckle, so watching it with an opening night crowd (even 3 rows from the screen… we showed up an hour before 12:20AM showtime, but I guess we needed to show up 3 hours early or something) was still incredibly enjoyable.

Christian Bale was hot. (He was looking pretty good as John Connor, too.) Heath Ledger was an amazing Joker. The movie was action-packed, wonderfully dark and sickly humorous. The only thing I didn’t like about it: even with a runtime of over 150 minutes, it could have used another half hour. I wanted another half hour.

I think that’s all I can talk about at this hour and without spoiling stuff.
Rating: 9.7/10… at least until I see it again whenever it comes out on Blu-Ray. We’ll see how it holds up to rewatch.

I really need to go to bed now.