Phone: 503-481-4539
Email: chef@lajocondecakes.com
www.lajocondecakes.com
I have been on less frequently because we are in the middle of planning our wedding! One of the biggest mistakes I made during our wedding planning process was looking at all the wedding websites and magazines out there. Good thing I don’t watch TV anymore because I heard shows like Platinum Wedding were ridiculously addictive as well. My previous obsession with the Food Network (especially their cake challenges) didn’t help either now that we have progressed onwards to the CAKE selection process! For our first tasting, I set up an appointment with La Jaconde Cakes.
Call me a glutton for punishment but I had to try her out since her designs are worthy of Food Network! Her European style cakes are filled with light, creamy, and often surprising ingredients such as black currents flown in from France and German chocolate. The cake itself was pretty dense but that’s probably because she makes her samples each month and freezes them for tastings. The majority of her cakes are almond cakes and that probably explains why her cost is so high since the cakes are made with mostly nut and very little flour. The natural almond taste and aroma is so nice that I quickly got used to the texture. We met at a gelateria on NW 23rd for our tasting. This is what was inside the lovely box of goodies she came bearing!
Oh sweet heavenly goodness, I have never seen such beautiful and bright colors! The best part–it was all natural. The deep violet of this beauty? Black currant baby. It’s a very tart and strong berry flavor that holds up well against the creamy filling.
This one here is a mixed berry & mascarpone cream with a sponge cake (I believe.) It could also be almond. I think only 2 of her cakes were not some type of nut cake. Look how sweetly pink it is! Again, all fresh berries. This one was a strong contender.
However, after we tasted this raspberry mousse filling, we immediately jumped ship. This cake is near perfection (I say near because there will be one later on that rules them all). Jutta, the owner of the bakery, said she could even use more or less berry or even a mix of berries to suit our tastes and the look we want.
Lets move on to something tropical. It doesn’t look as snazzy as its berry colored compatriots but the taste is a wonderful blend of coconut and pineapple. Not oily or greasy at all, which is very unusual for coconut. I forgot how much I liked it because I tried it relatively early on during the tasting but when I ate the leftovers today, this one stayed in my mind.
Ok…moving on. Whenever I think of the ideal summertime dessert, I think of fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Here is La Jacoconde’s version. It is a white chocolate & fresh strawberry filling with almond cake. This combination is a universal favorite so if we go with her, it would be one of the main tiers.
After the light berry cakes, we moved onto nut cakes. This nut cake has cream cheese frosting. It is either made of walnut flour or hazelnut (at this point, my memory eludes me). The Fiance loves cream cheese frosting and wanted to know if we could use it to frost the cake. Here’s where Jutta said kindly that not all cakes go well with cream cheese haha. At least she takes her work seriously. That’s very important when trusting someone with your wedding cake.
Moving on. Ooh! This jolly cake is perfect for the holidays. It’s hazelnut or walnut cake with rum soaked raisins. Rum + cake + heavenly cream cheese frosting = pure, unadulterated JOY. Great for fall but not so much for a summer wedding.
From there, we were eased into chocolate territory. This is a hazelnut cake with milk chocolate butter cream frosting and chocolate ganache. This tastes like nutella in cake form! This one would be my choice for the chocolate cake layer. It’s not as mature as some of the other offerings but I proudly say that I prefer milk chocolate over dark.
This next one is the only cake that didn’t make FI squeal like a school girl. He loves passion fruit. He prefers dark chocolate. But somehow the mixing of the two didn’t quite work for us. (I liked it better the next day though).
This dark chocolate cake was everything FI wanted in a chocolate cake. It was rich without being too sweet and the black current/raspberry mousse complimented it perfectly. Look how seductive the color is!
Ok…but I am saving the absolute best for last. Remember the cake I talked about earlier that ruled them all? That would be this sweet and simple almond cake (of course) filled with pear and lavender cream. See that tiny speck of mauve? That is lavender! It smells so wonderful and tastes amazing. So unusual and sophisticated!
The aftermath
All in all, I kind of wish we didn’t meet with her first because it set the bar really high for the other places. My palate is more similar to European palettes I guess. I don’t like super sweet or super buttery cakes. My favorite cakes are light and airy, like chiffon cakes and I prefer light mousse over buttercream filling. I do wish I got to taste her almond cake fresh but they do taste remarkably good for a previously frozen cake. I do wonder what my guests would think about almond cake. It is quite dense even when fresh and doesn’t have the soft, springy, moistness that most Americans equate with good cake. Still, it really grows on a person and I liked her cake even better the next day.
Jutta doesn’t have her own store front but after meeting her, I know that she would care about the perfection of the cake even more than I would. I would rest easy with her if only my budget would allow it. Cakes start out at $5/pp for buttercream and go up to $8/pp for fondant. She spent 2 hours with us and we went through the whole process from tasting to preliminary design. Her service was great and I liked that she wasn’t afraid to tell me what wouldn’t work and gave suggestions to what would work. If we don’t end up going with her for our wedding, I may be tempted to order a 1 layer round of the lavender one for our rehearsal dinner.
