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CREATIVE CAKES page C51

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ers out of sugar and a lily um-
brella over the frogs. It actually
looked absolutely gorgeous,"
she said.
She said she's one of the few
bakers in Chicago that still does
sugar flowers. "You can eat
them, but generally people
want to save them. They can
bring them back to me and I
can make a bouquet and put
them in a dome setting they
can keep for a lifetime," said
Lastick.
But as for the cake itself, her
customers
want to eat it.
"Ninety-five
percent of my
customers
want the wed-
ding cake for
dessert. It's
very important
what it tastes
like," she said.
"They want
dessert-size
slices, not little
slivers to put
into boxes to
take home.
They want a good-size piece of
cake that's actually a plated
dessert with little flowers or
sauces or pieces of fruit on a
decorated plate."
Flavor is decidedly the dri-
ving force behind Karen
Krasne's Extraordinary Desserts
shop in San Diego. The holder
of a certificate de patisserie
from Paris' Le Cordon Bleu,
Krasne has been wowing cou-
ples with her wedding cakes
for nine years.
"Our top seller now is a Pas-
sion Fruit Ricotta Torte. It's
three-pound cake layers soaked
with passion fruit juice and lay-
ered with passion fruit
whipped cream, kiwifruit,
strawberries and bananas," said
Krasne. "It's a light cake, very

fragrant, and I don't think
there's a person who doesn't
like it."
Her second top seller is
called Moka, three layers of
very dark bittersweet chocolate
cake soaked with coffee and
separated with espresso-infused
chocolate mousse, caramel and
pecan espresso pralines.
Then there's her White
Chocolate Linzer Torte, a
hazelnut almond cake with .
white chocolate butter cream,
fresh raspberries, homemade
raspberry pre-
serves and nut
meringue; the
flavor choices
at Extraordi-
nary Desserts
are as luscious
as the cake's
presentation.
"Our sig-
nature look is
fresh flowers
or fresh
greens. We
like it to look
as though it's
natural, in that
organic garden idea," said
Krasne.
Some of her stellar wed-
ding cake designs have show-
cased seven layers with real
pink anthutiums and tiny
white orchids; layers wrapped
entirely in sugared pansies; tiers
of cake dressed tuxedolike with
really smooth frosting punctu-
ated with real ribbon in the
same color, then pressed with
bright-red rose petals while the
top layer is covered with bright-
red rosebuds; or those same
tuxedo-style tiers festooned
with leaves in the colors of fall.
"I'm trying to get out of
the pillar thing," said Krasne.
"I'm trying to avoid having any
plastic pieces on the cakes, try-
ing to keep them organic."