No wonder Carolyn's wedding cake is among the three things a bride and groom remember from their wedding day. Her cakes are not only beautiful and decorative in their elegant simplicity, but they are among the most delicious cakes I have tasted.

We met in the large commercial kitchen she shares with other food professionals. Over coffee she told me about her print making degree from Berkeley, her year-long work as a print maker, and the deliverance she felt after she switched to the food industry. First she worked as a cook, later as a baker making breads and croissants. Fondly she remembers the time at Cocolat, where Alice Medrich, the owner, was her mentor, and the time she spent in Paris and Nice as an apprentice in a patisserie.

In France she got acquainted with hazelnuts, a staple used in European cakes, now also readily available from American farms. However, the tropical passion fruit purée, which she uses to prepare the passion fruit mousse, still has to be ordered from overseas. My favorites are cakes with hazelnuts and the passion fruit and the dark chocolate cake with rich dark chocolate and fresh raspberries. All her cakes are light on sugar and contain the best ingredients combined with fresh seasonal organic fruit from local growers. She decorates them with seasonal fruit and flowers.

Carolyn loves to meet her clients; her goal is to please and surprise them. She strives to create desserts that reflect their personalities and capture the mood of the wedding. Her cakes are distinguished by their clean elegance - from classic to whimsical - with sparingly used fresh fruit or flower decoration. The former art student feels that decoration should enhance and not overwhelm the cake. She loves to combine different textures and colors such as red, shiny currants, yellow raspberries and seasonal flowers. Sometimes she wires gum paste or chocolate flowers to create a natural three-dimensional shape. A good example was the decoration of a cake for an October wedding. Here she created colorful fall foliage to enhance the dark brown chocolate cake. You will find more sample cakes on her elegant website.