“Don’t worry or freak out. There will be a lot of cake.”
With these reassuring words spoken into a microphone, Elisa Sunga sent off a horde of cake lovers to weave around two long tables topped with 162 cakes and dig in.
Sunga launched Cake Picnic last year in San Francisco, and after its completely understandable success, she has replicated it in New York, Los Angeles and, this weekend, Carlsbad. Now she is dealing with a flood of emails pitching new sites. “Come to Iowa, come to Malaysia, come to Morocco, come to Paris,” they tell her, she said in an interview. She chose the Carlsbad Flower Fields because she’d wanted to visit them since her childhood, which was spent partly in the Philippines and partly in the Bay Area. Also, Sunga loves decorating her own cakes with flowers, “so it was such a no brainer.”
The next picnic will be in London, on July 5. Future locations include Vancouver, Manila, Paris and Austin.
Sunga, a senior UX program manager at Google in her day job, said these picnics, which are a side project, feed people in a deeper way.
“Like, you don’t need to come to a picnic with hundreds of cakes,” she said. “But you do it because it’s incredible, it’s awesome, it’s delightful, it’s whimsical. I think at this time, when there is a lot going on in the world, you’re looking for moments of — maybe it’s distraction, but also just, like, choosing moments of joy.”
Many people who brought cakes Sunday had baked their own. Some brought store-made goods. Some did a combo, buying a cake but then decorating it. They came from as far as Palm Springs and Ventura County. There was no dress code, but sundresses abounded.
Tickets to the sold-out event were $65. “Every attendee must also bring their own cake bigger than 6 inches. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Los Angeles fire relief organizations,” the Flower Fields’s website says.
“I was so glad that we secured tickets,” said Yonca Ashkar, who was first in line at the entrance gate. Ashkar, a 25-year-old nail technician, had driven from Los Angeles with her mother, leaving home at 6 a.m. She described herself as “a very lousy baker” who loves good cake.
“I know my sweets,” Ashkar said. She contributed a lilikoi crunch cake.
After Ashkar and the others had registered their cakes, they entered the grounds and had time to take pictures. They unfolded picnic blankets near the cake tables and strolled the fields, which were carpeted with ranunculuses that rustled in the morning breeze.
Right before the feasting started, Kim Kitchings, the senior vice president of consumer marketing with Cotton Incorporated, the nonprofit trade group that sponsored the picnic and provided linens and baseball caps, informed the crowd about cotton’s sustainability and longevity.
Kitchings said the trade group sponsored the event because they share a key demographic group, environmentally conscious women ages 18 to 34.
Time to eat.
So many cakes. So little time.
But if the goal — sample as many cakes as you can or want out of 162 options at a glorious picnic — seemed daunting, the event was organized in a way that kept things running smoothly and fairly.
Each participant got an empty box. In groups of several dozen, the cake eaters were released. Each group had five minutes to cut and load cake slices into their boxes. There was a second round, plus a turn for volunteers, and finally, leftovers were up for grabs.
As Sunga foretold, there was plenty of cake and no reason to worry about not getting enough. Abundance and sugar reigned.
A tasty variety of flavors awaited: raspberry chocolate mousse, earl grey, elderflower, mango sticky rice, Thai tea, honey lavender. A moist olive oil cake was loaded with chunks of apple and topped with pink and purple petals, with a surprising hint of bay leaves.
Other offerings: matcha with Swiss meringue and black cocoa, mango yuzu Chantilly, cannoli cake and a Garden cake with lemon curd, pea sponge and basil soak. There were sections for gluten free and vegan recipes.
Ella Babin and her mother, Melissa Van Tassel, of Escondido, brought three cakes between them. Babin made a hummingbird cake, inspired by her Southern roots, and Van Tassel made one with Meyer lemons from her garden and a vanilla bean cake decorated with cotton candy.
“When you look at people’s cakes and all the decoration and thought and care that they put into it, it’s really amazing that they just wanted to do this, just because it was fun for them,” Babin said. Her birthday is coming up, and she thinks she will host a cake picnic.
