Meet Lindsay Holdorf, Marin Cake Studio's Designer

I took a cake decorating class with friends in Iowa in my twenties. It was meant to be an afternoon out. What I left with was the discovery that I could bake, and that the part I could not stop thinking about afterwards was the design.

I baked for friends first. Then for family birthdays, then for friends of friends, and somewhere in there it stopped being a hobby and became the thing I thought about on the drive home.

The studio opened in 2016, though it spent its first years under a different name: Live Love Bake. Same designer, same standards — only the name changed.

For most of that time I worked from home and from shared kitchens. The studio on 4th Street, in downtown San Rafael, opened in November 2024. It is where the design conversations happen, where the classes are taught, and where you collect a cake.

The early years were long ones. I worked out techniques, developed flavor combinations, and learned the business end without letting the work slip. Nearly a decade on, what I set out to do has not moved: cakes designed for the occasion they are made for, by someone who knows whose party it is.

The studio has grown since. There is a team now — in the kitchen, on the design, and on delivery. What has not changed is that I am the person you talk to, and that no cake gets designed from anything but your own occasion.

The Marin Independent Journal wrote about the studio in 2025.

We start with the occasion, not the cake. What the day is for, who it is for, and what theme you have already built everything else around. The design comes out of your answers — we are not fitting you to a house style.

Then the practical questions, because they shape a design more than people expect. Where it is being served. Whether it is outdoors in July. How many people, and whether they are being handed a slice or serving themselves.

What I believe:

• Every celebration deserves a cake designed for it, not adapted from a template
• Design and flavor are not a trade-off — a cake has to do both
• The process should be enjoyable, not one more thing on your list to manage
• The theme matters more than the trend
• Getting it right matters more than getting it fast
• You are working with a person, not submitting a ticket

This is also why I sometimes say no. If a flavor combination will not hold, or a design looks right on a screen and will not execute in buttercream at an outdoor venue in July, I will tell you and offer something that will. Clients mention that afterwards more than anything else.

Step One: The First Conversation

You reach out with your date and whatever you have in mind — a theme, a photograph, a color, or nothing at all yet. We talk it through in the San Rafael studio, on a video call, or on the phone.

Step Two: Design

We work the concept up from that conversation, show you where it is going, and refine it against your feedback. There is no fixed number of rounds. We go until it is right.

Step Three: Flavor and Filling

You come in and taste. Flavors are chosen alongside their fillings rather than picked off two separate lists, and nothing leaves the studio untasted.

Step Four: Approval and Booking

Once the design and the flavors are both settled, your date goes on the calendar and a deposit holds it. Nothing is booked before both are settled — a cake you were talked into is a cake nobody enjoys on the day.

Step Five: Making and Delivery

In the days before your celebration we bake and decorate. Wedding cakes above our minimum we deliver and set up at the venue ourselves, rather than handing them to a courier or leaving the caterer to assemble them. Everything else is collected from the studio.

Throughout: you can reach me. I would rather answer a question early than have you wonder about it.

There is no case to choose from:

You are not picking the closest thing to what you had in mind. The design starts at your occasion and works outward, which is a different exercise from customizing something that already exists.

Problems get solved, not routed:

When something is awkward — a venue with no refrigeration, a dietary request running through half the guest list, a design fighting its own structure — I work the problem rather than telling you that is not how we do it.

You deal with one person the whole way:

Whoever takes your first call is the one answering the phone the week before, because that is the same person. Nothing gets handed to an account manager. There isn't one.

I live here:

This is a small community and my name is on the box. How your day goes is not an abstraction to me.

That is the difference between a cake you order and a cake that gets designed. It costs more than something out of a case, and it is a different thing.

The studio is in San Rafael, and the work travels further. We have designed cakes for celebrations across Marin County, San Francisco, Napa and Sonoma.

Being in Marin makes it easy for local clients to come in for a consultation and a tasting. For clients further out, consultations happen by video and the cake comes to wherever the celebration is.

Wedding cakes above our minimum are delivered and set up at your venue. Everything else is collected from the San Rafael studio.

Flavor: A cake that looks right and tastes ordinary has failed. Nothing leaves here untasted.

Design: Every cake should be worth photographing before anyone cuts it.

Attention: You get me, through the whole thing, not a handoff halfway.

Problems: If something goes wrong, I tell you before you find out, and I fix it.

Reliability: When I commit to your date and your design, that is what arrives.