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How LAUSD’s famed coffee cake became this Valley bride’s wedding cake
LAUSD's beloved coffee cake.
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Photo collage by Elina Shatkin
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LAist
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She turned the LAUSD coffee cake into her wedding cake
Jaylin Gonzalez reports.
Micki Boden wanted a wedding cake that checked off a couple of big boxes — personalized and tasty. Instead of a traditional tiered cake, the San Fernando Valley native went with a favorite from her school days.
“My favorite cake of all time is the coffee cake that I ate through my entire K-12 education going to LAUSD public school,” Boden said.
Boden attended elementary school in Studio City and middle school in Sherman Oaks before graduating from a Reseda high school.
Boden and her husband, Matt Stollman, met in 2016 while working on the reality television show Big Brother and eventually started dating. The two got engaged in 2025.
With the groom’s family traveling from the East Coast for their wedding in October, the couple wanted to provide a uniquely L.A. experience.
Micki Boden and Matt Stollman cut into their LAUSD coffee cake wedding cake.
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Micki Boden
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“We wanted something that was gonna be fun, that was gonna be memorable for people,” Boden said.
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They held their wedding at the Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, surrounded by San Fernando Valley memorabilia, and got a California favorite — an In-N-Out truck — to serve guests.
The search for a cake that fit
But when it came to the wedding cake, the couple struggled to find something suitable. Neither Boden nor Stollman liked frosting, and traditional wedding cakes didn’t excite them.
“We explored the more traditional tiered cake setup, and it just wasn’t meshing well,” Boden said.
Boden kept returning to the coffee cake she ate throughout her years in public school. Los Angeles Unified School District had published its official recipe online, but she wasn’t confident she could bake it herself. So she reached out to the district to ask for help.
The Stollman's wedding cake, decorated by the chef at Mulholland Middle School in Lake Balboa, sits in a pastry box.
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Micki Boden
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How LAUSD made it happen
Thomas Cohen, a public relations representative at the district, and Manish Singh, the director of food services, arranged for a chef at Mulholland Middle School in Lake Balboa to prepare the wedding cake. The chef also shaped part of the cake into a heart just for the couple.
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Singh said the district doesn’t take cake orders from the public — but made this exception.
“We were doing it just to make one of our Angelenos, an ex-LAUSD student, make her special day even more special,” Singh said.
For the bride, it was the icing on her big day.
“I think it’s all just part of being an L.A. student,” she said. “The fact that we have these amazing memories from childhood, I think it’s just so meaningful for a lot of people.”
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