One great sadness in the Tacoma culinary scene is the general lack of bakeries. There are a few scattered about, but they have a tough go of things.  One star on the Tacoma scene is the Corina Bakery (602 Fawcett Ave – in the Merino building – where the Tacoma City Ballet and the Grand Theater are located).  They do many things at the Bakery, but their cakes are always the draw for me.  I’ve bought them for birthdays, cub scout potlucks, retirement parties, and just because sometimes life requires a good piece of cake.  And it is good cake.  This is no Costco sheet cake.  It is cake worth eating.  These cakes are the quality-ingredient, baked-with-love-and-care, as-beautiful-as-they-are-tasty, culinary masterpieces you deserve.  You can order a cake over the phone, but it is so much better to pop in and order in person.  Because then you have an excuse to have a fine cup of coffee (All the espresso options are available with AJ’s fine Valhalla coffees) and one of their cookies or other creations (I’m rather partial to their lemon bars).  I usually pick up a few treats to take home for an after dinner surprise for the family.  If things are a bit bumpy at work, you can do worse than to show up at a meeting with some cookies, brownies and those fabulous lemon bars in tow.  I’m not really a sweets fan, but calories from Corina’s are all worth ingesting.  They do pies and cheesecakes as well.  They also do some savory products – quiches and the like, which are honestly more up my alley (real men do eat quiche…).  But I stick with the sweets there, cause they rock.  Yes, you’ll pay more for a Corina cake/cookie/pie than you might want to.  But it is the real thing, and it is worth it.  They have lots of room inside, and it was a go-to meeting location during my nomadic period.  I still remember buying coffee and pastries and then getting ripped a new one by a parent unhappy with some decisions I made in my PTA president days (art night concession options were more consequential than I realized - lesson learned).  Ah, good times.  Anyway, make up an excuse for a trip to Corina’s Bakery.  Maybe you have some out of town guests?  Or a work party?  Nothing says I love you like sublime sweets.  And lord knows, we need to say I love you a bit more than we do.