Photo Booth Station... Complete!

For the past few weeks, I have been rearranging the kitchen in order to build a dedicated area to take my cake pictures.  My brother helped me profusely with the project, even going so far as to travel with me and Chad to IKEA in Atlanta to pick the cabinets and lights and stuff up!

I ordered some photo backdrops from Adorama in white, black, gray, and beige so I have several options to choose from.  I am very pleased with how it all turned out and I even wound up with a ton of out-of-the-way storage due to all those new cabinets.

Yeah, but how do the pictures look, you ask?  Well, the backdrop didn't make us professional photographers or anything, but we were very pleased with our initial test shot with a dummy cake:

Hawaiian Luau Birthday Cake

This past weekend did a first birthday cake for my vet's daughter, affectionately known as Gigi (isn't that cute?).  They were doing a Hawaiian Luau theme, and wanted to use bright tropical colors.

Since it was a holiday weekend and I had no weddings, it gave me a little extra time to throw some creativity at it.  I got out my Cricut Cake and my Life is a Beach cartridge and started cutting tropical leaves, tiki heads, hula girls, and tropical flowers.  Now these cut files weren't specifically designed for cake usage but they worked very well.  I could pull out the centers of the flowers and the tiki heads and it gave the cake lots of dimension.  I even made a big 3D Tiki head out of rice crispy treats for the top.

Gigi's Mom was super excited when she came to pick it up, she even shed a tear or two she was so happy!  Awwwww!  Happy Birthday Gigi!!

Koi Wedding Cake

Growing up, some of my Mother's most favorite jewelry was the Elizabeth Taylor sets put out by Avon (in the mid-80's I guess).  The earrings and brooch to the left have always been one of her favorite sets.

Sometimes, when I'm looking for inspiration, especially for my dummy or show cakes, I turn towards treasures like these.  Some time ago, I bought some silicone molding compound and used her earrings and brooch to make molds so that I could use them on a Styrofoam showcake.

At the last bridal show I had a bride that just went bonkers over that "fish" cake.  She loved everything about it.  We booked a consultation, went through the whole design process and in the end she still wanted that as her wedding cake.  Professionally I took it as a real compliment that she liked it just the way it was.  I love it when I can have that type of connection with a client.

So I recreated that dummy cake for her.  I molded and painted, the fish, applied the sugar pearls to make "bubbles" and even added some "crystal doomies" to the top to give a water spray effect.  We even placed it on our aquarium cake stand to add to the aquatic effect.  The venue we took it to was very dark and our pictures didn't turn out very well at all, so I know you're missing out on all the effects.

Armadillo Groom's Cake

Now I must have seen Steel Magnolias at least a dozen times, but I have never been asked to do an armadillo cake... until now!

I carved the cake and covered it with fondant, and used my clay tools to make the lines and the armadillo plates.  Then I used oval cutters to make the scales.  I dry brushed the whole thing with dove gray petal dust to give it a more natural look.

When we delivered this to the Grand View Hotel, we ran into the bride and groom and they were both super psyched about their cute little armadillo cake.

Thanks for stopping by and everyone have an excellent week!!

UGA Sanford Stadium

I always love a good challenge, especially when it comes to cakes.  When I had clients ask for a quasi-replica of UGA's Sanford Stadium, I knew that I had my work cut out for me.  I visited all my favorite web sites and really couldn't find any good blueprints of the stadium, only seating charts (which were still helpful).  Finally I ordered a scale model off the Internet.  I used the model to take measurements and transfer them on to graph paper.  Then I used the graph paper to make my full-size patterns.

I know it's hard to tell, but this cake is actually mostly cake.  There are a few rice crispy treats, and it has its fair share of modeling chocolate, fondant, and edible images, but 95% is just pure delicious cake.

I delivered this groom's cake to the Dalton Golf and Country Club.  None of the guests were there yet, but I think all of the staff came out and took pictures with their phones.

Rock City Daisy Wedding Cake

This little buttercream number took a drive up Lookout Mountain recently and settled in at the Rock City Pavilion.  It was out first trip there and it is a very nice venue.  Cheryl Hyland with Blissful Moments was the wedding coordinator and she had everything setup perfectly when we arrived.  That was a very good thing - it was hot as blazes and it was an outdoor wedding so we showed up moments before the guests arrived.

With the exception of quite a bit of piping, this was a simple but elegant wedding cake.  The florist left some Gerber daisies for me to place on the cake.  Once I had them on there, I thought that little splash of color really made the cake pop!

Everyone have a great week now, OK?  Let's meet back here on Friday for another installment!!

Cutout Panel Wedding Cake

Happy Friday!  For the longest time I have had this cake in my "inspiration book", and I finally had a bride that picked it as her wedding cake.

Once she had picked it, then came the task of figuring out how to do it.  Well, I finally decided to use modeling chocolate panels, and I was very pleased with the results.  One tip:  initially cut the panels larger than you need - no matter how hard you try, cake will never be truly square.

I think this was also the first cake where I used smaller separators for the tiers.  I used styrofoam, coated with piping gel and covered in the same modeling chocolate I used for the panels,

Lastly, for the blue behind the cut-outs, I took a sheet of edible image paper, colored it with blue luster dusts and stuck it to the back side of the panel.  It kept me from making a big batch of blue icing and it kept icing from coming through the cutout, keeping that nice clean design the bride was looking for.

Peanut Butter Paradise

This weekend we were tasked to make a HUGE package of Reese's Peanut Butter Butter Cups.  And when I say huge, I mean almost 2 feet long!  Since it was a Reese's Cup cake, it only makes sense that it was chocolate cake with peanut butter icing, right?

Nothing terribly fancy going on here - the sides of the package were made from rice crispy treats and the whole thing was covered in fondant.  The one cool thing we did on this cake was to use our Cricut Cake to cut out the logo.  Chad took the logo and somehow got into this new software we bought (called Sure Cuts a Lot) and used it to cut the logo out of modeling chocolate.  It was very cool, and if we ever do another one, we can use the same file to make it as large or small as we need!

Once it was finished I had some extra space left on my cake board so I covered most of the exposed areas of the board with ganache and then topped it with quartered peanut butter cups and Reese's Pieces!  Peanut Butter Paradise!!!

Indian Sari Wedding Cake

A couple of weekends ago I did a wedding at the Dalton Trade Center for a wonderful couple.  The bride brought in a fabric swatch from her sari and wanted it represented as a major design element of her cake.

It was a fairly complicated design (see the gold diamond patterns) so we accomplished this by taking a picture of the fabric swatch and tracing the image on tracing paper with an ultra-fine Sharpie.  I then colored in the tracing with a thicker Sharpie and scanned it on the computer.  My hubby worked his computer magic and took the black and white image and made it a faint yellow.  We then printed these patterns out on edible image paper.  After that, I cut out each diamond and hand painted over the yellow with gold luster dust.  Now normally I mix my dusts with Pure Grain Alcohol (PGA) but in this instance I needed some more working time so I used vodka instead.

Wow!  So much going on!!  And I haven't even got to the isomalt sugar gems we made for the centers!  Oh well, this week's cakes aren't going to finish themselves, so that may have to be another story for another time!  Thanks for stopping by!

Grooms, Start Your Engines!

We live in the South, and people here really love their NASCAR racing, but it's odd that until now, I have never been asked to do a NASCAR groom's cake.

This groom is a big Jeff Gordon fan, and wanted his signature "24" number to adorn the top of his groom's cake.  We printed the checkered flags out on card stock, and cut the numbers out of black and yellow modeling chocolate.

To get a little more chocolate on the cake, the groom opted for the "chocolate drippy" look and a few tuxedo and chocolate-covered strawberries.

As we were setting up the cake, a lady approached us and was telling us what a huge Jeff Gordon fan the groom was.  So big, in fact that the couple invited Jeff Gordon to their wedding!  She said that Jeff had declined their invitation, but did send the couple a wedding present... how cool is that?