Raspberry / Blackberry / Succulent Wedding

Sometimes a bride enjoys picking out her wedding cake so much that she does it three times.  Luckily the final choice was one that I really wanted to make.   This cake is very different and "natural".  I was given the picture and asked to make a few minor adjustments like the colors on the succulents, vanilla bean specks in the fondant, and two layer had a royal icing texture that was very subtle with a bit of gray to lightly mimic river birch.  I went very light on the gray because I didn't want it to stand out and take away from the focal point.  To keep things clean and simple, I put a little bean specks in some royal icing and "caulked" the tiers together instead of any kind of a border. 

For the "Hens and Chicks" or succulents, I really didn't have the time to make them since the bride changed the design fairly close to the wedding date and I was too busy to learn and try (or maybe just tired...).  I ordered them all from "A Cake To Remember VA".  Kara was absolutely great to work with on these!  She changed the color to just a pale grey and I used petal dust to make them match the wedding colors.  She was so helpful and VERY quick in getting them to me.  If you ever need pre-made decorations, molds, supplies or great tutorials check out her Etsy store. 

We made 80 raspberries using silicone molds that I also found on Etsy. I bought six kinds of raspberry molds but I think this is the one I used the most,

We started out by using a little tool and making the natural indentation on the top but then there wasn't enough to poke my wire into!  So no hole!  Ron Ben-Israel would not be proud of me :)
The most realistic raspberry mold that I purchased was this one. 

The reason I didn't use it is because it is impossible to get the berry out without distortion unless you use a material that will get hard in the freezer, like Fondarific or modeling chocolate.  I did not have time to do that 80 times!  If you are making five, cool, but not 80!

The "blackberries" that were "purpleberries" to match the wedding colors were much more challenging even though there was only ten!  They are not hard, just require some patience.  Make a grape size piece of gumpaste/fondant mixture, dip your wire in tylose glue and insert.  Let these sit up a few hours.  Now make a TON of tiny, varied sized, balls and let the dry.  When you are ready to make them, make a few fresh balls so they will squish and make a more natural look overall.  paint the "grape" with tylose glue and stick all the balls on it.  I tried rolling it and that will just get you a few and then fill in all the spaces.  Poof!  You have a blackberry!  I enlisted my friends to help me and it took four of us 90 minutes to roll all of the tiny balls.   That's six hours!   I was glad there was only a few!

If anyone knows the original artist for this cake, please list them in the comments.  I would love to give them credit for the beautiful design!  Now go cover a cake with summer berries! 


TIEREDCAKER GIVEAWAY WINNERS!

OK folks, we a A LOT of people register to win the Tiered Caker app giveaway.  I can tell that there's lots of interest in the product.  Special thanks to Calculated Cakes for sponsoring the prizes.  Chaddy put all the comments into the randomizer and picked out 2 names:

I have heard from Thelma already, but we are still waiting to hear back from Judith.  Once we have proper contact info from both we will get the information sent to Calculated cakes for your prize!  Congratulations!

TieredCaker App and Giveaway

Full Disclosure Time: This post includes a giveaway sponsored by Calculated Cakes.  They are providing the prizes, but the opinions are mine alone.  I will not receive any compensation for this post.

I love my gadgets - I'm usually not very far way from my iPad or iPhone; I just like the way programs seem to work!  There's always some little something going on with my desktop computer, but my tablet is rock-solid!

I have found myself using my iPad a lot during consultations.  I can pull up images, look through a bride's Pinterest board, etc.  A few months ago I found out about the TieredCaker app by Calculated Cakes and agreed to help beta test the product.  Now I've been at this cake game a while and I know most of the standard cake tiers and how many they feed.  But this app makes it really easy, and they offer lots of customization options!

Just start out by entering how many servings you need and instantly it will pop up a multitude of configurations.  So if you want a cake to feed 120 the app will return that a 14" and an 11" cake will do the trick perfectly.  And then the client says "But I want something that really makes an impact - can't we make it taller?  Like 4 tiers?"  Well, just scroll on down and the app will tell you that a 13 / 10 / 7 / 6" will do the job.  But you don't keep odd size pans... then the 12 / 10 / 8 / 6 will be the way to go.  You can even tell the app which pans you own, so it won't suggest combinations you can't deliver.  And since you enter your price per serving in the app ($3.75 in my case), you already know you're talking about a base price of $476.25.

Once you have chosen your configuration you are presented with a visual representation of your cake.  This is where things get neat!  Let's say that we want that 2 tier to be a squatty tier.  We'll just drag the size down to a 2 inch tier.  And they want some color on that squatty tier?  Just click it with your finger and you can change the color to light pink.  If you want a double-barrel design, you can extend the tier and make it twice the size.  Note that at the current time changing the tier height in the app will not alter the number of servings.  It is my understanding that this feature is being worked on for a future update.  It's easy enough to account for though.   I can also use a 2-finger swipe to rotate and tilt the cake.  If my design will have lots of things on the top tier it's nice so I can print it out with a good view of the top.

Once I get the cake looking like I want it, I can then print that out and get all artsy on it.  Before this app I used Microsoft Powerpoint's drawing tools to make my standard cake tier sizes and I drew on them.  This is better because I get any custom design on the fly, with the base colors, and it's shaded so that it has a dimensional 3D look to it. Not to mention that tilt / rotate feature.  And it's SO much easier.

And this app will even take the cake you have just created in literally minutes and it also offers you a cutting guide - for that exact cake!  It even allows you to choose between straight and classic cutting guides.  Once the cake has been settled on I just print out that cutting guide and add it to the client's folder.  One less thing I have to worry about!

This app has seriously changed the way I do my consultations.  It saves me from remembering wrong and from fussing about with a lot of paper during the consultation.  And the client gets to get a pretty close representation of their cake on the spot.  It has saved me from stacking pans so the client would know how certain sizes look together.  The product has been developed by fellow baker Jennifer Flesner and her husband Chris.  They are very open to suggestions and have made many great enhancements to the product since I began beta testing way back when!

Now for the best part!  Are you ready to try out the TieredCaker app?  Well the good folks at Calculated Cakes are offering not one but TWO free copies of the TierCaker app to the winners of this giveaway.  Just leave a comment here on the blog and just for fun why not tell me who your favorite cake artist is right now.  Any comments left between now and Sunday June 22nd will be included in a random drawing..  Winners will be announced next Tuesday!  Good Luck!

With a Little Help From Your Friends....

Congratulations Chris & Nancy!

For many years Chad and I have had a very special friend.  We treasure the time we get to hang out and chat because he's a fancy lawyer and works a million hours a week.  Luckily he found love in his own office and married his paralegal of fourteen years!  Some say that it was a long time coming!   We really didn't know his bride, Nancy, and had only met her briefly a couple of times.  She's fantastic though!  It's been especially challenging trying to help since they live an hour away.  When he told us they were engaged, I begged him to bring her up early and let me guide her in the planning process.  They did not come until a month before the wedding so that they could have a cake consultation.  At that point there was a plan in place, just incomplete.  That day, she was so overwhelmed with all she had to do that she almost didn't come.  By the end of the night, she had a good plan in place and finally started looking forward to the wedding.  I volunteered to help find some decorations, make the cakes as our gift, help decorate the tents the day before, to help figure how the food was going to be placed and to cut the cakes.  They had no decorations for the tents, so I talked to my favorite florist for some ideas and started ordering goodies.  Luckily Nancy was very easy to please and was so grateful for the help that there wasn't a lot of back and forth.  I'd send her some pictures and she would say, "great! buy them!"

I wish that I could say everything was smooth and easy.  People just don't understand how much is involved in throwing the most expensive "party" of your life.  The world sells this "magical time" kind of thing when it's NOT.  It's stressful and expensive and stressful.  There are power struggles between families, friends and bridesmaids.  There are vendors that forget orders and don't deliver what you had in your head.  The weather does not care that you are getting married, nor do the bugs!
For this wedding we had a special view of the process.  I hope that if you are getting married or know someone that is walking down the aisle soon, this may help in some small way.   Here is SOME of what we learned. 

The first challenge in helping the couple was the wedding was in a town that I don't have vendor friends and don't know who is good or bad.  Anyone can have a good website or fake good reviews, but word of mouth from fellow vendors is truly priceless.  Read online reviews on Facebook and WeddingWire.com.  They can be a great resource.

The second challenge was that they were holding the wedding at their home.  It wasn't necessarily a money saving decision, but partly so everyone could see their new home and so they could make memories there.  Chad and I also got married at our home only a month after we moved in.  I cannot stress this enough, don't do it.  You can't get a minute of peace, the house is a wreck and it's hard to get people to leave when all you want to do it go to bed.  It's a crazy time in your life and you just added the stress of cleaning the house and presenting it to everyone you know.  If you pick a hotel, for example, you can get a room to get ready in and get away from all the family.  Also, most of the extras are already there.  Tables, cloths, food, drinks, and rooms for out of town guests are a "given" instead of an "unknown"

The third challenge was that I didn't know anyone that Nancy was relying on to complete wedding tasks.  I didn't know if these people were dependable, had good taste, or if they had egos that I didn't want to step on.  I admit, I'm an "alpha" and have no problem taking lead on projects.  That is my default way, but when you come into a situation where you don't know anyone and really don't want to peeve anyone off that you just met, it's a little tricky.  Chad and I just did our thing, decorating our little buns off, and if people asked us if they could help, we gave them a task.  It wasn't my place to boss their people but after about eight hours with no break, I really wanted to, but I didn't...mostly.  There were several people that were fantastic and it was great to have them help! 

The fourth challenge was having no wedding planner.  I advised the couple to get a "day of" planner and sent a few names that I found.  I never asked why they didn't hire one, but let me tell you how it would have helped.  The day before, while everyone was gathering for a rehearsal one family member was late and it held everyone else up.  The DJ was running things and needed to leave thirty minutes before he did.  A planner could have been the "bad guy" and said we need to go ahead without her and fill her in on the details later.  The planner would also have a crew that could have helped with all the last minute set up details, like how to place tables.  The day of the wedding, a planner would have organized everyone and kept things on schedule.  Ten minutes before the wedding, the punch concentrate was still frozen and the food wasn't out.  I think a planner keeps things running on time, but not too fast also. 

The fifth challenge was that all the major "helpers" they were counting on were in the wedding party.  They were all dressed up and had places to be and stand.  Getting the dark purple punch out was not what they needed to be doing.  If you are getting married, your friends are there to enjoy the day with you, especially your close friends.  Do not make them work.  Hire people through the caterer or a planner.  Even just to pick up trash and refresh the food.  Who do you think is going to do that?  The day of was extra hard for these reasons.  Guests are busy being guests.

As a baker, I was sad that the couple didn't get 30 seconds to look at their cakes before they cut them.  They didn't get to eat either, but I didn't make the food :)  It's just one of those things that happens on the wedding day that I'm glad I don't normally witness.  I'm glad they have pictures afterwards.  My advice is to not have an outdoor wedding, too many variables and hot weather stinks!  This wedding was fine, but it rained the morning of and things were squishy and muddy.  The wedding cakes we delivered this weekend were at a "fancy" barn.  It was a beautiful OVEN.  My poor cakes and those poor guests.  How is that a fairytale?

After all was done and we were unbelievably tired, we were glad that we could help make their special day better.  I want any bride and groom to be able to enjoy the day while soaking in the love from everyone that wishes them well. 

Mint Green and Lavender Wedding Cake

Last week you read about our Bender cake, well this is the wedding cake that went along with it.

I was so jazzed about the bride's choice of color's on this cake.  Our color palette here was a light mint green and lavender.

This was a great cake to remind me about how colors and icing can mess with you.  I had the perfect color of icing made up for the cake and even let the colored buttercream sit for a day for it to darken a tad.  Everything was just right... and then I iced the cake.  And the icing darkened... a lot actually.  I wound up giving the entire cake a heavy spray of pearl dust, which gave the cake a beautiful sheen and toned that color back down to where is should have been.

When will the Home Depot develop a color matching system for icing!?!

I did find another shot... thanks Jim!

Actually, one of the best features of this cake didn't make it into this photos, simply because they were made at the absolute zero hour.  I printed some dragonfly wings on wafer paper and used them to make little edible dragonflies.  They really were cute - if I get one of the shot s from the wedding, I'll come back and include it here.

Going on a Bender Cake

Photo courtesy of our friend Jim Pankey

Very recently I helped a very good friend of ours with his wedding day. I even spent a couple of days acting as bridal planner, coordinator, and decorator. It certainly gave me a new found respect for those people, but that's another post.

This post is about this crazy groom's cake! Our friend Chris has a million interests; he's a lawyer, into martial arts, electric guitars, South Park, Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama - he's into a little bit of everything. So when we met with him we had no idea what might come out of his head when it came down to the groom's cake. I was delighted when he said "You guys know me and what I like, just work your magic." We had already been kicking around the idea of a Bender cake, so that sealed the deal.

In my mind, this seemed like such an easy cake; he seems like such a basic shape. The execution proved to be much more difficult. Here are some notes on exactly how we straightened out Bender!

We based this cake on a 6-inch base. I looked at my domed pans and I had a six and an eight inch domes. 8 inches was going to be WAY too big. We printed out some large images to us as templates and used those to determine where the visor would be located. I made a custom cardboard cake board for that section so the visor would have something to rest upon. I also carved out the mouth area and covered the whole thing in fondant.

Our only in-progress shot of the cake!

Now for the visor, man that thing was tough! I started by making a rice crispy treat puck that fit against the side to the cake, but still came straight out. Think about how a scuba mask is made. That puck rested on the extended cake board and I used royal icing to glue it to the side of the cake.

I then took modeling chocolate and made a band that was wrapped around the puck and the board it rested on. It stuck out more than the puck, but not a lot, just enough to allow for the eyes, which we used candy melts to make. As I type this, it makes it sound easy since this is what worked, but there were several attempts that didn't.

Do you get bored?

I'm tired and maybe a little grumpy, so you get a grumpy blogger. :) Too many weddings, graduations and parties happening at the same time! We are in the height of the event season. We have made a version of this cake so often that I don't think I can say another thing about it! I'm getting bored with this design. I've made it in every combination, color and shape! But brides keeping asking for it as a whole or in parts! They all think it's an "original" idea. I've removed it from my inspiration scrapbook that brides look at as well as my Pinterest page. I don't think decorators should talk brides out of designs they have their hearts set on, BUT we don't want to copy another decorators work and we want to make something we like. That doesn't really matter does it?

I've been making cakes for over eight years and I still don't feel like my cakes show my taste and vision. They show good workmanship but are often not my original idea. Some brides have to see a cake in a photograph, often in their own colors. I really envy companies like the Caketress and Cotton & Crumbs. They have a distinct style that was perfected by them and is now being copied all over the world. Maybe they get bored with those designs too!

Bottlecap Groom's Cake

We made a repeat cake last week, so there isn't a ton to say about the design.  We did so a little better job on carving the sides by making the indentations a little closer together.  I also chose not to airbrush the sides because I didn't think it needed it.  It is so much easier making a cake design for the second time!

The "big" story on this cake is the flavors!  It was an "Irish Car Bomb" cake.  The chocolate cake is made with lots of Guinness stout.  The filling was chocolate ganache flavored with Jameson whiskey.  The buttercream was flavored with Baileys Irish Cream.  Yum!  It takes a lot of these alcohols, so if you sell cakes, you should know that it is an "expensive ingredient cake".

I'm sharing the recipe I used for this cake as well as for all the cakes I carve (that need to be chocolate).   The cake tastes like a brownie and cake got married and had a yummy little baby!   I can't throw away the scraps that I carve out because it's so yummy!  We found the recipe in a King Arthur Flour catalog.  They have such awesome ingredients, gadgets and even mixes.  I've tried so many of their recipes and they always seem to be great!   I hope you try the recipe and love it like we do!

Try the recipe here:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/chocolate-stout-cake-recipe

Gotcha! Groom's Cake

I have said it before, and I'll say it again, I really love it when a client gives me some artistic leeway with a cake.  This couple really liked this topper and the term "Gotcha!"  It reflected their playful personalities.  We kept the design simple, which is what they wanted.  We just cut the letters using the Cricut Cake.

I have talked about how much we use our Cricut Cake because we have a program (no longer available) that allows us to cut any image or font we want.  I have been very worried lately as to what I would ever do if/when my Cricut Cakes decides to die.  As luck would have it, Cake Central user JackiSto mentioned in a thread that she is using a Cricut Explore with Cricut's new design software to do the same thing.  It was a great relief that I now have an option if something were to ever happen to my precious Cricut Cake.

ITEMS USED:
Wilton's "Now I Have You" Cake Topper

FULL DISCLOSURE:  As a member of the Amazon Affiliate program, I receive a small commission if you buy a product from the links on my blog.  I actually own the products I recommend and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Ruffle Ribbon Rose Tutorial

Lots of people have made a cake like this, but I'm going to give you a few little instructions and hints. Let's call it a tiny tutorial!

You need a few things: a ribbon cutter ( or not if you want to take 4 times as long), a poking tool (something with a dull end-aka not pointy), and a small knife. I used a gumpaste and Fondarific combination. I love the extra working time that the Fondarific gives me. Now a pasta machine is great! But if you are going to make one of these, don't make the investment.

I rolled the fondant pretty thin and in long pieces. A #4 on the pasta machine. Using my ribbon cutter with a 1-1/2" space, I cut as many strips as I could. I used plenty of cornstarch on the bottom and top of the strips. I then folded the strips in half longways with a slight crease. I then rolled up the strips in nice little pinwheels. Then store them in a ziplock bag until you have a bunch and are ready to put them on the cake.

 

I used a large circle cutter to mark all the "roses" that I was going to need. Then starting on the outside I started applying to the cake using the little tool to slightly adhere it to the cake. I was working on a buttercream cake that does not crust, so it went right on and stayed. You may need to apply gum glue or piping gel to make things stick.

I went back to the strip I just applied and poked it further so it would be more secure and fluffed it at the same time. Now keep going and going......

Once all the roses were done , I started added the fill in pieces. I developed more of a system the longer I did it. I put as long of a strip as you can handle. Having them in rolls helps you handle lots of the material at one time. When I got to the smaller pieces, it was best to make a zig zag Christmas tree sort of thin and then fitting it in the hole. Then go back and attach and fluff.

Lastly, I did use some very small pieces of foam to keep any very tight or heavy areas up and to keep them from being all flat. This was really important on the top of the cake when everything was laying so flat. This was a 12" round cake and it took me about 7 hours to get all the ruffles finished. Please be sure to charge accordingly.

Ruffle Ribbon Rose Wedding

We were asked to recreate an almost exact copy of a cake from the Pastry Studio.  I have been getting involved with some more FB groups and noticed people saying that you should ask permission before recreating a design that you copy.  I guess in a perfect world with lots of time and super polite people that may happen, but this is not that world.  I'm not going to lie and say that I ask other cake people, wrapping paper designers, or invitation designers for their permission when I draw inspiration from their designs.  I have friends that say they WILL NOT recreate another person's cake or even their own.  I have tried many times to sway a bride to my design but many times they are insistent on a certain cake with NO changes. 

I try to alter it but I can only push so much.  I don't want to lose the sale!  I would if I told them "No, you can't have what you love and dream of."  Does that mean I am an awful thief? I just can't accept that.  If you put your work out there to inspire brides and decorators, you shouldn't be mad when they want it.  I see copies of my stuff all the time, especially in my local area.  What I hate is when a local competitor knows your price for your cake and tries to undercut you to get the order, but that's a whole other topic.  I make sure to verbalize and have in my contract that my work will differ from another baker even when I'm trying to be exact.  I still feel guilty about using someone else's design and I won't be using these types of cakes on my new updated website in the future.

Please weigh in and feel free to tell me your thoughts on the matter.  We can have varying opinions and still be friends, right?