Oscar Bat Mitzvah Party Cake

We love a good Bat Mitzvah!  We were lucky enough to make a Hollywood style cake for this great birthday event.  We decided to make a simple cake stand just to make the cake a little more festive.  We used a couple of  24" covered cake drums.  We spray painted the area that were going to show with silver spray paint to cover some of the embossed print.  We would have recovered them but there isn't a material that I know that is 26" wide, so we would have had a seam and I thought that was worse than the little bit of a pattern.  The cake was on another board, so it never touched the spray paint.  We used a large circle punch from the scrapbook department and cut black contact paper.   We used a 5" tall Styrofoam cake dummy and covered it with a printed film strip (on cardstock, but paper would have worked).  We used spray adhesive to attach this to the dummy.  We hot glued a couple of strips of rhinestones to the top and bottom cake boards and the boards to the dummy.  Be sure to line up the back sides (where things start/stop) all together like you would a tiered cake.  

Enough about the stand, look at this cake! We love the way it came out.  Lots of dripping sparkles, glitter and lights!  We did use a few more rhinestone on the cake for the borders here and there because you can't get to much sparkle!  We attach ours with acrylic/diamond topped pins. 

Lastly, I did want to share how we did the "spotlights".  Very simply, we used those lights that twist to turn on and made a large hunk of modeling chocolate that would house them.  We then cut off a piece on the bottom so they would angle in the right direction.  Lastly we made a square frame to make them look more finished.  We did not twist on and insert the lights until the last minute as they are hard to get out once they are inserted.  Make sure to leave enough wiggle room to get them in but not enough that they are loose. 

The "best" part of this cake?  We found out later that they never cut it!!!!  We did have some kitchen cakes for the back of house, so there was cake served along with every other dessert know to man.  The family had the cake moved to the hotel's restaurant for Sunday brunch with their family.  They ate a little of it and gave the rest away to the hotel staff (that love us now!). 

Megan vs Morgan - A Tale of On Site Repair

So only a couple of weeks ago I was telling you about my cake emergency kit and about all the things I did to make sure everything is perfect before I leave the shop.  You all remember that right?  Well, it would seem I jinxed myself.

I made this sweet 16 cake this past weekend.  It looks great right?  Except somewhere between reading the order and cutting the letters for the cake, some how Morgan's cake became "Megan's" cake.  I don't know where the mix up happened, and that's the point of this post - none of that really matters when you get to the event and something's wrong with the cake.

So I can tell you to read through those orders thoroughly multiple times, but the more important lesson is how I fixed it on site.

As soon as the mother told me the name was wrong, I started thinking of ways to fix things before she even finished her sentence.  I told her very confidently that we would take care of it and make it right.  The venue was an hours drive (round trip) so that was my LAST option.  I had also cut a second set of name letters for the back of the cake.  The cake was against a wall, so I removed the back set of letters.  I had covered the cake with sanding sugar to give it a frosted effect and I had also sprinkled the cake board with it too.  I took a couple of pinches and sprinkled it where the letters had been .  The back now looked great.

OK, so letters I took off are now what I have to work with to fix the front.  I  cut the "e" and fashioned it into an "o".  That worked well.  And then there's that extra "n".  Cut it at just the right place and it becomes an "r".  Alright, now I have the letters I need.  From there I swapped the old "e" with the new "o" and moved the "gan" over just a smidge to fit in that "r".

All that smooshing and moving took a little of my silver luster dust off some of the letters.  They looked a little mottled.  I didn't have any extra silver luster dust in my kit, but I had my small bottle of PGA, a small paint brush, and some (now) extra silver letters that weren't going to be used.  I put some PGA on the brushed and scrubbed the extra silver letters to collect of that precious silver dust.  Then I used this to paint over the letters, which evened things out pretty nicely.

So how did it turn out?

Not too bad, huh?

Now I fully realize that luck and ingenuity was on my side that day.  Things could have turned sour very quickly and these types of situations should certainly be the exception and not the rule.  But it's SO important to know what can go wrong, and what you would do if it did.

As always, I appreciate each of you that stop by to read my little 'ol blog - Have a great week!

... and Happy Birthday MORGAN!
 

Wedding Cake Jewelry

It seems as thought this season's most popular wedding cake is similar to this cake here.  An elegant scroll pattern with rose separators.

Most of the time I want the florist to do the flowers on the cake.  I have done some basic floral arrangements in the past, but florists make sure that the flowers are pesticide free - things I know nothing about!  This time around, the florist had other commitments, so I agreed to place the flowers on the cake. They left me 2 huge buckets of roses and I used every one I could between those layers!  LOL!

Also, the bride provided me with those teardrop crystals to go on the cake.  Aren't they beautiful?!?  I have to find out where she got them.  These pictures just don't do them justice. They were so sparkly, they really did look like diamonds.  I just thought they were perfect and added a lot of personality to the cake!

Thanks for stopping by and y'all have a great week!