Golden Inspiration Wedding Cake

Edible sequins are one of the new big trends in cake design, at least with Chattanooga wedding cakes  We shared one a few weeks ago that had "large" sequins but now we have one with tiny sequins.  I'm just going to say it, I used A LOT of gold! But it's SO pretty! We baked and iced a 6/8/10/12" combination in all buttercream.  We created the lines with a little pairing knife dipped in warm water every few minutes.  The borders were fondant and the sequins were colored quinns painted gold.

 

You can get a five pound container at Pfeil and  Holing.  Don't kid yourself, 5 pounds is a big container; it should last you a while!

We bought a bunch of these flowers to make the cake more economical for the bride.  As usual, my favorite flowers are the big pretty garden roses from Cal-Java.  They are SO big and pretty and they really popped against those gold sequins!  I hope you get a little bit of golden inspiration from this pretty cake!

Gold Sequin Wedding Cake

I'm so glad to make a cake that is new and not made from someone else's design.  I can't even tell you how this design came about.  I think the bride liked so many popular wedding cake trends that we just used them all.  All tiers were buttercream and about 5" high except for the gold tier which was about 3.5". We used an Evil Cake Genius lace cake stencil and outlined each piece with a #2 tip.  We then added some pearls and silver dragees on top.  The bottom tier was buttercream with fondant "fabric ruffle" look.  We didn't want to  cover the entire tier because it would have been too heavy looking.  It was a 20" tier, so it took a long time!  We made the fantasy flowers with gold button centers and the fondant teardrop shapes. 

I'm sure you have seen lots of tutorials on how to do a tier with a sequin-like look.  There are so many ways of doing this and since I've only done it once, I can't speak to the other techniques.  I used some very large quins.  I highly recommend buying them from  cakedeco.com because the 5 lb carton is a LOT and cheap!  These were 1/2" big and I tried to push a handful into the buttercream covered cake and it was just a mess!  I ended up having to put them on one at a time and that was big fun......not!!  So I then chilled the cake really well.  Some people use a paint brush to get these completely covered.   I then airbrushed this old gold and bronze over the entire tier.  I had to cover the neon colors and it took a while.  You want to do this is several coats and not in a couple because you will have drips.  Now, my complaints.  It looks a bit like scales, probably somewhat because I'd been looking at it a long time.  I may do it in smaller quins next time, but I've got 4 lbs of the giant ones left!   I was happy with the look of the cake, but I couldn't stop wondering what people must have thought of "the baker" if the were served a piece of the gold tier.   The quins were NEON COLORED on the backsides!  They aren't very tasty either.  I'm just saying, the more I thought about it, the more embarrassed I was.  I am not judging anyone that does this technique.  I am not saying I won't do it again if time is a factor.  Next time  I really want to make my own sequins out of fondant or something else.  I just don't want the wedding guests to think that the baker is crazy when they bite into the cake :) 

Another Bottle Cap Groom's Cake

I've blogged about bottlecap cakes on several different occasions.  They are a great option for clients that enjoy their brewskies (or any drink for that matter!)  The great part is that they're relatively easy to make and they're budget friendly.

The funny thing about these bottle cap cakes is that once the groom hears that I offer a chocolate cake with Guinness stout beer they are sold.  There's just something about a cake with beer in it that reaches out and grabs men by their tastebuds!  If you haven't tried the chocolate stout cake yet, you can get the recipe at King Arthur Flour's website.

This cake offered us a mildly different challenge.  Normally we just cut out the pieces we need.  This logo was more of a negative image; it took up all the space and the pieces we cut out were the pieces that got thrown away.  And the graphic is based on a 16-inch round, and our cutter will only cut a 12 x 24 inch graphic.  So we had to make a common cut and cut the logo in two separate pieces.  It really helped to have the graphic printed out full size when pulling out the "unwanted" pieces.

Thanks for stopping by and have an awesome week!

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

Domed Wedding Cake with Lace Doilies

Sometimes we are lucky enough to have a bride that really has a vision. They know they want a cake to blend into all the reception decor as well as the venue. For this particular event the venue was the Tivoli Theater in Chattanooga, TN. There are dark red curtains, gold and silver fixtures and lots of pretty marble. The bride chose darker shades of orange and purple to accent her Fall wedding.

It is really a challenge to add a lot of color to a bridal cake while ensuring it doesn't look like a fancy birthday cake. A baker can add tons of tonal details and the cake rarely looks busy, but color really changes things.  The "easy" part of this cake was the bottom stencil and the drop strings. For the bottom tier we used the "princess lace" stencil from Designer Stencils. This is the largest design in the set.

My tip here is that we air brushed the gold while the stencil was still on and in place. We also cheated a little and used a little swag marker for all the drop strings. It keeps things so consistent and easy. The cake is all buttercream with a little fondant for accents.

There is a cake all over Pinterest that shows a beautiful cake with a domed top tier and the same lace doily design. When the bride presented me the picture, I thought "holy moly that is a lot of intricate piping!" and therefore a bunch of money. She was on a budget and I wanted to help. I got so lucky and found the the lace was all done with a SugarVeil mat and SugarVeil.

I found the same mat on Etsy for a lot less money that Sugar Veil was charging. It worked great! After I removed the lace, I dry brushed it with gold luster dust and immediately applied it to the dome. It really did cut down the work while still looking like we had done a lot of hand work. I was really happy with the final product and the Bride loved it too!

Art Deco / Gatsby Wedding Cake

This the other cake I made for the wedding photo shoot I was involved with a few weeks ago.  You see, when you have all these people together with their time invested, it really doesn't take that much more to get a second (or third) look and feel using mostly the same props.  The bride changes dresses and makeup, switch out the flowers, and voilà!  Different (looking) photo shoot!

One of the "looks" we were going for was a Great Gatsby / Art Deco wedding look.  I could have used the bird cage cake I made, but I had some extra time and I wanted to some great pictures of another cake for my portfolio as well.

I didn't really get to finish this cake like I wanted to, but I wasn't ashamed to bring it either.

I really liked the way the white stenciling over the gold tier turned out.  The tier being entirely gold was just too much!  Stenciling white over still left a very impactful statement. And I thought it went very well with Amanda's bridal bouquet, don't you?

My favorite part of this cake were the edible feathers we made!  What's that you say?  Edible Feathers??  Yep!  And they're actually easier than you would think to make them.

Drop back in next week and I'll have a tutorial ready for you on how you can make your own edible feathers.

Khaki Wedding Cake in Trenton

This past weekend I made this wedding cake for a sweet couple getting married in Trenton, GA.  This couple was a little older than my average wedding couple, but they were super nice and allowed me a little leeway with their cake for the big day!

Our color scheme for this wedding was khaki, white, and gold.  White is an easy color to bring to the party; here we used white in the borders, piping, and in the roses I got from wholesalesugarflowers.com.  A little gold goes a long way on a wedding cake and can be easily overdone.  I used a cosmetic sponge to lightly edge each of the roses with gold luster dust.

I had a rough time getting the right color combination to get that perfect khaki color.  Khaki is WAY different than ivory.  My final recipe included mixing in brown, green, and just a smidge of purple coloring into my white buttercream.

Smokeless Tobacco Groom's Cake

THIS CAKE AND POST HAVE BEEN REMOVED BY REQUEST

60th Birthday Golf Cake

I made this golf cake recently for my high school art teacher's husband.  Even though it's been a LOONNG time since I was in high school, I have always stayed good friends with Jeanne and her husband Ken.  Ken was turning sixty and was preparing for a big party with family and friends.

Ken's an avid golfer, so can you guess what he thought was so great about turning sixty?  Yeah, I had no clue either!  Well, once you turn 60, you get to golf from the golden tee markers, which are closer to the green, and the little hole I guess. 

This little golf scene includes some of the hazards of the game, as well as the green and those golden tee markers.  We also made some golden golf tees from fondant.  Ken was very happy with his cake and we were happy to be a part of the celebration.

World of Warcraft Stein Cake

We made this cake a couple of weekends ago and this was the first cake where I applied the techniques I learned in Mike McCarey's cake structure class.

 This was a fairly large cake, coming in at almost 2 feet tall, so it was going to need some support.  Once the structure was completed (you'll get to see it at the end!) I started stacking cakes up around the center support.  Once the cakes were all stacked, the stein got a nice coat of butter cream and I then wrapped the whole thing in a thin later of modeling chocolate.  The top (gold) pieces of the stein were made from modeling chocolate as was the handle.  I made all the handle pieces in half and then connected them around the copper structure underneath.  The great thing about modeling chocolate is that it really will fuse back together and with just a little work will look very seamless.

The graphics around the stein was taken from an image sent to us by the groom.  We thought just printing it out on edible image paper an wrapping it around the cake would be SO easy. It wasn't THAT easy.  For starters, the make the image large enough, we had to print it across 6 pieces of paper and then piece it together.  That went pretty good, but things in the back didn't come together so great at first.  The graphics just didn't match up well at all.  We printed another sheet physically big enough to fill in the gap and then I channeled my best Bob Ross and painted in a cave and some trees to bring the scene together.  It looked good, especially for the "back" of the cake.

OK, so here's a picture of the structure we used on this cake.  It's just a center wooden dowel rod with a length of copper tubing to act as a support for the handle.  We just drilled a hole through the dowel and fed the copper tubing through it.  Easy peasy, right?

I can say that when we started this cake we took a photo of the stein and blew it up to our dimensions.  And yes, I looked a little crazy at our local Home Depot with my HUGE stein picture.  But an employee named Neil (who is a big Cake Boss fan) spotted me and we had a great time figuring out some options for the structure.  We could just lay the picture down on a counter and lay everything out.  It worked out very nicely.

And if this post weren't long enough already I got the sweetest e-mail from the bride on Christmas day.  It read:

"Both of the cakes you made were AMAZING!!! We got sooooo many compliments on both and are even sending in photos of the groom's cake to World of Warcraft to put in their gallery. We had done so much searching to find a cake like what Clay wanted, but could never really find one that met up to what we wanted. Well you totally blew that out of the water and then some LOL. Some of the guests thought it was a sculpture at first and were in shock to find out it was a cake :D You truly did an over the top job. And then on top of the cakes being so beautiful and intricate, they tasted even better. We took some of the wedding cake with us on the honeymoon and even the Disney people were impressed by how amazing it looked and tasted. You made our dreams come to life in the most wonderful way. We can not thank you enough."

I couldn't have asked for a better gift on Christmas day!  Be sure to stop back in on Friday for more adventures!!

UPDATE:  As well as being featured on WOW Insider, This cake has been entered into InkEdibles February 2012 monthly edible image contest.  Since you're already here I would certainly appreciate your vote.  Simply click here and the click the "Like" button next to my cake.  It uses Facebook so there's no signup or registration - Easy Peasy! 
  

Silver and Gold and Sparkly

I really like making display cakes.  I have complete creative freedom, no time (or spoilage) constraints, and I get to enjoy my artwork much longer than a regular cake.

I worked on this display cake a few weeks ago and I was very pleased with the way it turned out.  I wanted a create something with some bling, because it seems every other bride coming into the shop wants sparkles or rhinestones on their cake.

This cake features quite a few non-edible parts, and it's all the blingy parts.  I have bought the sugar diamonds before and my brides are just not happy with the sparkle or the price!!  For this cake I used individual rhinestones, a rhinestone rope as a border, and a gold rhinestone buckle as the center of a bow on the bottom tier.

One of my newest cake idols. Lori Hutchinson (The Caketress) likes to do a scoring effect on fondant that I really like.  I did a little of that here on the top tier and really liked the effect.  I'll be adding that to my bag of tricks for sure!!

The buckle was a little hard to see so I took a closeup of it... and it's still sorta hard to see.  I took loops of fondant and placed the buckle in the center and then place a strip of fondant around the buckle, as if it really were a buckle for the gold bow. 

I hope you all have a great week and stop back in on Friday for a neat little groom's cake!

Rhinestones and Gold

I made this wedding cake a couple of weeks ago for a lovely couple at the Fairyland Club.  This is another in the "bling" series that have been all the rage with my brides these days.

I had great time making this cake, as this was my first experience with using these foam separators.  They worked well, I just covered them with fondant and painted them with pearl dust.  Luckily for me, I have found that Wedding White Fondarific matches my buttercream almost exactly.  It comes in very handy when I need to mix elements on a cake.

The rest of the cake is buttercream, except for the golden curls, which I also made from Fondarific that I extruded and then painted gold after they were placed on the cake.

The bling on this cake was all provided by the bride.  She bought the 5-row rhinestones and the rhinestone buckles (the center of each tier) while she and her fiance were visiting in New York.  It was the first thing they purchased for their wedding.

GIVEAWAY UPDATE:   Oh yeah, today's the day we announce the winner(s) of our Marshmallow giveaway.  We didn't get over 100 new "likes" on Facebook, but we decided to give away 2 tins anyway.  Congratulations to Maria and Jenna!  I will get your marshmallows in the mail within a week!

Gold Egyptian Display Cake

I really like doing display cakes.  It's one of the few times that I get to create any cake I want!  And since the "cake" is actually styrofoam, I don't feel so compelled to use all edible materials on the cake.

I was walking through the hobby store when I came across this cute little peacock feather wreath.  I made a comment about how it would make a really cute cake stand.  Before I left the store I already had all the details worked out in my head and bought a few things too boot!

I covered the tiers in fondant and then airbrushed them gold.  I made some fondant in some of those peacock colors and used them for draping and the border.  Then I topped and placed the peacock feathers all around. The jewels are actually a pair of earrings that I ordered super cheap online.  They arrived the day I was working on the cake and when I opened them, they were already broken!  Even though I couldn't wear them as earrings, they still looked great as my swag connectors!

Just goes to show that cake inspiration can come from the darnedest places!

PS - Happy Birthday to the best mother-in-law a girl could ever hope to have!  Have an awesome birthday Trish!

Fairyland Club Bow Wedding Cake

The design of this wedding cake was inspired by the holiday decor of the venue, the Fairyland Club on Lookout Mountain.

The bride wanted a bow motif, but wanted it to be more relaxed, or "droopy" looking.  I was using Wedding White Fondarific for the loops, and I added tylose.  Guess what?  Tylose and Fondarific doesn't get "gumpaste hard" like when you add it to regular fondant!  Worked out well for me this time, but something to keep in mind in the future.


The loops and tails also needed a gold edge.  To achieve this effect, I first tried rolling the fondant in a tight coil and painting the edges, but I had too much seepage.  I then rolled out the strips and while they were still semi-stuck to my work surface, I painted the edges gold.  Worked out very well!

Lastly, this bride wanted a "no border" border.  I used a #6 tip to pipe a small buttercream rope where the 2 cakes meet. Then, while the cake is still very cold, I run my finger along the edge sealing the gap and wiping away any excess.  Just like caulking around your sink!!

Hope you all had a happy holiday and we'll see you back here on New Year's Eve!

Bake Like a Pirate Day!!

Avast ye mateys! OK, so it's not exactly "Bake Like a Pirate Day", but it is Talk Like a Pirate Day! So I thought that besides talking like a pirate, we would showcase a couple of pirate cakes from the Cup a Dee Cakes archives. On the top cake, we used a plastic gold doubloon and pressed it into gumpaste discs to make our own shiny gold pieces. some stock clipart and our trusty edible image printer made the map. We molded white chocolate gems and painted them with edible glitter to make them look more like real pirate's booty.

On the bottom cake, we used a lot of the same techniques as in the top cake, but we also molded 2 little pirates for the birthday boys. And each little pirate needed their own treasure chest smash cake. They turned out really great, even though they took us forever! We made each wooden slat out of fondant and built up the sides and top just like a "real" chest would be. I made this before I had my wood grain roller, so we used the tines of a fork to grain and distress the wood.

Well, get out and enjoy Talk Like a Pirate Day. Here at the bakery we'll be busy all day today making tons of cupcakes for all the couples visiting us the Premier Bridal Show at the Chattanooga Trade Center this Sunday. I will certainly blog more about that later! Until then, get out of here before I keelhaul you, ye landlubbers! Arrggghh!