Blue Damask Wedding with Bows

I'm so tickled that we made a wedding cake with lots of color!  I love an all-white cake, but sometimes a bride wants to make a big color statement.  The location for this reception was at a very rustic and HOT barn.  We have decided to MAKE customers use fondant for outdoor events when the temperature will be more than 75.  I know this isn't some crazy awesome cake, so let's just cover some tips and tricks.

A few hints for this type of cake.  First we did use our buttercream for the stencil instead of royal icing.  Due to condensation and general humidity, the very heavily colored stencil may have the color run.  There is no way to really fix this since it will stain everything it runs onto. 

Second, keep your hardened bows out of the fridge until the day of the event.  If you put them on sooner, they will become soft and lose their shape.  If you put them on right before you leave with the cake (the bows never made it into the fridge in this scenario) the bows will be matte and the other fondant will be shiny looking.  It does look really bad.

Third, to keep all condensation off your cake cover it with a brand new garbage bag.  Cakes going in and out of the cooler in short bursts of time won't get condensation.  Stack your cake and chill it for a while so all the piping, stenciling, etc are hard.  I use really large clear bags from Sam's.  Open the bag and put the cake on top of the bag and bring it up to the top.  Use a long pipe cleaner to secure your bag closed.  When you take it out of the fridge for delivery, give the cake about 10 minutes to acclimate to the kitchen temperature before removing the bag.  You may get some damage to your cake, so be super careful and only use this tecnique if you have a sturdy design.  Some cakes you just can't let sticky for different reasons so use this trick when it will really make a difference.

I'd love to know if any of these tricks have worked for you or if you have some that work even better.  Thank you all for your comments and participation in my little blog.

Black Lace Wedding Cake with Wedge Separators

This cake was my first experiment with Sugar Veil icing.  If you don't know, Sugar Veil is a type of icing, similar ot royal icing, that can be piped on parchment paper.  Sugar Veil will "set", but it still remains flexible.  This allows you to pipe intricate lace patterns on a flat surface and then place it on the cake.  I know there's a lot you can do with Sugar Veil, but I was pleased with our first partnership!

This was also my first wedge separator cake.  I used styrofoam wedges for the separators.  I ran my blow torch over r the surface of the styrofoam quickly and it really helped seal the surface.  I still covered them with cake foil, but that little blast of heat really helped it from shedding or pilling.  I then filled them with mini roses once on site.

I used plenty of dowels to make sure everything stayed together.  I had to carry it up the sometimes harrowing Lookout Mountain to the Grandview and it traveled just fine!

Rhinestone Wedding

This bride and groom (the same ones that wanted the upside down cake in the post below) had varied ideas about their bridal cake. They liked many different styles and designs. We decided to incorporate everything the bride like into one awesome wedding cake. We have square, round and octagonal cakes as well making use of quilted patterns, piped panels, and stripes. We even added some circles to compliment that crazy groom's cake!

But the bride also wanted some bling on this cake. She purchased the initial topped, but wanted a little something extra. Now, I like for everything on my cakes to be edible, but sometimes it just isn't technically or economically feasible. In this case, I found some rhinestone trimming in the ribbon section of my local hobby store. I used it as the border between tiers and it looked awesome!

As always, thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

Quilted Buttercream Wedding Cake

Hi all! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!! This little number is a quilted wedding cake I delivered to the Sheraton Read House some time ago. The happy couple wanted a cute quilted pattern, but they were not especially fond of fondant. Haha... challenge time! I iced the cake nice and smooth and then, armed with only a 36-60-90 ruler and a hot spatula, I set out cutting facets into the surface of the buttercream. By cutting the "V" shape, it really made the pattern stand out quite well. There was a little math involved to get everything just so, but then there's always that, right?

This week is crazy so I'm keeping this post short. I have an upside-down groom's cake booked for the weekend, so there's a ton of prep work to do!

Toodles!