Worley Rustic Wedding

 

Barn weddings are everywhere!  If they are not as popular in your area, you are a little lucky.  Don't get me wrong, they are pretty in a rustic or fancy rustic (trademark pending) and make for nice pictures.  Most are not air conditioned, which means fondant icing is the best idea so that sawdust doesn't stick to the buttercream.  Some brides just won't do fondant, so here we have a buttercream cake in a barn. Pretty!  We added the little gold dots with a paint brush that I cut to be a flat circle. I know it's super hard to tell, but the bottom tier had lines scored in it, a little like a tree pattern.  The pendent banners were purchased on Etsy and the flowers were real.  The result was rustic, pretty and tasty!  

Woodland Owl Birthday Cake

Sweet Kaeley is one of the only kids I still make a birthday cake for these days.  Her mom is a vendor and sends me lots of business, so it is pretty cheap pay for an unofficial outside sales person.  This year's party was at the Chattanooga Nature Center in their "Tree House" and they were having a real owl come to the party.  Birthday parties were not that cool when I was a kid.....jealous ,  I am.

I love it when  I'm given a few parameters and let to go.  A "fairy, owl, woodland, princess theme" is what I was told.  I didn't want to use "traditional" forest colors, so I went with a silver bark bottom tier, purple owls and mushrooms and bright green leaves!  That's the kind of world I want to live it!   I finally got to use a tree bark impression mat that I just love.  I 'm sorry to say, they don't make it anymore :(

My "lesson" on this cake is to tell you about over building or cake insurance.  When you have any type of heavy fondant figure or item, like my owls, put a wooden skewers up the middle with plenty of skewer to go into the cake.  All my mushrooms and letters/circles have thick floral wire in them.  For the cake support there are big straws in the 11" tree trunk to hold up the top tier.  It was only two layers. The 7" tier was four layers with a cardboard cake board under the bottom two layers and one under the top two tiers.  There are also fat straws supports in the bottom two tiers to hold up the top two.  I used four skewers through all those layer to keep the tier straight and stable.  After I stacked them, I ran a sharpened master dowel through the whole cake.  I never let  a cake out the door without a center dowel.  It's a great insurance policy in itself.  When you drive up a mountain to deliver a cake, nothing is going to move if you build yours in this way.

Unfortunately there are times when all your over building can't stop a bigger problem.  As is the norm, I was carrying the cake to the customers car.  I have four steps to go down as you leave my shop.  I was watching Kaeley and her mom and lost count of how many steps I had already taken.  As I took the last step I realized there was still another step.  I went SMACK on the concrete and so did the cake.   As stupid as I felt, I was more worried about poor Kaeley because she was looking at me with a look of horror.  The first thing she said was "Are you OK?" and then "Is my cake ruined?"  Oh, I hurt but I wasn't going to let her know that.  I said "It's OK, I can fix it.  You are just going to have to stay a little while longer".  She was happy because I have a pink kitchen and edible glitter :)  I gave her and her Mom some fondant and said "help me by making a few butterflies".  That was good because it's hard to work when everyone is looking at you and thinking "How is she going to fix that?" 

I'm truly lucky that I caught the top tier so it didn't land on the ground and because the cake was super cold.  Since my buttercream is all real butter, it's get really hard in the cooler.  That is great for traveling with any cakes.  It took me about 20 minutes to fix the cake, but it felt like two hours.  I am also grateful that the customer was a fellow vendor and she has seen a lot go wrong during wedding set ups and is cool as a cucumber.  She was much more worried about me than the cake which I so appreciate.  I was too busy being embarrassed.  At the end I told Kaeley that the fixed cake has lost all it's glitter and I needed help to get it sparkly again.  She was a big help!   I think all the after boo boo glitter really helped!  (The smaller picture is the "after".  Take my word for it, there was a lot of glitter!"

Kaeley and the "After" Photo!

Khaki Flower Sanding Sugar Cake

As you all very well may know, I am known for getting my buttercream nice and smooth.  It's a skill I have developed over time - it certainly didn't happen overnight.  I get questions from people all the time that want a solution for covering some of those beginning boo-boos without using fondant.  I have found that sanding sugar fits this bill quite nicely.  It's relatively inexpensive, it goes on fairly easy, and it will go a long way to covering up some of those small mistakes in your buttercream.  It gives a really nice effect too; I fins myself using this a lot for winter weddings.

I actually used the sanding sugar here because this is a dummy cake.  I wanted to showcase something besides fondant to my brides, so I started covering the tiers with royal icing.  I wasn't very happy with the look, so out came the sanding sugar.  One note: when applying this, it can get messy fast.  I recommend sitting your cake inside a large sheet pan as you put the sanding sugar on - it will catch the "runoff" and you can scoop it up and use it again.

Rustic Burlap Cake

As a cake decorator, every client you meet will have a budget.  Big budgets can easy and fun to work with, but that doesn't mean that limited budgets can't be fun too.  A client with a limited budget can still get an elegant, gorgeous cake, but it might require just a little but of resourcefulness on your part.

Take this cake for example.  This cake is so pretty, and so elegant, and it's available to my clients a my base price, which is $3.75 a serving.

This buttercream beauty is anything but plain, and the burlap ribbon and flowers give it that rustic feel that's all the rage these days.

Woodgrain Buttercream Wedding

One of the most often heard comments I get during bridal consultations is "I don't want fondant."  The problem is that most of the inspiration photos they bring me are fondant.  There's the odd occasion where I have to tell them no, but more often than not I can come up with some way of replicating the design in buttercream.

When I met with this couple they brought an inspiration cake that was buttercream with lots of lines in it.  It was supposed to be wood grain, but I didn't think it was woodgrain enough.  I discussed it with the couple and we decided to make it wavier, with some knotholes so that no one would wonder.  It was a design I had only done in fondant before.

Here's a closeup of the final effect.  Pretty convincing, huh?  I started with my standard buttercream recipe.  Once it was nice and chilled, I started by cutting in my knotholes with a small sharp knife.  Once they were finished, then I started cutting in the lines around the knot holes first and then moved outward.  Nothing fancy, just happy little lines.

In these photos, I used some silk flowers I keep around the bakery, but the cake received fresh flowers when we delivered it to the venue, which was DeBarge Vineyards.  It was a lovely venue and this rustic wedding cake fit in well sitting on a wine barrel with the vineyards in the background.

Rough Iced Lemon Swag Cake

I found this lemon floral swag on clearance at Cal Java a while back and it was so cute and such a great deal that I bought it right away and figured that I would find something to use it for eventually.

The rustic look has been so popular here that I wanted to create a rough-iced "buttercram" dummy cake to show my clients and I immediately turned to my lemon swag.  I actually used royal icing to cover the dummy - it looks enough like buttercream, but it will hold up for a long time.

This rustic look is a great option for the budget conscious bride.  Wouldn't this little wedding cake look super cute in a small barn venue?

AND THE WINNER IS...

A couple of weeks ago I teamed up with Craftsy to offer a giveaway for a free Craftsy class.  Yesterday we chose a random winner and the lucky cake designer is... Christine from Cakes by Christine!  She informed me that she just started her business back in January so stop by her Facebook page and give her a LIKE!  Congrats Christine... I hope you enjoy your class as much as I did!!  And special thanks to Craftsy for sponsoring the giveaway - I look forward to working with them again soon!

Stag Head Woodland Wedding

Click to Enlarge

I made this dummy cake recently for a bridal show.  My goal was to make a very elegant cake, but I also wanted to give it a really rustic feel, since those seem to be all the rage these days.

My inspiration for this cake was a necklace a friend got a while back on Etsy.  I borrowed it from her and Chaddy used it to make a cut file for the Cricut.  From there I took the 2 half height tiers and used an impression mat to give them a good wood graining.  I know it's hard to tell from the photo, but if you click on it to enlarge it, you should be able to see it better.

For the borders, I used some leftover rhinestones for a punch of bling on the wood grained tiers and I used a twig mold on the plain tiers.  When I was finished I really liked the monochromatic look.  The cake got a lot of response when it debuted at the Chattanoogan's Wedding Showcase.

Have your signed up for our Craftsy giveaway yet?  This is the last week to register to win Mike McCarey's Advanced Sculpting Class; don't miss out on your chance for free cake training!!  Click here to see the post!!

Kaben's Birthday Hoedown

Recently I did Kaben's 4th birthday cake.  I have mentioned Kaben here on the blog a few times before, since I have done all of his birthday cakes.  He is such an amazing little boy, and he always gives us such great ideas for his party cake.  This year's party theme involved a petting zoo, cowboy hats, cactus balloon sculptures - certainly enough for me to create a cake around.  It all worked so well at The Car Barn!

Our cake starts out with the bottom cake tier as a wooden crate covered with modeling chocolate "wooden" panels.  We also made his name using wood planks also made from modeling chocolate.  We used a Wilton #3 tip to make mail holes in the planks.

The next tier was covered in blue fondant and made to look like denim blue jeans complete with little pockets and stitching.  We also made a horseshoe inspired 4 made from gumpaste for rigidity.

The next tier was a bandanna in John Deere yellow and green. I gathered the fondant a little and finished the tier with a little fondant knot.

The next tier was inspired by the petting zoo.  Just a green fondant "hill" with a rickety country fence.  There were a few animals made from modeling chocolate poking their cute little head through.

Cars is still Kaben's favorite cartoon, so we incorporated one of the tractor "cows" into the cake as a topper. I used some pictures from the Internet to sculpt a tractor from modeling chocolate.  Now Kaben also wanted his tractor to "moo" just like on the cartoon.  He was too high on the cake for Kaben to reach, so we used a recordable sound module and incorporated it into a tractor tire on the cake board.  Now my frequent readers here will know that this is totally Chad's area of expertise.  He took the module into the office and about 2 minutes later he came back with with the sounds on it.  I thought he had pulled up some sound database on the Internet to record it from.  It wasn't until the next day that he told me he just mooed into it.  I couldn't believe it, but it sounded great!  I guess if this cake thing doesn't work out, he has a career as a cow impersonator!  LOL!!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my little old blog.  I know this was long, so here's a closeup of that tractor sculpture as a special bonus for sticking around!

Smokeless Tobacco Groom's Cake

THIS CAKE AND POST HAVE BEEN REMOVED BY REQUEST

Wedding Cakes in Rustic Locales

At least in my area, barn weddings seem to have become very popular.  Maybe the rustic setting is coming back in style, or maybe it's easier on the budget, but I am delivering more cakes to these rustic locales than ever before.  I delivered this cake just this weekend to the barn at High Point Farms.  This design was based on a cake the bride found on The Knot, and I thought it worked very well in the rustic setting.

There are some things you have to be aware if you're planning on having or making a cake for a barn wedding.  There are many types of "barns" - some are nicer than your house; some don't have fully formed walls.  See the light coming through in the background of the photo?  That's sunlight from the outside world.  If you don't specifically know the barn, you should treat it like you would an outside cake.  I recommended fondant for this cake and I'm so glad I did.  When we arrived the barn was cool enough, but it had sawdust / wood shaving floors.  Every time we stepped, you could see sawdust floating through the air.  If I had delivered a buttercream cake, those guests would have had extra fiber in their dessert for sure!

Now for this cake... It was a 3-tier fondant cake, with a rose stencil on the bottom tier, and an extruded rope wrap on the top tier.  The flowers are gumpaste ranunculus in the bride's colors.  The toppers are small corn husk dolls that were made for the bride and groom.

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

Fondant is INSURANCE, not a Guarantee!

We live in the South, so heat and humidity are just what is expected this time of year.  Oh, how I long for the days when I don't have to run the car's A/C for ten minutes before we can load a cake or when the condensation appears so quickly on our cakes.  To make matters worse, the new trendy place to have a reception is in a "Barn".  Not all barns are created equal by far!  Some are beautiful and elegant and some are so "rustic" that I can't believe how much they are charging.  For the record, my very favorite barn venue is Walnut Hill Farm in Dalton,GA.  Nanette has impeccable taste and the landscaping is flawless.  There is nothing rustic about their venue and that's the way I roll!

Cakes and heat do not play well together, especially real butter-buttercream!  Last year we delivered to a very "rustic" oven... er, I mean barn, and I was sick all day worrying about the cake.  The family didn't want to spend money on portable A/C units and the giant fans were only making the oven/barn feel more like an outdoor convection oven. They also didn't want fondant so the cake was all buttercream.  The bride did have to move up the cutting so that the cake didn't melt.  We came home and our best friend Chris, who is a bankruptcy lawyer, came over for a visit.  I explained how worried I was about the cake holding up and how I told the bride, at the consultation, about all the bad things that can happen to cakes in the heat.  For example, bugs fly up and get stuck in the buttercream or lightweight decorations like pearls/dragees slide down as the cake heats up (I've seen this happen five minutes after putting a cake outside).  Chris's answer to me was "did they sign something that says they understood what could happen and that you aren't responsible?" "No, but I explained it!"  His answer is what we all need to remember, "If they didn't sign or initial something, then it didn't happen".  I made two major changes that hot day.   One, I have an amendment (lawyer term) to my contract that lists everything that could happen and that I'm not responsible if the client chooses to go against my recommendations.  Two, on the form my potential clients fill out they have to list if the cake is going to be outdoors.  That way, at least one of the samples have fondant.  Speaking of fondant, it is now our policy that ALL outdoor cakes have to be covered in fondant.  That way I help them avoid tragedies that will tarnish their day.  I will back down on this if I am pushed hard, but I tell them to trust my experience and I'm not doing it to make "extra money".  It's INSURANCE, but not a guarantee!  Please protect your business and the couple's cake "experience". 

Oh!  The cake...not much to tell you about this one, hence the hot weather advice.  Don't get me wrong, I really do like it, but the simple design doesn't lend itself to an entire blog post.  I used the very large rose tip to do the buttercream ruffle.  It's very "rustic" and not "too" perfect, which is a good thing when you are busy :)  The only non-buttercream element on the cake is the large flower thing.  I made two, one for a back up in case the first broke.  I used gumpaste and the thinner you roll it the better.  Just make a big circle a little smaller than what you want the "flower".  Now insert two wooden skewers into the circle so you can install it safely on the cake later.  Think of the skewers like the two supports that come on monogram toppers. Then make strips of fondant, wet one edge and gather them like putting curtains on a rod.  Use some sugar glue and attach it on top of the circle, letting the edge of the ruffle hand over the circle.  Add another row or two and a center piece.  It's just a ball of fondant, but you could use pearls, rhinestones or dragees. Let it dry for a few days because it is going to be "thick" with all of those layers.  Have fun with it!
  

Chocolate Groom's Cake with Antlers

I have to admit that anytime I start hearing the term "antlers" discussed in a cake meeting, I tend to get a little nervous.  There's just so many ways you can go wrong with antlers.  I definitely like the rustic look, but I guess antlers just freak me out a little.  I guess it's that they come from little baby deer (OK, so I know that "little baby deer" don't have antlers, but they do in my mind!)

I delivered this cake to The Farm in Dalton and when I brought it in it was just a plain chocolate cake.  The florist took over while I was putting together the ginormous wedding cake and when I finally looked over this is what he had done!  I really thought it looked amazing.  The moss near the stump base, the roses, even the pheasant feathers looked great.  And the antlers even looked pretty cool around the base, although I was still a little iffy on the on on top of the cake.  Is there such a thing as artificial antlers?  Is there something you can coat them with or do to them that makes them food safe?  Boil them maybe?

Have a great weekend, and be sure to stop back in next week as we have a really great cake to showcase on Tuesday and a tutorial for you on Friday that you're just going to love!