Chevron Cake

We were asked to make a cake for a "Chapel talk" for GPS seniors.  The young lady that speaks at the service provides tea and snacks for all the attendees.  My clients had a very specific design that was very similar to a Charm City Cakes design.  We added a little something here and there, but I certainly give them credit for the design.

The bottom tier was six thick layers high.  The very dark teal was hard to make and probably the most challenging part of the project.  When making a super dark color, start with dark pre-colored fondant, never white.  Make sure to add some black.  If you can purchase some powdered color, it would help.  The amount of gel color you have to add makes your fondant very sticky and loose.  You will need to work powdered sugar in with the color to keep the fondant the right consistency.  For the chevron design, we made a stencil and traced the design with a scribe (a pin with a handle).  We used Nu-silver and painted on the design.  We did the same with the pink layer, but just painted the stripes with super pearl luster.

 

For the total silver baby tier, we painted it instead of airbrushed. To remove the brush strokes, just go over with a soft brush in a circular motion using a little more dust. For the silver dots we trimmed off the tip of a stiff paint brush so it was a dot stamp more or less.  We had to do more than stamp it, but it got the job done.  The peonies were purchased at Wholesale Sugar Flowers.  Last but not least, the pretty backdrop is from Ink and Elm.  I love their backdrops!

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.

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?

Happily Ever After Wedding Cake

I really liked doing this wedding cake.  The couple were fun and not afarid to bring some color to their otherwise traditional wedding cake.  Not only was the bow hot pink, but the inside of the cake was pink strawberry with hot pink cream cheese icing!

You can click on the cake for a larger picture, but the piping reads "And They Lived Happily Ever After".  What a great way to start your fairytale life!  To do the piping, I started by printing out the wording on paper with the printer's settings changed to "mirror image".  Then I used a #1 tip to pipe faintly over the wording onto a sheet of parchment paper using royal icing.  Once I finished piping, I carefully lifted the parchment paper, flipped it over, and placed it on my cake.  That gave me a nice outline that I used to pipe over again using royal icing.  Once the royal icing had dried I then went back and painted the words with Nu Silver.

There is one other thing I wanted mention, and it applies to all cakes.  If the bride has a topper she wants to use on her cake, make sure you at least see it before the wedding day.  This bride had a cute carriage topper, but it was on a large base.  It hung off the sides of the initial 5" top tier, and it didn't look right.  Luckily, I caught it in time to rebake the top as a 6" cake.  And Wilton cake toppers have a nasty habit of securing their toppers to the box with lots and lots of screws!! So make sure you always carry a screwdriver in your emergency kit!

Thank you all so much for stopping by and visiting my little blog.  I'll leave you with a little closer shot of that piping, just so you can see it better.

 

  

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!