Piped Lace Wedding Cake

I'm going to post a little quick entry today.  It's the first week of May and I have a BUNCH of cakes to work on!  We are getting a lot more requests for colored wedding cakes and I think that's great!  This a khaki color which isn't always the easiest color to achieve.  I sure wish I had one of the paint color mixing machines at Home Depot!

I used an Evil Cake Genius lace stencil and the piped an outline with a #1 tip.  I really like the look of the lace with that extra step.  The people at Evil Cake suggest putting a piece of tulle fabric  on the cake with the stencil.  I guess it's just to have a more realistic texture.  I personally don't think it's worth the effort, but that's just my taste.  My tip for the week is to add your edible pearls and silver dragees to your cake a few house before the cake is due.  If you put them on the day before they will break down and not be pretty.  OK, bonus tip!  Only make your pearl borders with Fondarific or modeling chocolate (or add 50% to your fondant).  The fat in those products will let you put the pearls in the freezer for just a couple of minutes and they will harden.  Then unmold them and they won't get all stretched out and disfigure.  When you see a really pretty cake with stretched pearls, it makes me a little sad that the decorator didn't know this tiny thing that makes a big difference.

Chattanooga Lace Wedding 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 :) 

Calvin & Hobbes First Birthday

We love Calvin and Hobbes, but we can't recreate those sweet characters in 3-D unless we had lots of time and the customer had lots of money to spend.  We have learned over the years to do our level best not to say "no" to a design.  You have to offer options that fit your skill set and their budget.  I don't feel it's right to agree to make a cake that a baker doesn't know IF they can do it.  Almost every cake is unique in my situation, but most aren't made with unfamiliar techniques.  When you are asking a baker to create something you have not seen in their portfolio, offer to pay for a small cake in the same technique before you sign the contract for the larger cake. Please trust me, it will be money well spent, a lot like cake insurance.

 

Part of the awesomeness of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon is their font, so we made a stencil for the verbiage.  We printed the characters out with edible images and cut them out. For some reason, I wanted the bubble/non flat image so I tried something new. It was not without challenges, mainly trying not to tear or stretch the images. We used the cut images to cut a piece of modeling chocolate out and thinned down the edges.  Then we dry fitted the image again and trimmed again, repeating the process.

“You know, Hobbes, some days even my
lucky rocket ship underpants don't help.”

Girlie Sock Monkey Cake

To be honest, the week has gotten away from me and I need to squeak out a little blog really quick.  We have a customer that we have been able to make most of her kids birthday cakes.  She trusts us by giving us a theme, colors and budget and lets us go for it.  We had a tiny budget so we employed the use of time savers like a stencil and some easy little buttons.  Well, the stencil was supposed to be easy but it was a pain.  All the little lines wanted to get stuck in the stencil.  The cake has to be very cold so the little lines hardened quickly.  We had to work fast!  The sock monkey was inspired by a figure made by "Sugar High".   If I did it all over again, the pinks would match better.  The light pink diamond stencil on top of gray buttercream just got washed out.

My tip for new decorators is use tylose powder when making animals and figures.  If you put a few pinches the day before you make a figure it will absorb the extra liquid and let the fondant hold it's shape.  You can also make a 50-50 mix of gumpaste and fondant to hold it's shape.  Tylose is also used when making fondant bows to get them to dry hard.  Tylose does not work in modeling chocolate or Fondarific.  Happy Caking!

The Caped Crusader vs The Evil Cake Genius

Most of us have heard of Robin Martin and the amazing cakes she makes at Gateaux... But have you seen some of the awesome cake toys she offers over at Evil Cake Genius?

They make some of the most awesome stencils I have ever seen!  They are a little expensive, but they are really nice!  Some are standard stencils, but some are printed on a ribbon type material and works a lot like a silk screen.  I haven't tried the silk screen types yet, but I used the Skyscraper Windows stencil to make this birthday cake for a huge fan of the Caped Crusader.

Everything else on this cake is either buttercream or modeling chocolate.  Speaking of modeling chocolate, you guys know that I love the stuff, but lately I have been having some pretty fierce condensation issues with my modeling chocolate.  Anybody else experience this?  If so, let's talk through it in the comments! 

Stencilled Buttercream Cake

There is a private girls school in Chattanooga, Girls Prepatory School or GPS, and we have been making the rounds there lately.  We were asked to make a cake for a "Chapel Talk" event.  A senior student is asked to give a talk, during chapel (seeing a theme?) and then host a little tea party kind of event.  We were given colors of Navy and pink and we came up with this cake.  What is funny about it to me, is that the design would have worked when I was in high school, many years ago.  Preppy has not gone out of style since the 80's.  Polo shirts, pearls, bows in your hair and monograms have always been in style in our town.  Is that just a Southern thing?   Perhaps, but I think we will check back in ten years from now and see if it's still "in".  Maybe moon boots and hoverboards will be in?

This was a very easy cake to make so I won't pretend otherwise, but I will give you a few helpful hints.  First, when you are using buttercream icing and then stenciling on top with more buttercream icing, cold is your best friend.  I made the oval plaque by applying the middle letter, chilling the plaque and repeating the process.  The boo boo here is that the top "F" is slightly thicker than the other two letters.  You "should" look at the thickness closely before removing the stencil otherwise you are stuck with the decoration or you have to start all over.  I guess my patience was short this day. :)
   

I did have a little problem with the bottom tier stencil, but this is a design that you can pipe a little to fix the blemishes.  Also, use Fondarific for your pearls.  It will chill up and hold the shape so the pearls don't get distorted when removing from the mold or applying to the cake.  Sometimes I will put the pearls on as I take them out and other times I have to wait so I will make a bunch, then chill and apply.  If you see a cake with distored pearls, the decorator either didn't use the right product or hurried the process too much.  You can use modeling chocolate also, but the Fondarific "wedding white" matches my all butter-buttercream perfectly.  I also add whitener and a drop of purple (to counter act the yellow) to the outside layer of buttercream to brighten it.  It's still not bright white.

Lastly, making the color navy is not as easy as you would think.  This is a great chart for coloring fondant, but I think it also applies to buttercream.  Please know that colored buttercream gets darker as it sits, so make it 24 hours in advance so you can see the final color.
 

Here is a coloring chart for royal icing, but again it's a good general chart

This is a good chart too, but no navy.  http://www.annaandblue.blogspot.com/2012/04/frost-by-numbers-how-to-make-frosting.html

And lastly, I found this to be so very interesting!  A chart on what happens to leftover colors when you add ivory or black.  Super good reading!  http://www.sweetsugarbelle.com/2012/04/my-ramblings-on-icing-color-and-some-easter-cookies/

I hope you get to make or receive a timeless cake this week! 

Items I used to create this cake: 

FMM Sugarcraft Ribbon Cutter & Stitcher
Fondarific Buttercream Wedding White Fondant
First Impressions Molds Silicone Mould - Pearls - 12 & 14 mm 

First Impressions Molds Silicone Mould - Pearls - 6, 8 & 10 mm
Designer Decorating Stencil, "Script Monogram" Size of Letters 2.25" 

1.25" Small Script Cake Stencil by Designer Stencils

Contemporary Lattice Cake Stencil Side by Designer Stencils

FULL DISCLOSURE:  As a member of the Amazon Affiliate program, I receive a small commission if you buy a product from the links on my blog.  I actually own the products I recommend and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Sweet Sixteen Birthday Cake

This past weekend I made the cutest sweet sixteen for a young woman in Chattanooga.  I worked closely with her Mom to get a list of all her favorite things so we could surprise her with this grand birthday cake!

Our birthday girl is on the rowing team, so I made a replica of her rowboat in her school's colors.  The rest of her cake followed a salmon and turquoise color scheme.  Does anyone besides me have a problem mentioning salmon and cake in the same sentence? ;-)

I made her favorite shopping bag, and even a set of car keys, something every s16 year-old wants, but I had the most trouble with the birthday girls' pup!  I initially starting molding the dog using Fondarific modeling chocolate, but I had to scrap it.  It was just a little too wilty and wouldn't hold its shape the way I wanted.  I made a quick batch of real modeling chocolate and that worked much better. 

Thanks to everyone that stops and reads my blog; I enjoy telling you my tales in the cake trenches.  Friday is Valentine's Day, so hug someone you love!!

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.

Cake Stencils are Awesome!

I love "Designer Stencils" a bunch. My current favorite is the mod flower because it gives the cake a sophisticated texture which seems to be a hot button with my brides. There is a display cake in my shop with this stencil and I swear that is why it keeps being picked. Here are a couple of my  "pearls of  wisdom" on stencils. First, you can absolutely use them on buttercream IF you use butter based icing that you can get cold/hard in the fridge. Sometimes I even but the tier in the freezer for 15 minutes so that it's super cold. Just go straight to the work when you take it out of the cold so that it doesn't get a layer of condensation because then the icing won't stick. I have bought some stencil holding "kit" but it was just two book clamps and some stretchy gauze. I found that it did more harm than good, so I don't use it. I sometimes use a corsage pin through the hanging hole and hold the other end with my fingers. Using a small angled spatula, I put on a clump of buttercream and spread it down the stencil. Once you get icing on the end your hand is holding you won't have to keep holding it down. I then used a plastic, cheap, dough scraper and take of most of the icing. You have to be consistent with the "thickness" or "depth" of the stencil icing or you will have really high sections and some barely there at all. That looks bad so it's a good habit to chose how you like the depth and be consistent. While the stencil is still attached, I airbrush the entire stencil with luster dust. Remove the stencil from one side first, scrape off the leftover airbrushed icing to throw away, wash and dry the stencil for the next section. Sometimes you are going to have some areas that "bleed" under the stencil. Just clean them up with a stiff paint brush (and soft to blend) after you have chilled the cake back up.

My next tip is to stencil the tiers before you stack them. If you want the design at the top of the cake you can raise the cake by placing cake boards/drums under the cake until you get the perfect height. That's a good reason to keep cardboard singles for just the right height. Don't forget to use shelf liner/grip so the doesn't slip when you are stenciling. When doing the cake pictured, I saved the bottom tier until last and then I had to trim the "extra" off the bottom so that it could be flush. I think the hardest part of this cake was the caulking the tiers so that there was no borders. I took out some of the stenciling, but I couldn't help it. The very best idea is to talk the customer into a ribbon border (fondant or real). It gives you lots of material to hide the union of the tiers.

Closeup of Stencil...  It adds so much detail and texture!

Just remember that every cake is going to have a backside. Seams won't match up perfectly. Just blend and love on it so that it's not so apparent. That's all you can do, so don't worry about it. It's just cake :)

Don't forget about the height. Lots of stencils are only 4" tall and I make 5" tall or taller cakes. Luckily some stencils are taller, so focus on those to buy if you make tall tiers too! If you really want to use a skinny stencil, allow for the width of your ribbon border and measure. Cut the cake shorter so that the stencil isn't a weird band looking thing, unless that's the look you are going for :)

One note about the cake featured above.  When I got to the venue, the "florist" left me a bucket of flowers the looked like the trash at the bottom of the boxes. Real Junk! I had to make it work but I don't have to be happy about it. The poppies were squished and mostly closed. The blue things were prickly! Sorry, had to get that jewel off my chest.

Do you have any tips on cake stenciling? Please share them with us in the comments so we can all be better decorators!

Baby Shower Reveal Cake

I blogged about Matt and Nikki's awesome Converse cake a little over a year ago.  They are such an awesome couple!  When they called me about making a "baby reveal" cake, it broke my heart to say "we only make wedding cakes".  Matt was super sweet and willing to bend over backwards to get any cake from me so I had to do something.  He agreed to a 9" cake with NO decoration, but this is the cake he got.  It's not awesome, but I had a little extra time and felt like doing a little something for such special people. 
   
I REALLY like Jonathan Adler's designs and pottery.  I have a wish list a mile long on that website (hint, hint..) so when I found this stencil (and a few others) on DesignerStencils.com.  it had to be mine!  Something about me wants it to go the other direction, but I'll get over it.  Do you see it or does it look right to you?  I used a hounds tooth impression mat for the bands and border.   I love to mix patterns, but it does often look messy to me.  I added piped the borders because I had extra yellow icing.  At least I'm honest :)  It probably would have looked better without the piping.  The cake was lime cake with lime French buttercream filling and rum French buttercream outside.  It's kind of a mojito cake!  By the way, it was blue on the inside!

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.

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! 

Saxophone Music Lover Cake

I made this groom's cake for a music lover a while back, and I was really thrilled with the way it came out!

I bought a musical note stencil a long time ago and I was so excited about using it when the client placed the order.  The stencil was pretty intricate, but it went on the cake really well.

I cut the saxophone out of modeling chocolate using some printed clip art as a guide.  Then I added some dots using my diamond impression mat.

A lot of my grooms are peanut butter lovers (my hubby included) and this groom was no different.  So we piled this cake up high with Reeses' Peanut Butter cups.  YUMMY!

Did any of you catch my interview over at CakesDecor.com?  If you didn't it would mean a lot to me if you stopped by and left a comment.

Rose Stencil Wedding Cake

This weekend we delivered another wedding cake to The Grandview on Lookout Mountain.  And this wedding cake was all about roses.  It's hard to tell in this photo (I have a better picture below), but I used my rose petal stencil on the sides of this cake.  And then each tier had a layer of roses in between with a nice little bouquet on top.  It seems like most of the cakes I take to the Grandview are all cakes I have to put together at the venue!

I'm not sure how other decorators carry cakes that have to be assembled at the venue, but it has always been a problem for me.  I decorate the cakes on the column plates, but I'm always a little afraid of traveling with them on these plates.  The day before the delivery it came to me!  I could just put the separator plates on a styrofoam dummy and carry it that way.

As you can see above, I used an extra plate to make the indentations on my foam dummy. I actually had to use a small knife to dig out some of the extra foam, but I still wanted the separator plate to fit tightly.  Then I just sat my cake into the foam block and popped it into a bakery box.  It was super stable and traveled very well.  If you click on the picture you can also see the detail on the rose stencil.

Montana Cowgirl Cake + Mini Tutorial

A few weeks ago I was lying in bed trying to get sleepy while looking through Pinterest when I saw the cutest Cowgirl Cake by Ana Beatriz Carrard.  I repinned it immediately tn my "Cake Inspiration" board, even though I don't do very many birthday cakes these days.  Wouldn't you know, the VERY next day, I got a call from a former client looking for a cowgirl cake.  I sent her a link to Ana's cake.

Of course, she loved it, so we took several elements from it and created our own cake.  The bandana tier went together much easier than I thought.  I covered the tier with fondant like I normally would and just left a little excess fondant for the folds.  The knot I made separate and just tacked it on to the front.  I made the belt buckle out of modeling chocolate and cut the the birthday girls' name using the Cricut. I searched the web over for a how-to on a fondant cowboy hat, but never found a good one.  In the end it as pretty easy.  I rolled out a gumpaste circle and then just gave it another roll with my rolling pin to "oval" it a little.  For the hat, I sorta made a wide taco shaped piece and molded it from there.  The rhinestone "hatband" ad the crystal heart were pieces left from past projects.  Yes, I have a flotsam bin... don't judge!! ;-)

The horse head is what I really dreaded making.  I'm just not someone that can draw a horse, or even horsey features on a horse-shaped cut out.  But Chaddy and I did something pretty awesome to get the look on those horses.  If you want to find out how, click the link below to finish reading and see the full tutorial!

Damask Buttercream Wedding Cake

The damask pattern look has been so big in wedding cakes for a while, but until now I haven't actually done one for a client (I did make a display cake).  I have had the stencils now for oh, like... ever!

I finally had a couple interested in a damask cake, but they did not want fondant on their cake.  I have stenciled on buttercream before, so I knew it was possible.  I really thought it would be harder, but it was actually not too bad.  I found the key was keeping the cake nice and cold while decorating it, and working in small sections. 

The borders are just ribbon and the roses are real roses provided by the florist.  This cake was delivered to the Loose Cannon Art Gallery in Chattanooga.

Cutout Panel Wedding Cake

Happy Friday!  For the longest time I have had this cake in my "inspiration book", and I finally had a bride that picked it as her wedding cake.

Once she had picked it, then came the task of figuring out how to do it.  Well, I finally decided to use modeling chocolate panels, and I was very pleased with the results.  One tip:  initially cut the panels larger than you need - no matter how hard you try, cake will never be truly square.

I think this was also the first cake where I used smaller separators for the tiers.  I used styrofoam, coated with piping gel and covered in the same modeling chocolate I used for the panels,

Lastly, for the blue behind the cut-outs, I took a sheet of edible image paper, colored it with blue luster dusts and stuck it to the back side of the panel.  It kept me from making a big batch of blue icing and it kept icing from coming through the cutout, keeping that nice clean design the bride was looking for.