Peacock Inspired Wedding Cake

I don't know if the Katy Perry song has had anything to do with it, but lots of brides lately have been considering peacock for their bridal inspiration.

When I met with this couple, they definitely wanted peacock incorporated into their wedding, but they wanted something not so literal; more of a "hint" of peacock, I guess you would say.

When the bride saw a similar cake from Art Eats Bakery in SC, she completely fell in love.  We tweaked and loved on the original design, and made into something that would really fit in with the couples big day!

We delivered this beautiful wedding cake to the wonderful ballroom at The Chattanoogan in downtown Chattanooga.

Congratulations Hallie and Joel!!

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.

Buttercream Ruffle Flower Cake + Tutorial!

I made this cake this past weekend for a dear friend of ours, Daisy Moffatt - owner of Daisy Moffatt Photography.  Truth be told, I was actually conspiring with her husband, Beau, to make her a cake with a surprise design.

As I looked through Daisy's Pinterest board, I saw lots of romantic cakes with frilly ruffles and fantasy flowers.  But almost every one was mostly fondant.  Knowing that most people aren't huge fondant fans, I got out some icing tips to see if I could possibly recreate those ruffles in buttercream.  It didn't take long before I had worked out a technique that I liked.

As I was putting the cake together, I just kept liking it more and more and I realized I was really on to something.  So as soon as Chad got home we got out the video camera and shot some footage so we could present you with a very quick mini video tutorial.  I didn't even get ready because I really didn't intend to be seen on camera.  One thing lead to another and before I knew it we were in full fledged video tutorial mode!

Here it is in all it's glory!  LOL!!   Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions!

Buttercream Ruffle Flower Tutorial
 

I was featured in Cake Central Magazine!

I have been holding on to this little secret for several weeks and it has just about burned a hole in me!!  Several weeks ago I received an e-mail from Jackie at Jackie at Cake Central.  They wanted me to submit a cake for publication in Cake Central magazine.  I answered her back so fast I think the e-mail caught on fire!!

The theme I was asked to submit for was "Minimally Decorated with a Splash of Red".  Now, that's a hard theme for any decorator that wants to showcase their skills to the rest of the decorating community.  But I vowed that I would do my best to keep the design simple.

I was really happy with the way this design turned out.  I have read Cake Wrecks too many times and seen too many balloon cakes that turned out looking like something... less sophisticated.

I actually made 2 cakes to submit, and Cake Central put both in the magazine.  I was worried that they wouldn't one cake or the other, so I submitted a second cake.

This was the other cake I submitted.  I had conceived this design a while back, but with different colors.

I only had a couple of weeks from initial request to submission to get these cakes ready.  I wished I had more time to work on them.

How many of you receive Cake Central?  I wished it was still a real live printed magazine, but I'm still glad to be published in a leading industry magazine.

Special Thanks go out to Mike Houston of Houston Studios for taking such great photos to submit to the magazine.

Y'all have a great week!

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! 

Crawfish Boil Birthday Cake

We had such a fun time making this cake.  My friend Amanda, that owns Divine Designs called me up recently and wanted a birthday cake for her husband James' 40th birthday.  When she mentioned that they had planned a crawfish boil, I immediately had a design in mind.

This is a 2-tier cake, with the entire top tier being an edible cooking pot.  The cake was wrapped in modeling chocolate and then painted with silver luster dust.  The lid and handles were also made from modeling chocolate.  The effect was really nice; people at the party thought it was actually a mini pot!

When we got ready to take our pictures, I was looking for a suitable cake stand, when Chaddy came into the kitchen with one of our big Calphalon pots.  I thought it made for the perfect cake stand to take our pictures on!

Threadcakes Contest Entry

I'm sure by now that most of you have heard of Threadless, the awesome T-Shirt company, and as cake people you're probably familiar with Threadcakes, the annual contest where people make cakes based on a T-shirt design.  If your not familiar, then go check the links above and then come right back - I'll wait...  ;-)

Seriously, I have been wanting to participate in this contest for at least 2 years, and this year I finally made the commitment to participate.  I literally spent days just looking through t-shirt designs to find the perfect one.  I finally found Bonsai Cats, a shirt I had seen previously and fell in love with.  I'm a big gardener, Chaddy likes his ninjas, and we're both big fans of kitties, so this design worked for everyone.  The design also lent itself well to cake, and I thought that while challenging, it was something we were capable of creating.

The Threadcakes rules require LOTS of photo proof during the baking and assembly of the cake.  That was an unusual addition to my workflow, but I managed it OK.  My biggest problem was one that most of you are very familiar with - TIME.  I didn't allow myself enough time and we were both rushing around the night of the deadline.  We finished the cake, took all the photos, and then cut and ate part of the cake (one of the rules) and got all the photos uploaded with only 20 minutes to spare before the midnight deadline.

So now all the entries have been turned in and the judges are now scoring each of the entries.  Hopefully they will announce the winners soon,  There are some super talented people with some great entries this year, but I remain hopeful that I at least have a shot of placing.  Keep you fingers crossed for me, OK?

UPDATE: A day before this post went live, Threadcakes announced the winners of the contest for 2012.  We didn't place in the top five slots, but we were selected as a finalist!  Considering all the great cakes that were entered, we can be happy with that!  If you want to see my entry along with the original t-shirt design and my progress shots, just click here to go to my Threadcakes entry.
  

Laptop Groom's Cake

This cake is a great example of how you can give your client's a 3D "looking" cake, but not blow their entire bridal budget on the groom's cake.  Our groom here was a big PC gamer, and his favorite game was Starcraft.  He also wanted his gaming laptop represented on the cake.  Here's a couple of ideas we incorporated to minimize the complexity, and thus the price.

Keep the 3D elements on a smaller scale.  On this cake, the majority of the cake is actually just a sheet cake, the laptop has just enough cake for the couple to cut into.  And the back of the laptop is just corrugated plastic coated in black gumpaste.  Since it was so light, we were able to use a small bent metal angle bracket to hold the laptop lid open.

Simplify decorations where possible.  We have no problems making individual keyboard keys for a laptop cake, but that gets pricey fast.  Printing out a keyboard on edible image paper not only looks great, but saves you decorating time, and your client money. On this cake, we used edible images for the keyboard, the laptop screen (logo), and the side decorations.

All of these concessions gave the couple the cake they wanted, while still keeping the price at an affordable level.  We delivered this to the Hunter Museum of Art in Chattanooga and it looked great.
 

Buttercream Ruffle Tutorial

OK, so you remember those buttercream ruffles from last week?  And you wanted to know exactly how they're done, right?  OK, well, this is the method that I figured out, and they are much easier than you think!  Let's start with an image of the technique, almost completed:

Pretty, huh?  The best part is, you only need 2 tips to accomplish this look!

I have seen a rose tip used to make ruffles, but I have found that the Ateco Tip 070 is absolute magic for this.

I wanted to add some "lift" to my ruffles, so for this tutorial we're also going to use a Wilton tip 12.

The ruffling part is really quite easy; the tip does almost all of the work.  My suggestions here are to start each row with a full bag of icing.  Bag "burps" and running out of icing is not your friend here.  Once you have a row of ruffles, pipe a tip 12 rope on top of the ruffle. 

This rope will give you a nice ledge to pipe your next next row of ruffles onto.  Now just keep alternating ruffles and rows until you reach the top ledge of the cake.  If you want to continue on the top of the cake, just keep doing the same thing - ruffles and piped ropes.

That's it!  That's all there is to it!  I told you it was easier than it looked!!

And while you're here...
Last night I submitted my first cake to the ThreadCakes contest.  I would really appreciate it if you took a look and even clicked the LIKE button or left a comment!  Here is the link:  http://www.threadcakes.com/entries/view/1546

Buttercream Ruffle Wedding Cake

I have never made buttercream or fondant ruffles on a wedding cake before... at least not like these. 

The client brought in a picture from The Pastry Studio, done all in fondant.  She wanted something similar, but in buttercream of course!  Since I seem to be the Queen of Buttercream, I jumped at the challenge!

The bride also wanted some extra bling on this cake!!  For the ribbons, I added rhinestone chain, but for the gumpaste peonies, it took a little extra creativity.  I took some needle-nosed pliers and cut out the middle of the flower, taking care to leave as much of the wire as a could.  Then I used the wire to crimp on a rhinestone button I got at the craft store.

But I know you're really wondering about those butter cream ruffles, right?  Well, it took me a few tries to get it right, but it's really not that hard.  Do you want to learn how to do it?  If so, leave me a comment and I'll show you next week!