wedding show!

This week will go by quickly, as they always do when there is LOTS to do!

Check it out here.

Come on by to see us and say hi!

paging Captain Morgan...

Mmmmmm......

giant oversized can of coke....

Next up (should) be a matching bottle of rum.

No?

here come the tears...

Sigh...
Weddings....
I adore them...

And these guys too.
My dear Pat and his sweet sweet Annika.

Nothing makes me happier than seeing my best friends happy too.
And then getting to make them cake.

I have the best job ever.
Seriously, just look at Pat's face...

We wish you both so much happiness and love, the kind that makes your heart want to explode. Miss you every day Pat.

Little gem of a wedding cake from this past weekend. Clean, simple, yet a bold accent of pussy willows and a new monogram to catch your eye. The best part would be the cake itself though. I believe you should never have to sacrifice, if you want three types of cake, three you shall have! And if one of those cakes needs to be banana chocolate chip, then consider it done. Yum.

Handmade pussy willows of gum paste and fondant, dusted with sugar for texture.

One of my creative challenges I face is making cakes "masculine". Sugar and spice, pink icing, little cupcakes, bows, flowers and of course, icing roses are all fairly feminine, which poses a challenge when doing up cakes for men and boys a like. One trick I have learned is that less is more. As demonstrated in this cake, the edges are all done up in polka dots, and I've done the birthday boys initials in a nice green. The swirls add some artistic flair without seeming swirly and girly. This birthday boy happened to be 90, so again, less is more. Rich chocolate fondant is covering a vanilla cake. This was one in a set of three cakes.

Well it seems I'm a bit of an all or nothing person. Perhaps I thrive under pressure. I find the more I take on, the more excited about them I get. They each get lists, charts, shopping lists, directions, drop offs and drawings. I've worked on an excel sheet even, just to get the details looking formal. That's me; fancy pants. Next I'm working on stationary, you know, in all my spare time. The husband and I had a fantastic weekend, catching up with old friends and I found as I chatted about work and cakes, my adrenaline started flowing. Passion perhaps?.....

The lovely little cake we have above is a rehearsal dinner cake. My new category for cakes. Instead of lumping them into "special occasion" they deserved their own title. It's a dense vanilla cake, layered with raspberry preserves and Callebaut white chocolate mousse. Then it's covered with homemade rolled fondant. My third time using my very own recipe. I would thoroughly recommend doing it by hand than purchasing it. Hand made it's soft and sweet. I find the premade to be pretty tough and has a harsh sugar taste to it. It also dries really quickly where the homemade is easier to work with. The outside is wrapped in two layers of grosgrain ribbon and covered in little Swiss dots of butter cream. The letters are in fondant, by hubby dearest, as I made the flowers from fondant as well.

The Barr's

Well, there she is. The fattest wedding cake I have ever made. In hind sight, I should have figured it was too big. But in the thralls of it all, I couldn't stop once I got rolling. And just like a snowball, it grew and grew. I like to think it's so big because it's so full of love. And deliciousness. Many thanks to the hands that helped make the flowers. It was the camp family love that started the cake last weekend, making gum paste flowers at midnight. But hey, that's how you make those memories that you smile and look back on. This extra special cake was for two extra special people, our best friends Luke and his dear Karlen. Many years of love and laughter to you both.

As for the details, the cake is a custom one, with inspiration from a cake by the Cakegirls. The bottom is a 16" chocolate cake with mocha filling. The second layer is 14" and is vanilla cake with an orange icing and orange custard. The top is 12" and is chocolate cake on chocolate filling. The initials are hand written in chocolate, and the flowers; hand made gum paste. A true labour of love.

I have a couple of people to thank for this one. Giles Ringer, of AGR photography for his beautiful photo of the cake. And a good friend, Albert Meijering for making me custom cake boards to place the cake on. Thanks Albert and Giles.

Cake pics

One of the main reasons for this blog was to promote the business of cakes. Saying that, I felt the need to post again. Yes, twice in one day. Here is another picture of a cake I have made. There are people out there looking at this, right?