Tales of a Cake Apprentice

burger buns + nerdy puns

2011-09-11T18:50:00.002-04:00

In the past few months, I've found myself leaning more towards making cupcakes than I have in the past. They're a bit easier to transport and they're especially easier to divvy up when celebrating in a public place (aka you don't have to ask the bartender for a knife). So whether they are just mini versions of a whole cake or each develops into its own personality, cupcakes are a different way of thinking and working. So it was fun to come up with these:

They're cupcakes for Grace's and Potter's birthdays along the themes of 1) good old-fashioned cheeseburgers and 2) xkcd. When you Google Image search for burger cupcakes, you get these - which I think are genius and adorable. But, with the guidance of Sarah (the birthday boy's fiance and birthday girl's best friend), I went for the layer-by-layer approach:

Secondly, another set featuring the stick figures of supernerdy web comic series xkcd.

Many of the comics involve characters sitting at their computers:

or waiting for their code to compile:

or even, trying science:

Happy birthday Grace + Potter!

Threadcakes goes live

2011-07-20T00:30:00.001-04:00

Threadcakes has been submitted - view it here!
Look, there is a nerdy video too - watch it here!

Facebook, chat, Tweet, buzz, bling, whatever it is you kids do!

Threadcakes 2011: Revenge of the Nerds

2011-07-19T23:05:00.003-04:00

There are nerdy cupcakes (and some incredible ones at that). And then there are NERD cupcakes.

It's that time of the year again: Threadcakes 2011.

Threadcakes is the beautiful marriage of Threadless shirt designs and cake decorating, and I submitted two entries to the competition in 2009 (Alphabet Zoo, A City Built on Rock 'n Roll). This year, I chose to go with the bespectacled Know Your Nerds design, which is meant to inform and educate the general public on the various types of nerds among us (complete with nerdy power bar statistics):

The design just screams "cupcakes!" so that's what I did - 9 painstakingly-crafted nerd cupcakes, lovingly placed on a black nerd board. I bought 1/2" thick black foamcore for the background and a silver paint pen for writing the most important text from the design (skimped on the other details for the sake of time and my sanity). Also thought to draw in little cupcake placeholders so the Nerds would perfectly positioned when the time was right.

Next step was to turn on the oven, despite the sweltering summer heat in our apartment, and bake those cupcakes.

These would be served at our house-warming party, so I ended up making two flavors - Vanilla/Mango/Coconut Milk cupcakes in the yellow and red liners, and Mexican Chocolate cupcakes in the black liners (for the Nerd Board). (recipes to follow soon).

On your mark...

... get set ...

GO!

The decoration is all buttercream frosting - the faces were outlined in frosting, filled with frosting, and hot-knifed smooth; the various hairstyles were also outlined/filled/hot-knifed; the glasses were the most difficult due to their delicate nature (#1/#2 tips!) and the fact that they were meant to be symmetrical - in an ideal world.

I could have done the skin and hair layers in fondant or gumpaste, and they definitely would have been more precise. But, I'm a frosting girl all the way and shy away from fondant because I'm not fondant of the taste, and I've learned to do some pretty cool things with frosting in my years.

So there you have it:

Bonus: and now you know your nerds! (almost as helpful as your ABC's)

And finally, proof that no one can resist the power of a nerd:

miss independent

2011-07-19T13:43:00.010-04:00

Even when you're not going all out with buttercream, fondant, gumpaste, modelling chocolate, ganache, drages, edible transfers, sugar art (are you tired yet?), you can still be very creative with the cake itself. Whether it's playing with the flavors or the appearance, it's just as satisfying (and less exhausting) to tweak a simple layer cake.

In architecture, my favorite type of drawing is the section, which is where you "cut" through a building to show the construction of the exterior and also what space looks like on the interior. So you can imagine the possibilities are endless when it comes to the section cut of a cake. Look at these amazing sections:

(ok, not cake)

(via Omnomicon)

(via Martha Stewart)

(via Whisk Kid)

So to accompany the Fourth of July is the American-flag-section cake. Seen on many blogs and in several variations, the step by step process involves baking several red, white, and blue round cakes (by coloring the cake batter), then alternating and fitting them into one another so that when cut, each slice resembles our grand ol' flag.

I loved the idea but didn't want to incorporate the blue cake so I saved that for the frosting on top. I also decided to only use red velvet cake with thick white frosting stripes in between, so I baked several 8" round cakes (2" deep pans), cut the rounded tops off, and split each cake in half (about 0.5-1" thick each).

Started building up with layer of cake, thick layer of frosting, cake, frosting.

Ideally I was going to have 7 layers of cake and 6 layers of frosting in order to fully represent our original 13 colonies, but I cut it short for sake of time and it was already plenty of cake. Also decided to leave the sides plain because it was already going to be several 1/2" layers of frosting inside, and it has a more rustic appearance (though I love the simple look of this one, which completely masks the patriotic interior to unsuspecting guests)

Topped with blue frosting and gumpaste stars.

Happy birthday America!

i want to turn this whole thing upside-down

2011-07-19T12:59:00.001-04:00

My mom has gotten some interesting birthday cakes over the years including, but not limited to: milkshakes (not cake), a concert T-shirt, sailing, our dog Sydney, and of course - the Snake. This year I decided to go light on the decorating and go heavy on the flavor instead. Sangria has been flowing freely in the Schrank household this year so now presenting: the sangria-upside-down cake. Based on the concept of a pineapple-upside-down cake and several similar recipes, this cake was made with our chosen ingredients for a white wine sangria - peaches, mango, and pear:

Boil a combination of fat (butter), sugar (sugar), and alcohol (white wine, triple sec, peach schnapps) in a saucepan, pour the glaze into the cake pan, layer with the cut fruit, then pour cake batter on top.

Bake, remove from oven, flip it over (fruit on top, cake on bottom) and then I chose to store it in the freezer for a few hours to help it solidify, though it was still pretty oozy.

But so delicious, and one of my favorite flavor combinations so far. Happy birthday Mom!

- Sangria upside-down cake -
1 white cake mix

Eggs per box instructions

Oil per box instructions

- Glaze -
Butter
White wine, triple sec, peach schnapps (various amounts 'to taste')

Sugar

+ mango, pear, and peach slices

catwoman

2011-06-13T09:39:00.009-04:00

Sometimes cakes are hard to cut. Perhaps physically, but I'm talking more mentally here. People have slaved over their planning, creation, and decoration, and some seem far too elegant, decadent, or totally awesome to imagine dismantling in a matter of seconds. However, cakes are meant to be devoured and enjoyed, so in the end most make the cut.

Cutting into a beautiful cake is one thing. Cutting into realistic recreations of living creatures is quite another.

Usually creating a cake that looks identical to the real thing will score you major Brownie points. But there's just something sadistic about taking a knife to babies, animals, and other living creatures. See what I mean?

Despite all of this, I decided to forge ahead with my cat cake for Meg's birthday. Started with a simple rectangular plan cake and rounded off the edges (do not eat scraps):

Repurpose corner scraps as ears and various facial features, and crumb coat the pieces the pieces together with a layer of icing. I did the top icing basically by "painting" on different colors with a spatula (with 2-3 bowls of frosting ranging from white to dark brown as my paint palette), smoothing it together, and finally running a toothpick over the whole surface to create the texture of cat fur (hair? Fur.)

Now, this isn't just any generic Google Image Search cat or even an LOLcat. Nope, this is an actual likeness of one of Meg's cats (either Neville or Sawyer - not sure which one) making this actual facial expression, as discovered via pre-birthday Facebook stalking. See below for reference:

D'awwww.

Whiskers out of fishing line are the finishing touch. In the end, it's very reminiscent of Morgan's seal cake from 2 years ago - whiskers, nose + nostrils, and general adorability.

No pictures of the cake being cut (though it did seem just like a high school feline dissection), so here is the celebration of birth and life instead:

Happy Birthday Meg!

pattycupcakes

2011-05-16T17:48:00.002-04:00

As an extension of Patty's pumpkin-maple-pecan birthday cake, I also made cupcake versions:

pattycakes

2011-05-16T17:38:00.003-04:00

First I'll lead off with Patty's 2010 birthday cake, a gardening / vegetable / Cherry Plains theme:

Now for 2011. Last fall, we entered a pie competition in Brooklyn and Patty dreamed up a winning combination of flavors - a pumpkin pie, covered with a maple custard, and topped with pecan streusel. It was an absolutely delicious pie, but had stiff competition with all of the other delicious pies:

In an ironic (and suspicious) turn of events, a different pumpkin-maple-pecan pie ended up winning the overall prize. This left us and Patty very sad:

Luckily, her birthday provided the opportunity to do it all over again, with a happier ending this time. So, I present the cake interpretation of Patty's pie:

- Pumpkin spice cake -
1 spice cake mix
1 can pumpkin

1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 Eggs

1 tbsp brown sugar

- Maple frosting -

1 cup Crisco or similar

4 cups powdered sugar

1/2 cup maple syrup

1-2 tbsp water

1-2 tsp maple flavoring

1 tbsp brown sugar

- Pecan streusel -

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup flour

Dash of salt

2 tbsp butter

1 cup chopped pecans

Mix flour, sugar, and salt in bowl, cut in butter, mix in pecans. Lay on baking sheet and bake in oven on low temp (200 degrees F) for 5-7 minutes until clumped together. Add to top of frosted cake.

Happy birthday Patty!

seeing "red"

2011-05-16T16:55:00.003-04:00

One of the greatest lessons from my cake apprenticeship was when Joan handed me a flat cake and told me to make a backhoe. From that day forward, I went on to help dozens of flat cakes realize their full potential as guitars, dump trucks, and roast pigs.

And that leads me to this cake for Jess's birthday. I wanted to do kickboxing gloves, though - like most things in New York City - space is limited and I would be carrying these on the subway during rush-hour commutes (I can already tell this going to put a damper on all my future cake endeavors). So I compromised and made one life-size glove, with margarita flavor (lemon cake mix + lime tequila buttercream frosting) and starting from just a square cake.

Took a knife to it, stacked the thing, rounded the edges, and it shaped up nicely.

One question that has long confounded myself and the online cake decorating community is how to mix a true red frosting. They do sell red frosting in tubes, but it comes in small quantities and it doesn't taste as good as the homemade stuff. To get the color of red that would do Elmo justice, you would need to add in such absurd amounts of Red Dye #4 (or even No-Taste Red) that you risk permanently staining your teeth and internal digestive tract. (On that note, there is an unhealthy amount of food coloring that goes into making colors like dark green, navy blue, and, shuddering, black. But we all make sacrifices, right?)

So the bottom line is that I had to settle on a light red/slightly pink version of a boxing glove for Jess, which was perfectly fine, seeing as they actually do market pink gloves to female kickboxers. (A pink Spiderman, on the other hand, may be more difficult to explain to a young birthday boy).

Happy birthday Jess!

- Lemon (Margarita) cake -
1 lemon cake mix
1 cup orange juice (substituted for water)

Oil per box instructions
Eggs per box instructions

1 tbsp tequila

Salt (optional)

- Lime (Margarita) frosting -

1 cup Crisco or similar

4 cups powdered sugar

1 lime, juiced/squeezed

1-2 tbsp tequila

Salt (optional)

there's a pan for that

2011-05-16T15:11:00.005-04:00

Like many things in a consumer economy, the cake decorating market is flooded with devices, contraptions, and bakeware all designed with super-specific functions. I would venture that half of them earn a spot in your cake toolbox, while the other half are borderline informercial-type-products which can be yours for the low cost of 3 2 easy payments of ~~$19.95~~ $18.95 (plus shipping & handling).

Some of my favorites include the Wilton Cake Lifter (not to be confused with the Flower Lifter), the Pastry Bag support (I just use a pint glass), and the Cupcake Corer/Plunger (what will they think of next?). Now I'm not knocking these products, it's just that purchasing all of these will set you back a chunk of change that could otherwise go into paying rent. Or making more cakes, whatever. It just means spending money wisely - do I really need the $59.95 Layer Slicing Kit when I can buy the lowly Cake Leveler for a mere $4.95 and do the math myself? Plus, it's more fun to make do with you already have, and it builds character.

One of my favorite parts of cake decorating is the creative freedom in making something from nothing - or at least unexpected shapes from simple, unassuming pans. Along with the multitudes of tools and supplies available, one is also presented with infinite cake pan options to create every character under the sun, from Mickey Mouse and C3PO to Bob the Builder and Dora the Explorer. And if you're intimidated by the thought of purposely creating an unstable cake, you can now play it safe with a 2D version like this.

I question the value of products that are so specific that they are really only meant to be used in one way. Because I don't know about you, but I don't really see myself making more than one VeggieTales cake in my lifetime; therefore the return value of me purchasing this pan is significantly low compared to my inventory of square and round pans which I use all the time. Versatility for the win.

I do admit that shaped pans are helpful to provide an underlying outline, especially when dealing with high-recognizable characters. But I would rather have some individuality in my cakes where each one is different...

...unique...

... special?

So, uh, how much is that Tinkerbell cake pan again?

i bless the rains down in africa

2011-04-28T15:37:00.001-04:00

In addition to providing the inspiration and title for Toto's #1 hit song, Africa is also the second largest continent in the world and the site of Brian's architectural thesis project where he was researching sacrosecular effects of a 21st century church in Nairobi.

Chocolate cake, chocolate frosting, and crunchy sprinkles for the terrain effect:

Happy birthday Brian!

Also, because I like to make lists, I can now cross Africa off my List of Continent Cakes. So far I have done:

1) Africa for Brian's birthday.
2) Australia (Australian Outback and Survivor's Colby) for Mrs. J's birthday years ago.
3) Antarctica for a 6th grade project (unfortunately no photo at the moment but I'll search for one next time I'm home). The assignment was to make a map of Antarctica. I could have done something like this. But I made a cake. Foreshadowing? I think so.
4) Technically, I covered North and South Americas in the atlas cake from 2 summers ago.

So I just have to do Europe and Asia (or Eurasia - you never know) and I will have conquered the world.

meals on wheels

2011-04-28T14:50:00.003-04:00

This next one is an example of why I lovingly call my cakes ghetto (meaning ad-hoc, makeshift, improvised) - one step above amateur and ten steps below professional. Semi-professional, if you will.

Chelsea was having an 80s birthday party at Secrets roller rink so I knew I wanted to do a big roller skate cake. But 2D or not 2D? (That was the question) (So lame, I know, but baby I was born this way). The reasonable part of me knew a flat roller skate would be easier to transport. But the cake apprentice in me knew I could do better than that. (Note: this was never an option and this was just never possible). So this is what happened:

A 3D hightop sneaker?

Ohhh, or a roller skate (why yes, those are egg carton wheels) resting on top of a flat cake, inspired by La Roux's Bulletproof music video and the 1980s in general.

Can you guess why I did this?

A) It increases the surface area of the cake in relation to the groundplane, creating a more even load distribution, and therefore a more structurally stable ~~building~~ cake. (thank you architecture school)

B) It feeds more people.

C) You weren't really sure what you were doing / it's ghetto.

Unfortunately no process pictures as I was probably too excited listening to 80s music or getting dressed in our awesomely 80s garb. But here are some fun final photos!

Happy birthday Chelsea!

Answer: D. All of the above.

fishcakes

2011-04-28T13:17:00.004-04:00

Another from spring 2010 - Jenna's birthday. Started with a square cake -

Voila - a fishcake!

...Well, that's not very interesting or nearly obscure enough to really qualify as a Michelle cake, so let's add some more cake and foamcore...

...Woodgrain texture, big fish on top...

...is this a Big Mouth Billy Bass cake?! Because that would be awesome and it is pretty obscure...

... or, could it be? ...

Yes! Even better than Billy the Big Mouth Bass is his distant relative Frankie the Fish, the star of McDonald's genius commercial which spoofs the original mechanical crooner while also promoting its new Fish-o-Filet sandwich. As with many annoyingly catchy tunes that sometimes make you question your musical maturity level, once it wedges itself into your head, it's hard to get out. So don't get mad, make a cake.

I think she likes it! Happy birthday Jenna!

Now looking back, I realize I make a pretty solid fish cake (not sure about that fishcake though).

Good thing too because there's a big empty fish tank sitting in front of me here at caseworks, just begging for some fishy residents. And where there's new fish, there's an excuse for cake...

this cake will make you smarter

2011-04-28T11:09:00.006-04:00

The next few entries will recap cakes from 2010 which never made it onto the blog. This particular beaut was commissioned by renowned architecture professor David Bell for the students in his studio, who happened to be designing a physics laboratory in the spring of 2010. With the instructions to design a cake apropros of Albert Einstein's 131st birthday (coincidentally, his birthday is Pi Day. If this wasn't a sign from the heavens that he was destined for mathematical greatness, then I'm really not sure what is), here is the result:

And while this picture kept coming up in Google Image searches (I'm still not sure if it's real or Photoshopped. Pretty sure it's real), I instead decided to have him lurk off the page and let the theoretical equations and - more importantly - the Einstein coif take center stage.

running to stand still

2011-04-26T15:49:00.008-04:00

After the previous traveling cakes, I was ready to think outside the box and stay local for the next one. Luckily, this cake didn't even need to leave our apartment. My roommate Caroline admirably ran the Marine Corp Marathon and more recently the New York City half marathon, with Team in Training:

Her (Guinness-flavored) runner's bib was of course created using the best cake pan ever, and also joins the T-Shirt Cake Pan Hall of Fame with such gems as:

As a final note, you might be noticing the dark areas around the cake:

It is possible that I was going for complete physiological accuracy and therefore had the cake appear to "sweat," as Caroline most likely did during her races. It is also entirely possible that the oil from the frosting simply seeped into the paper cakeboard overnight. The choice is yours, and yours alone!

Happy birthday Caroline!

- Guinness cake -
1 chocolate cake mix
1 can Guinness draught (substituted for water)
Oil per box instructions
Eggs per box instructions

it's time for cotterfest

2011-04-26T14:58:00.006-04:00

Another modest project - cupcakes which would be traveling more than 200 miles via public transportation from NYC to Boston for the 2nd Annual Cotterfest. Even though it would be I transporting the goods this time and not the USPS, I knew a fully-decorated cake would never reach its destination unscathed.

So (chocolate rum) guitar pick cupcakes (with rum frosting) it was:

Even attempted the Fender logo with the teensy #1 tip:

Happy birthday Matt!

I am happy to report that the cupcakes arrived safely, and I now have complete confidence about transporting cakes through the rush-hour swarming gridlock of the New York City subway system. Sort of.

crack open an arnold palmer

2011-04-26T14:38:00.008-04:00

Once upon a time, there was a golfer by the name of Arnold Palmer. While his swinging skills place him at the top of the game with golfers like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, he also joins the exclusive ranks of celebrities with their very own beverage lines - Donald Trump's Trump Super Premium Vodka, Dr. Dre's Aftermath Cognac, Marilyn Manson's Mansinthe. (Does Charlie Sheen's Tiger Blood count?) And, of course, Arnold Palmer's Arnold Palmer Tee. (did you see what they did there?)

My brother has been known to enjoy (read: stock up on) the occasional Arnold Palmer, so it was the perfect birthday cake concept - besides the fact that I would be shipping the cake to him. Which put a significant damper on the decorating ideas because I realized the United States Postal Service probably didn't care as much as I did about the cake arriving upright and intact. So I decided to go with an Arnold-Palmer-flavor (half lemonade, half iced tea) by replacing the water with lemon iced tea in the cake mixture:

Round cake (soaked in iced tea), lemon-flavored frosting, round cake (also soaked). A modest appearance but definitely shippable:

Throw in some Arnold Palmer Cake Toppers, decorated cakeboards, layers of Saran Wrap, and it's a DIY birthday cake in a perfectly-sized box:

Apparently it arrived in Rhode Island in fairly decent and edible shape:

Happy birthday Aaron!

- Arnold Palmer cake -
1 white (or lemon) cake mix
1 cup Arnold Palmer or lemon iced tea (substituted for water)
Oil per box instructions
Eggs per box instructions

- pour additional iced tea/lemon drink onto baked cakes -

- Lemon frosting -

1 cup Crisco or similar

4 cups powdered sugar

1/2+ packet Crystal Light (lemon)

1 tsp butter-flavored extract

2 tbsp iced tea/lemon drink

reunited, and it feels so good

2011-04-25T22:40:00.003-04:00

Dad delivered my cake supplies to NYC a few weeks ago, so this can only mean good things are on their way.

oh em gee kids - mini tier cake pans!

2011-04-18T17:25:00.003-04:00

Well I haven't been following much in the world of cakes until recently, but some news that caught my attention -

Ace of Cakes has ended its series run, after 10 seasons. I credit them (Charm City Cakes) as a major player in revolutionizing the cake decorating industry, mostly by creating the "genre of cake television" almost 5 years ago. In other news, they are expanding out to the West Coast and are also offering more practical and un-customizable "Cakes for Two" for customers are not looking to plan so far in advance, dip into life savings, or feed a small army with one of their signature masterpieces. I think their options still show how much fun you can have with simple round cakes:

Like round cakes, tier cakes are also a simple idea which can lead to beautiful things. However, there is the internal skeleton to consider, wonky or not. My friend forwarded this link and I think these pans are perfect for getting the overall effect - no assembly required. And in theory, like cupcakes, they're perfectly-sized individualized portions. However, like cupcakes, whatever time you save by not having to assemble a larger tier cake, you probably more than triple or quadruple make up for in decorating the surface of each individual cake.

Needless to say, I purchased the pan within 2 minutes of receiving her email and am looking forward to test out my decorating skills, with a #1 tip of course.

400 days later...

2011-04-12T00:16:00.004-04:00

... it has been almost exactly 400 days since the last Cake Apprentice post. Fortunately, it hasn't been quite that long since my last cake. Recapping an entire year in the life is never an easy thing to do. But, since the last post, I graduated, I became fully employed, I moved to New York City (well, live in Brooklyn / work in Manhattan), and everyone I know had at least one birthday.

In the next few days I hope to catch up with pictures from various birthdays and graduation cakes from the past year, and get back in the groove - so check back!

ga-ga, ooh-la-la

2010-03-09T16:11:00.016-05:00

Disclaimer: in order to fully appreciate the following cake, you should familiarize yourself with Lady Gaga and her 'Bad Romance' music video here, if you are not already in the know.

With Diehl's birthday coming up in February and considering his fascination with Lady Gaga, I knew that would be the concept of his cake. Even more suitable was the imagery and dance sequence from the Bad Romance video, which you will find around the 1:27 mark. I'll actually start off with the finished cake:
Now to back-track for the process - I wanted to make a tall round cake which would give me plenty of surface on the side to draw on. So I baked 4 x 8" cakes, cut off the tops in preparation of stacking, and assembled [cakes held together by chocolate icing and a layer of cardboard + straws in the middle].
I planned to [attempt to] draw out some of the signature dance moves on the side. Since the figures are dressed in white, I iced [+ hotknifed] the cake in a gray-black gradient. Overall inspiration from the video:
But before I get to that, I had to get Gaga herself on the top of the cake, so going from a screen capture from the video, to a hand-sketch, to icing is tricky but:

Success?

Now onto the more difficult part, attempting to draw out the dance. I watched the video over and over, trying to pause at all the major moves to get a screen cap. Then I sketched out each to scale and attempted to draw it out in icing on the sides of the cake. [The key word through all of this is 'attempt']. Anyways, here are the 6 best steps from the video and their edible counterparts:
Time for some final touches, such as the MONSTER 'coffins' and 'Bath Haus' sign:

One final look:

Happy birthday Diehl!

made in china

2010-03-09T15:39:00.010-05:00

It's been awhile since the last post, but some recent cakes from the spring semester.

First off, a birthday / goodbye cake + cupcake assembly for room-mates Victor and Vivian who turned 22 as Viv was preparing to jet-set off to China for a semester abroad. Her friends swore they would lock her away in a wooden chest so she couldn't leave them, so the inside joke became the theme of the cake. Baked a LOT of cake [too much in the end, but oh well]:

A base of chocolate cake topped by a cardboard box to form an interior for the chest, then rimmed with more strips of cake.

Add some nice wood finish, polish, and fill with Chinese-esque mini-cupcakes (Chinese flag, characters, dragons, etc):Finish with lid, details, and padlock:

And the presentation:

Happy birthday Viv + Vic!

so I blame it on the Cuervo...

2009-11-20T12:01:00.006-05:00

... and next up: Monica, our little tequila girl ;)

This was a lot of fun and similar to the champagne bottle from over the summer. The cake is sort of tequila sunrise-flavored, starting with white cake mix and adding OJ, homemade "grenadine" (reduced pomegranate juice), and tequila, and the frosting is lime-tequila-flavored. I could have added food coloring to the cake so it actually looked like the drink, but that can be for version 2.0.

Anyways, baked a cake in the bread loaf pan (yes the edges are dark and crisp and the center is uncooked) for the basic tequila bottle shape, baked more cake to carve for the top neck of the bottle:
All the messy stuff that cake makers don't want to you know is underneath: assemble, crumb coat, and frost:
I really wanted the top to shine like the glass bottle, so I mixed corn syrup with some of the yellow icing and glazed the top - got the look, but wayyyy too sugar-y sweet for my taste.

Time to add the details and label:

and the birthday girl trying to have her cake and drink it too:

Happy birthday Monica!

star light star bright

2009-11-20T11:53:00.007-05:00

this is a few weeks overdue, but birthday cake for Danielle taking an astronomy class, based on the infamous star chart. Devil's food cake for the star chat with angel food cake "nebula" and constellation cupcakes.

aaand:

Happy birthday Danielle!

cake + architecture, finally

2009-10-16T19:35:00.005-04:00

this is really the first cake of this birthday season for a fellow archie, Sarah. She said she fell in love with the Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright in New York City over the summer, so of course that means birthday cake idea. Six cake mixes and pounds of icing later...

based on this:

and this:

the all-important build-up process pics:

and the presentation:

Happy birthday Sarah!

it's my birthday too, yeah

2009-10-03T10:46:00.008-04:00

and of course August brings my birthday as well. First off, the "cheese"-cake platter (+ clown heads) from my family - don't ask.
and then my amazing friends assembled a sushi platter of cake and sugary goodness, in honor of my newly-discovered love of sushi this summer.

The rolls are cupcakes stuck together with icing and skewers, coated in chocolate icing and rolled in crushed Oreos for the seaweed wrap look. All the fillin's are diced Swedish fish and gummy candies, more Swedish fish for sashimi on the side, breadstick chopsticks, melted jelly beans for wasabi, and sour gummy rolls for ginger on the side... SO AWESOME!

summer leftovers

2009-10-03T10:38:00.010-04:00

a few cakes for friends that never got posted this summer. First up, James was off to join the army so like his long-lost red pickup truck - "Gone but not forgotten."

And for Morgan, working at Mystic Aquarium to save the seals. All frosting for the fur, painted balls of fondant for the eyes, and fishline for the "whiskers."

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

2009-08-28T15:39:00.009-04:00

so this is potentially the last entry for awhile, the best of the best and the worst of the worst.

Starting with the good:

[5] a tie between these two cakes. Mostly because they were team efforts with Joan and they look the most professional out of all the cakes I / we cranked out this summer [fondant clearly helps create a polished appearance]. Plus, the unexplainable satisfaction out of making lifelike objects and details, no matter how long it takes...
[4] Next up was the luau piece. Probably a favorite because it was sort of my own undertaking, figuring out what the customer wanted, plus it's just fun and bright and colorful and tropical. And again, going for the "lifelike" as far as cake goes...
[3] The anglerfish was memorable because it's based on a stuffed animal the customer brought in, which her son absolutely adores. The cake ended up being a great likeness of the toy model - despite how skeptical Joan was in the beginning when I started shaping it - and it's totally one-of-a-kind [go ahead - Google search 'anglerfish cake' and you get nothin, nadda, zilch].[2] The "world" wedding cake came in my last week of work in the summer and quickly became one of my favorites. It just looks straight out of an atlas, it's geographically accurate, and I think Joan was impressed to see how far I had come from my first few cakes.
[1] It's hard to pick my favorites and this may not be my absolute absolute favorite, but I sure did love this roast pig cake. A very strange order from the beginning, for a Hawaiian luau cookout, but yes that is all cake [covered in fondant] and it looks like it just came off the spit.

and of course with the good comes the bad, so a quick rundown of the 3 worst, in my opinion:
Well, that was the first attempt at Tinkerbell, we know she improved a little bit over time...

... And that tiered baby block shower cake did take all week and was a structural nightmare, but the customer ended up loving it in the end...

... And that "Darth Vader" ... well, I can't really think of anything to justify or redeem that one...

ok, well that kind of wraps it up for me. I'd be interested to hear if any of you had favorites or final thoughts and comments. If not, thanks for being loyal readers and check back again!

and a few more

2009-08-21T14:32:00.005-04:00

and some lessons and skills that just missed the cut for top 5:

The versatility of the Wonder pan. Upright, upside-down, sideways, this can be anything and anybody you want... maybe...

Icing penmanship. I would like to say that I've improved - and I do think I have - but there were still cakes that left the shop with my handwriting upon them that I wasn't too proud of. Probably my favorite so far though - imitating the shirt font for the rock and roll cake.

There is such thing as too much cake. Cake, like buildings, will crumble under too much weight.

There is also such thing as too much icing. See above. And this.

One word: Tinkerbell. Not really a skill, more of a work in progress...

top 5 skills + lessons learned

2009-08-21T13:38:00.021-04:00

so it has almost been a week since I worked at the shop and I'm definitely missing both the decorating and writing routine. Still as a recap, here are what I feel to be my most valuable lessons that I took from this summer [and will appear in my future cake endeavors]:

[5] How to do a real wedding cake. Or any stacked cake really. The biggest lesson here was seeing the structure involved in making the whole thing relatively stable. Also, making the base [triple or quadruple up on cake boards] as sturdy as possible because you forget how heavy these cakes end up [think of the weight of the shopping bags when you buy your ingredients - cake mix, eggs, oil, water, powdered sugar, etc]. Plus fondant [if applicable] adds another few pounds. And you need a cakeboard under each tier [each tier usually has 2-3 cakes in it] that sits on dowels that sit on the lower levels. And you probably need the big dowel running all the way down through the center if it's 3 tiers or more.
Once it's all assembled, decorate as normal and that's when the real fun begins.

[4] The art of carving and sculpting cakes. The idea here is that cut cake becomes very crumbly and messy [though not impossible] to work with so you want to be strategic and make as few cuts as possible.
This is where it helps to have a lot of cake pans to work with - you choose the ones that will get you as close to the desired shape as possible. But I guess the biggest eye-opener was seeing what can become of a simple sheet cake. Like I said, it's all a big puzzle in visualizing how you can use certain pieces and sometimes you're forced to be creative with the restrictions. And as I also learned, when it's business and there's money and materials in mind, you use every piece and nothing goes to waste.

[3] Hot-knifing icing. I learned this on my third day when Joan put a pot of water on the burner to boil as I drew out the figures for the Dora cake. As a quick recap, you outline and fill in sections of the cake with icing, then you dip your spatula in the hot water, wipe it off so it's hot but not wet, and use this to smooth the icing patch so that it appears as a solid block of color and not squirts from a tube.
It's such a simple concept but I had never heard of it before and still don't really seem to find much about it in relation to cake decorating. It takes some time and skill to figure out how to best hold the spatula, what direction to smooth, etc. and it's all things that just develop with time. Luckily I had the whole summer to perfect this, and I even got more into it with shading and marbling where the icing colors mix together like paints.
With a technique like this that makes icing look really good, who needs fondant? and yet ...

[2] Fondant, in all sizes, shapes, and forms. ... and yet this summer was a good way to see everything that fondant can do. Whether it is rolling it out huge and thin to cover entire cakes [a skill I'm still working on] or cookie-cutting out shapes like stars and hearts or slicing stripes or - my favorite - making recognizable objects like babies, pens, pills, and eyeballs. While everyone has their own stance on fondant regarding its taste and appearance, I used it more at the cake shop this summer than I ever would have on my own, using small packs from Michael's or AC Moore. I've seen what it can do, what it's good for, and may start to use it more in my own cakes if it suits the purpose.

and numero uno skill of the summer...

[1] Airbrushing. Not because it's the most handy skill and I really only used it on a few occasions, but it is completely awesome and this is one thing that I never would have been able to learn and try if I hadn't been at the shop. I might be slightly tempted to buy one of my own, in the not-near future, but in the meantime, here were some of the results:

feels like the first time

2009-08-17T08:34:00.012-04:00

So in the first of several ex-post-facto posts, here were several milestone moments and cakes from the summer:

[1] First cake ever at the shop. For a man [Ron Michon] retiring from a local dealership [after 43 years], to be modeled after a Latham Fords license plate holder [the black fondant frame]. Not completely awful but I was such a newbie with the fondant, handwriting is a bit shaky, and I was just nervous overall. Also, in my defense, who reallly wants a long quote written out on a cake in icing? Oh well, this did come out better than the Darth Vader cupcakes I did the following day and have absolutely no photographic evidence of, thankfully.

[2] First piped drawing on a sheet cake. This Dora came just 2 days later and gave me a huge confidence boost because I was learning to hot-knife the icing and my drawing skills came in handy. I later did 3D Doras, but 2D one is still my fave.

[3] First 3D / sculptured cake. Of course started out as a debacle because I didn't realize it was supposed to be 3D at first, but eventually got it upright. Though the whole thing took much longer than necessary, still a pretty big step for me.

[4] First wedding cake - Swiss dot. This took place bout 3-4 weeks into the summer and I felt it was a privilege to finally be able to work on a wedding cake. Once I cleared this, there were many more of these to come throughout the summer and I was allowed to work on more elaborate designs.

[5] and of course with the first comes the last, so my final cake for the summer at the chateau: a chateau. Not the best or biggest, but still appropriate and memorable.

once upon a time...

2009-08-15T17:26:00.025-04:00

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a princess...

...hmmm, try again...

That's better.

When I came in this morning, the set-up in the first picture was sitting on my table waiting to be decorated like Sleeping Beauty for a little girl's birthday. Iced the base white and the gown pink, then smoothed and creased it with the spatula [resembles the ice cream sundae dish, upside-down], and added borders [they finally look the same all the way around!]

Then used a star tip with individual squirts to fill in her corset top.
Because they come out like little flowers, you could totally do a Lil' Kim version, but I somehow felt that wasn't appropriate for a 6-year-old girl... oh well, next time. Which made me realize how versatile this cake is - for anyone into fashion design, you could come up with such elaborate dresses and outfits to decorate with icing or make them look like various characters [Joan has done these Disney princesses] or make it look like the birthday girl herself. Or you could just skip the whole Wonder pan thing and do a lifesize version, just sayin'...

Added some calligraphic writing on the base:

And the final fully-clothed version:

By now it's after 10 o'clock and people are starting to come in for their cakes. First is the Bakugan set - loved it. Next, had to add some quick supports in the stegosaurus neck because the icing in the head gave it a big crack overnight, but soon enough he was out the door too. Added the flags to the map wedding cake and the groom's mother picked it up, and loved it and we chatted for a few minutes. She filled me in on the couple's interesting wedding and reception plans, and found out her husband actually teaches at RPI [chemistry though]. So that left another empty spot on the shelf.
Then onto the pharmacy order which has been ongoing for a week now. Finished up the fondant pill bottle [edible marker]:
And the finished cake and cupcake samples:
It's all edible, though the pill bottle and cap may taste a bit like pepper and onion powder if anyone does go to eat them. She picked it all up and was absolutely thrilled with the outcome [she liked it better than the original picture she had brought in for the concept - excellent].

Then Joan says she has a wedding cake for me to do and I'm thinking "Ok, Swiss dots" but it turns out to be another one of these, but in the original black this time. She has already covered the 3 tiers with ivory fondant, but it's my task to do all the circles, stripes, dots, and ribbons with the black fondant.
This cake should have taken me just over an hour, but it probably took me 2 or 3 times as long because black fondant is such a pain in the butt to work with, especially when it's almost 90 degrees outside [and inside] the shop. Black fondant is already stickier than white and other colors of fondant [probably because there's so much dye in there to make it so dark]. I would say regular fondant feels like clay or Play-Doh whereas black fondant has the consistency of Gak. Ok, maybe not that bad, but it always sticks to the table, rips when it's too thin, is almost impossible to roll out smoothly, stains the white fondant... you get the idea. So when 3 o'clock rolls around and I've finally finished this cake...
... Joan asks, "Well, want to call it a day? Or do another?" I don't realllllly want to end off with this wedding cake so maybe I'll stay, but I am getting a bit tired ... "You can finish this castle I'm doing for a bridal shower for tomorrow if you want." A castle, as in a chateau? Excellent.

So I inherited the stacked and iced cake from Joan and set about making it into a fairytale castle. Frosted ice cream cones, piped on vines and flowers, etc. And it's good to know even princesses can be cheap and choose a stucco finish when they just can't afford the stonework:
A quick spin on the turntable:
And money shot:
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a tale of a cake apprentice that ends

... or does it?

Today was my last day for the summer, but I may or may not go back a few hours per week throughout the school year to help Joan out and maintain my cake skills. If this does end up happening, I will still be taking pictures and writing about the experience. But just in case this is the end, I have had a great summer and thank Joan for her absolute patience and mentoring. I have learned so much, made lots of fun cakes, and will probably do a wrap-up post or two in the next few days to bring it all to closure.

welcome to the world

2009-08-15T00:49:00.019-04:00

So many good cakes today, where to begin? We'll start with a show-and-tell of what Joan did after I left the shop yesterday afternoon, she must have been there pretty long afterwards. First up, a topsy-turvy Sweet 16 cake from a sketch by the birthday girl herself [and these tiered fondant cakes take forever]:
THEN, she did the 120+ cupcakes for the country club. LOVE them - all the fondant toppers on the bright green "grass" [you pipe icing with this tip], they will be such a hit:
Now for my cakes. First, did some quick Bakugan symbols to complete the cupcakes to go with this cake.

DONE

Then back to my stegosaurus cake. Pulled it out from the back, colored it up, then decided that its cupcake head was just too big and bulky, especially since stegosauruses are known for having small heads and brains the size of a walnut.
So cut that off [I had yet another headless dino torso on my hands] and downsized it to just a dowel covered in icing.

And the overall finished:

DONE

Next was helping Joan with a wedding cake - it is 4 square tiers and the bride wanted each tier to be an icing interpretation of the beadwork on her gown [also in tiers]. Such a cool idea and she gave us pictures of her dress, which was very beautiful and elegant, so I translated the beadwork into linework and etched it on the cake with a skewer so Joan could pipe it right on in icing. Unfortunately I became so busy with my next few projects that I didn't get a picture of it before it went out to be delivered, but it was a beautiful cake.

Finally came the time to do the pill order so I boxed up the 60 cupcakes, frosted white, and started by placing 2 pills on each. I had made a whole trayful of fondant pills last week but never really counted how many there were so I didn't know how far they would go, especially since I needed to reserve some for the 8" cake as well.
In the end, each cupcake got 4-5 pills so they look really fun, and here's the cake to go with it. I removed the fondant pill bottle from the salt shaker and spice cap, they cracked a little in the process so had to perform some reconstructive surgery and I'll add it on top of the cake tomorrow:

DONE

FINALLY onto the masterpiece of the day and probably the summer - yes this is probably my favorite cake of the whole experience. The event is a wedding reception cake for a couple [she's from NY, he's from Argentina] that got married in Peru and are celebrating with each of their families. The concept was to have a map showing North and South Americas, mark each of their origins, and where they got hitched with dotted lines and little airplane symbols. Joan was also very excited about this one, she told me to treat it as carefully as I would do for my own wedding cake. Ok then.

Started with a HUGE double layer and filled cake that I iced and hot-knifed [like the explosion cake the other day] so that you can the ocean-as-seen-from-space effect.
I had printed out scaled images of the Americas and used these as stencils to dot in the outlines.
Outlined and filled in with green. Between the small #2 icing tip and the outlines from my printouts, this thing is pretty accurate - much better than if I had attempted to draw it in.
Got 'em both filled in and I could have kept the cake just like this and been satisfied. Hotknifing gives it a nice 'landmass' look and it would be awesome to do a real topographic map in icing like this. But it didn't fit with this theme, so moving on...I did decide to outline the countries in the same green that I used to fill in the continents so it's subtle.
This is where things have the potential to go downhill and quickly, as I need to add in the 3 lcoations [Albany, Peru, Buenos Aires] and draw in the lines, but they didn't come out too badly:

And the final border:

In the morning, we'll add a big ribbon and paper American + Argentinian flags for the final touch.

DONE

Ok, got all of my Saturday cakes out of the way, so that clears my schedule for 3-5 wedding cakes tomorrow...

oh em gee kids, it's mini-Wonder characters [with little red jackets]!

2009-08-13T17:34:00.019-04:00

So you've seen the magic of the Wonder pan and all the characters it can create. But, if you just don't want quite that much cake [or want to spend quite that much money], you can buy miniature versions of your favorite cakes! But more on these in a minute...

It was a slightly cooler day so I tried to get a few cakes out of the way before it heats up again this weekend. First was to prep the dinosaur cake - the woman had said either stegosaurus or ankylosaurus - both pretty horizontal and spiky species.
A tough call, but I decided to stick with the original stegosaurus. Took the round cake, cut it in half, and iced the two halves together upright to form the body. Shaped the tail, head, and rear legs out of cupcakes and various cake scraps. I'll decorate and texture it tomorrow, shouldn't take too long.
Next up was a mini Mickey Mouse, fashioned from a mini-Wonder cake and a cupcake for the head. For a sense of scale, the cake board it's sitting on is only 6" in diameter and is only about 6" high, so this thing is teeny.

We've made the bigger version, though it was a source of stress for me because I was still learning the ropes, so I was hopeful this one would be a better experience. Even though it's half the size of the bigger one, it still takes almost as long to get through all the steps and details.

But in the end, totally cute!

Next up was doing all the parts for this Bakugan cake [Bakugan Battle Brawlers is an anime action adventure show]. Like the Hawaiian luau woman, this customer had all these ideas and wants this to be a centerpiece, albeit on smaller scale. She wanted something 3D, some cupcakes, and some more cake to account for all the little mouths she has to feed. The cupcakes were easy to settle on - we'll do a dozen, each with one of the symbols below. Today I rolled out fondant, cut out circles, I'll draw the symbols on tomorrow, and they'll go on top of the iced cupcakes. Note: my [semi-professional] advice to anyone who wants to work with black fondant - just buy some already pre-colored, it will save you time and energy from having to combine every color in the rainbow to make black from scratch.
Then, she didn't really want just a plain ol' sheet cake so I suggested starting with a sheet cake and making it look like a fire or explosion or something, and she really liked that. So cut, arranged, prepped, and got my colors ready:
So this is a technique that I started using with the icing - basically, mixing colors incompletely so when you spread it out, it has a cool gradient effect. Started this with the fish a few weeks ago and also did it on my rock and roll cake. In the picture on the left, it looks a bit like the burning bush - I mean autumn leaf - cake that Jenna and I made for her mom last fall, but once you hot-knife it smooth, it looks pretty awesome. A lot of people may use fondant to get this look, but it just goes to show what you can still do with icing.
The final component was a 3D version of Dan, one of the main characters. I prepped the mini Wonder and cupcake like I did with Mickey, got my structure ready in the base case, and got him aboard.

Then came time for detailing:

He, too, is wearing a little red jacket and poppin' his [cardboard] collar. I didn't want to give him cat eyes a la Dora so I made them a bit darker. Not perfect, but it's alright, now all that's missing is his feathery hair. To do his trademark hair, I filled a bag with brown icing and cut the tip like we do for the leaves on the frosting flowers. Because let's face it, that's exactly what his hair looks like.

Add some arms and some trim and he's done:

So tomorrow I'll finish the cupcakes for this order and box them up. There's plenty of room left on the cakeboard so she can arrange the cupcakes on there to complete her party centerpiece. I also have the map, dino, and pharmacy orders to finish up as my apprenticeship is drawing to a close...

it's getting hot in here

2009-08-12T20:07:00.014-04:00

It has been disgustingly humid around here lately, so imagine my disappointment when I get into the cake shop ... and the ovens are on. Yep, we actually have so many cupcake orders going out this week so Joan spent most of the day yesterday working towards the 20-dozen-cupcake goal and the rest of the cakes were being baked today. My pharmacy pill order will have 60 cupcakes, then there's a big order of 140 cupcakes for a local golf club banquet, and then the usual couple of cupcake flower baskets that go out each week. Here's the yellow ones chillin in the back room, and the chocolate batches were in another cooler.
It was so hot in the kitchen area that I was more than happy to help run and wrap the cakes again, seeing as it was about 20 degrees cooler in the "air-conditioned" back room. So spent about an hour back there, wrapping and shelving the cakes [and taking a picture or two - with my newly-repaired-and-returned SLR camera - just in time for the last days of work]:
My other quick task was to paint these fondant golf clubs with edible silver paint. There's trays and trays of fondant accessories like clubs, tees, balls, and pennants that will go on the country club cupcakes later in the week.
Next I worked on making an orange pill bottle out of fondant to go on the pharmacy cake. I needed to make it today so it would harden for this weekend, but the heat and humidity made it nearly impossible to roll out and work with fondant. I kept having to coat my hands with cornstarch because they were sweating and would smear whatever I was touching. I decided to make the bottle by wrapping fondant around a pepper shaker, first covering it with parchment paper so hopefully I can remove it from the "mold" on Friday after it hardens.
To go with that, I rolled out white fondant, covered the cap of another spice container, and trimmed it around the edge just as you would to do to cover a cake with fondant. Again, I'll remove it from the cap later when it hardens.
With these small tasks out of the way, it was onto my only cake of the day - a sheet cake for a Unity House dinner to thank their donors. They wanted it to look like the flyer with 'thank you' written in various languages [I knew Spanish, French, and Italian, but I learned 'hvala' is Slovic] and the Unity House logo.
Prepped the cake and iced it all around in white, which was more difficult than usual. It was so hot that our fondant was melting, our icing was melting, and even our cakeboards were melting - when I ran my spatula along the edge of the cake to smooth the icing, it actually picked up green from the cakeboard underneath and got into the icing.

Ay yi yi.

Anyways, iced the foreign thanks in a light green, "Thank You!" in slightly darker green, and finally the Unity House symbol as well as I could. Finished off with borders, though the top one started to slip off a bit in a few places because it was so soft.
That was all for today, most of the cakes were just coming out the oven so they will be prepped and decorated starting tomorrow. Along with the pill cupcakes + cake, I will be doing a stegosaurus [which will probably look very much like my "dragons"], a 3D version of this Bakugan character [which I have piped flat before], and a really cool wedding cake - a big sheet cake showing a map of North and South Americas and dotted lines to Albany and Peru and Buenos Aires [I think?] to show where the couple is from, getting married, and going to on their honeymoon ... or something like that ...

so here's hoping to cooler and drier weather.

your love is like bad medicine

2009-08-09T16:59:00.015-04:00

Critical first task of the day: dinosaur surgery [dinosaurgery anybody?] - stat. The head had had too much icing and split the cupcake so I replaced the broken one, quick cover of icing, and re-decorated the head. I did this superfast and the customer came in as I was finishing it up, so only time for one quick picture. He has a little bit of an underbite, though definitely not as much as this guy.
After that was done, Joan was just finishing up various wedding and small birthday cakes so I actually got a headstart on my fondant pills for a pharmacy school graduation cupcake + cake order for next Saturday. They'll be frosted in white so the pills should be colorful so they pop, so to speak. I reach into the magical tub of random fondant scraps...

... and 3 hours later ...

I figured these would take awhile, and considering the amount of time to produce what's shown above, it's good I got them out of the way before next week. I just went with the colors I had, mixed a few new ones, and began pinching, rolling, and squishing to get all sorts of shapes and sizes. This actually made for a really funny afternoon in the shop because as I've said, we watch the Hallmark Channel at the cake chateau and of course they play infomercials aimed at their biggest demographic: the older crowd [allegedly median age of 60], most of which are probably suffering from something for which a prescription can be prescribed. The point is, half of the ads they play are for some form of medication or treatment and I've come to wonder, "how do they come up with some of these names?" Prescription drugs have generic names based on their chemical makeup, but they may also have trade names for marketing purposes [branding]. However, over the weeks I've figured out their formula: take 2 key words that have to do with the disease or condition [bonus if one of them sounds positive], shorten each, then combine the two. Descriptive and catchy.

Miralax? MIRAcle + LAXative. Prevacid? PREVent heartburn & ACID reflux disease. Skelaxin? SKin rELAXIN' [it's a muscle relaxant]. Flomax? Get your FLOw to the MAX [male urinary] And ABILIFY just sounds like it gives you the power to accomplish anything [also makes me think of "Stupefy!"]. Others take some guesswork or are just a plain stretch. Plavix could be to VIX [like fix] "PLAque" in the arteries? Tamiflu, don't become conTAMInated with the FLU?

Anyways, so while I'm making all these pills and these commercials keep coming on the television [my back is to the screen], Joan goes, "Oh look! There's one!" "Make that one!" So I would turn around quickly to glimpse the prescription drug and possibly use it as inspiration for the next batch.

Starting off with some more recognizable ones:

Maybe some Motrin for that pain relief?

or a Advil liqui-gel capsule instead?

or can I interest you in a jelly bean?

or would you prefer an orange Tic-Tac?

or just stick with your stereotypical two-tone capsule?

and then I just kept going...

I will need 2-3 pills for each cupcake and more for the border on the cake so I have 11 types for now, but I'll probably make a few more next week to make sure I have enough. Even with this headstart, it looks like it will actually be an eventful and busy final week at the shop next week.

dumped

2009-08-08T15:16:00.018-04:00

Bit of a recap is needed so we'll start off with Friday's cakes, beginning with the Yankees jersey. I had printed off a '13' scaled to fit on the cake and used this as a stencil to cut a fondant version. Set that aside to harden a bit.
Then came time for the pinstripes. Luckily I had had some experience with this when I did Andrew's plaid shirt cake in July and I found that by adding a little bit of corn syrup - or in this case, some of the clear piping gel - will make the icing a little goo-ier and stringier which makes it a little easier to draw continuous lines without breakage. I also used a flat tip for wider lines.Started with the center line, moved out from there, not perfect but you get the idea, and added the fondant numbers.Kept the pinstripes going with another Yankees cake, this one just a sheet cake with the symbol for a birthday girl. Probably should have thought twice about using the same pink for the pinstripes and the symbol, so I outlined it with the blue on hand.
My last project which took up the rest of the afternoon was a giant dump truck for a first birthday. Haven't really done any heavy-duty vehicle cakes since the backhoe in my second week of work. True to form, I started with a sheet cake and worked from a toy truck. It took a few tries of arranging and re-arranging pieces to get an accurate massing. Needed to embed some straws as rebar and cross-bracing to keep the upright cake strips stable.

Covered the whole thing in the all-important crumb layer:
Followed it up with some bright kid-friendly colors, a fewtruck details, big black tires, crumbled-up-cake dirt, and a cardboard flap over the cab:
Some more fine tuning and finally completion:

And as a series? Sure, why not.

just take me straight to Virginia

2009-08-06T20:36:00.016-04:00

Nothing says congratulations on retirement like a golf bag cake. Levelled off the top of the big sheet cake and saved the scraps for the pouches. The customer wanted it done up like a Boston Cream Pie so we whipped up some chocolate icing and vanilla bavarian cream for the filling between layers.

Cut the cake in half. First piece down, rimmed the edge with chocolate icing and filled with the cream. Topped with the other cake half.
Rounded out the cake mass into a tubular golf bag shape. Cut some pouches from the scraps. Placed onto the chocolate-iced bag.
Filled a bag with gray icing without a tip - this leaves a really tiny hole at the end to do small details like ... zippers. Also added some gold clubs on the board.
Added some straps and writing and final shot:

Next up, prepping a cake for a Yankees jersey. I'm used to using my beloved T-shirt pan which has served me so well for cakes of this sort, but I started this one from "scratch" [sheet cake]. I'll decorate this one tomorrow.

Then time to do the dinosaur. The woman specified bright colors so I tried red this time [a red T-Rex, why not?] Started off pretty well, iced the head on, added some details.
However, not as T-Rex-ish as the last one, so we're going to call this one a velociraptor instead.
Didn't even get to the mouth and teeth before disaster struck in the back room:
Looks like the result of an epic battle in a scene from Jurassic Park. Orrrrr, just that there was too much icing for the head and it split the cupcake head in half. I hoped to salvage it...
... but I'll probably just do a new one tomorrow or Saturday morning. Oh well.

Finally, on a happier note, here is my ghetto non-accurate Virginia cake for Danielle.
She's going to Williamsburg for the fall where she'll work in an authentic colonial kitchen in authentic colonial dress, etc. She's a history major so should be an awesome experience. Started with a patriotic cakeboard and a round cake which I quickly carved in the back room to form "Virginia." Added a quick border and writing.
And here's to Danielle:

you go back, jack, do it again

2009-08-05T21:25:00.011-04:00

Almost all repeat cakes for me this week. This is good because, in theory, they'll go faster since I've already worked through them once. We'll see how that goes. Mostly prep work today to decorate later on in the week.

First up, all the pieces for the making of ...

...

can you guess?

eh not fair really, but it's another T-Rex, but for more servings than the last one so we add another round cake as a base. Maybe I'll try a different color this time...

Next up, another roast pig. Last time, I just had one big sheet cake to make everything. This time, Joan was clever enough to think of the Wonder pan for the head so this one came together much quicker and cleaner.

... well, relatively cleaner...

I also have another golf bag to do, but the cake was just baked this morning and therefore was too warm to prep, so I'll do that tomorrow.

Final cake of the day was another guitar. I've done a big electric one, a mini Hannah Montana one, and today's was modeled after the birthday boy's actual guitar. Or at least the color - burnt orange [gosh, I love that color, wonder why? haha] His mom specified only the color, nothing about the style, so I looked through Joan's handy "music" image folder and picked an easy style to copy from the Guitar Center catalog I found.
The cake is relatively simple: I use a pattern to help cut the base, use a strip off the side for the neck, color it all, add details and frets. Then I use clear piping gel for the "strings" and just icing-covered posterboard for the pegs.
Not the most realistic thing in the world, but hey, it's just cake, alright?
It's such a big cake board for not-too-much cake so I filled the empty space with some music motifs in icing. Voila!
The rest of the week will be finishing up my prepped cakes, possibly a few quick ones for birthdays, and of course some weddings. Also, I'm doing a quick surprise cake for Danielle, another girl who helps in the shop once a week - she is spending the fall semester studying / working in Williamsburg, VA so tomorrow is her last day and her birthday was last week.

And another awesome [but potentially monotonous] project for me next week will be making hundreds of fondant pills. Today I met with a girl who just graduated from pharmacy school and ordered a cake + cupcakes for her party. They'll be frosted in white and then covered with pills of various shapes and colors. Such a cute idea, it'll be fun to see it all put together, and one of my last projects for the summer - finishing up next Saturday!

PART II: La Batalla del dos Dora los Exploradores

2009-08-01T22:52:00.009-04:00

In general, I was pretty happy with the first Dora from the other day, but I had some areas I knew I could improve on [skin color? hairstyle?] and overall it could be done faster. So in the ring we have Dora Numero Uno and in the opposite corner, Dora Numero Dos.

ROUND 1: HAIR

Both somewhat missed the mark on the true Dora's adorable choppy bob hairstyle. They both have the center part, but both lack the volume [or you could go to the opposite extreme I guess] that make it recognizable. If anything, Dora Dos maybe needs a slight haircut, so

ROUND 1: Dora Numero UNO
1-0

ROUND 2: FACE

Ahhh, I was actually pretty happy with the face on the first Dora, the only thing was that her skin got pretty dark. So while Dos stayed out of the sun, her cat-like eyes are a bit too freaky for Dora [though her eyes really are light brown!]. Also, now that I'm looking at the picture, I also forgot to give her ears.

ROUND 2: Dora Numero UNO
2-0

ROUND 3: HANDSOk so I tried out two different techniques. First day I tried making each finger on the hand [which came out really cute on the sheet cake]. This time, they just looked kind of awkward with the body and arm position [though better than her Nickelodeon counterpart's poor "hands"]. So the next time I just kept it simple. Though now Dora Dos looks ready to punch someone's lights out, not that she would of course. Mmm a tough call, but let's say:

ROUND 3: Dora Numero DOS
1-2

ROUND 4: KICKS

The icing was giving me a hard time and wouldn't stay stiff enough to form shoes. Dora Uno gets socks while Dos has cleaner white sneakers. Both pretty awful so

ROUND 4: DRAW
2-3

ROUND 5: BACKSIDENow it's obvious both are a bit on the tubby side, but Uno appears to carry her weight a little better [there's no technical way of justifying this, maybe it's the ratio of shorts to shirt to hair?].

ROUND 5: Dora Numero UNO
4-2

ROUND 6: COMPANION OF CHOICE

Each Dora gets a different anthropomorphic accessory, but it's like choosing between your two best friends. Or your favorite child. You just can't do it.

ROUND 6: DRAW
5-3

ROUND 7: SIDE VIEW

So surprsingly, Dora Uno is ahead by a pretty wide margin by the last round, and this view is what gives her the win. While they're both on the round side, Uno at least looks human while Dos on the right has small stick-like legs and virtually no chin or lower facial features.

ROUND 7: Dora Numero DOS
6-3
FINAL

And here they are, ready to duke it out in the back cake closet:
And I know by the time I finally master doing this Dora, customers will be bringing in images of the new and improved Dor a and asking for this instead.

PART I: The Race Against the Clock

2009-08-01T22:10:00.013-04:00

7:30 AM: Turn off first alarm.
8:00 AM: Turn off second alarm. Go back to sleep [obligatory]
8:08 AM: Wake up, get out of bed, turn on the coffee pot, get dressed.
8:53 AM: Leave for the cake shop.
9:02 AM: Arrive at the cake shop.

9:06: Retrieve family tree cake from the back. The woman would be in at 10 o'clock to get the cake, so I came in early to finish it up on time.
9:09 AM: Add the mostly-hardened fondant plaque w/ photo at the base of the tree:
9:14 AM: Review notes on the names and placement for the tree. The birthday woman [now a great-grandmother according to the family tree] had seven children, most of which were married once [or twice] and had several children who also have children, so the tree was extensive and complex.
9:19 AM: Begin arranging the fondant name tags to match my notes.
9:23 AM: Realize that this is going to take too long and I should just start putting them on the cake and figure it out as I go.

9:27 AM: Realize that a few tags stuck to the metal pan and broke. Also forgot 3 people. Re-make these tags.

9:41 AM: Done putting tags on. The top-right corner is a bit unknown - I was a bit unclear about some of the names - who was a son, a husband, or a brother, so I'll ask the customer when she comes in.
9:48 AM: Drawing lines in icing to connect all the names [crossing my fingers - hopefully no one gets a spouse or sibling they didn't know about].

9:51 AM: Mixing up color for the border.

9:55 AM: Quickly putting the border around the base of the cake. Accidentally smudge the top of the cake in my haste. Cover this and other nicks by adding more brown "tree" swirls over them.

9:59 AM: Quick border on the photo plaque. Glance at the clock, sweat, panic a little.

10:00 AM: Deadline passes, no customer.

10:06 AM: Add some quick writing [definitely not my finest] and a rose in front.
10:09 AM: Breathe a sigh of relief, cake is done except for the names to add and arrange with the customer's guidance.

10:11 AM: Photograph the cake.

10:12-10:19 AM: Clean up the absolute mess I made on my table in the past hour being all frantic.

10:21 AM: Customer enters and is thrilled with the cake. Added the final names in the questionable corner and she quickly checked all the others - everything seemed to be in order. She appreciated the time we took to do a truly custom cake. It was a great reaction because she hadn't picked it out from a book [not that there's anything wrong with that], but she really didn't know what to expect and she was honestly happy with the result. So yay! The cake in its nearly-finished stage:
After this, I settled into my routine of dotting a wedding cake. Though after I was done, Joan realized the ribbon was supposed to be pink, not white. Easier to make that change than something like the icing work:
I'm reading a great book called 'Heat' by Bill Buford, who is a writer but willingly became a kitchen slave / apprentice in a NYC restaurant so he could learn the ways of food and cooking. The book is all about his experience and insight and as he is a writer, there are some excellent quotes. In one of his first nights as a line cook, he struggled to get the fish grilled correctly ["I broke many fish... twenty-one had been ordered, but thirty-nine were cooked], but by the second night "I seemed to be getting it - such is the miraculous pedagogy of relentless repetition." And it's so true - by doing the same things over and over again [Swiss dot wedding cakes anyone?], you have no choice but to get better. So if repetition is truly the key to success, let's see how my second Dora in two days turns out ...

... tune in for Part II.

day-glo friday

2009-07-31T20:14:00.014-04:00

It may have been a dull rainy day but my hands are stained some nice bright colors from the frosting we used today. First up was a round cake for a 16th birthday. Now while the colors and border may at first appear to be fondant... they're not. Instead of cookie-cutting out fondant circles and rolling dozens of tiny fondant balls, the look can be achieved with buttercream, the right tools, and some technique.
Joan added some matching hot pink flowers on top but I couldn't get a picture before it went out the door.

Next up was a 3D Dora with the Wonder set-up. I've piped her flat in icing before, but this brings her into a whole dimension. And she seems to have gained quite a bit of weight, somewhere around the waist area... Started with the orange "shorts," added the hot pink shirt and tummy [Dora just wouldn't be Dora if she wasn't baring some midriff]...

... wiped off my camera lens ...

Put on sleeves, the head, various "appendages," and finally her facial features and hair.
Now I know Dora is supposed to be a little Spanish girl so I colored her skin appropriately, but I also forgot that the icing gets darker when you hot-knife it smooth, and it also gets darker as it dries and hardens. So by the time I finished her and put her in the back, I'm not really sure what ethnicity our little Dora is anymore...

and now front - side - rear view:
and some Dora details including Map, accessories, and some white "sneakers" [the icing was pretty droopy from the humidity today so I'll shape those up in the morning when the icing is stiffer]
So all in all, this cake took me the same amount of time it took Joan to do a 4-tier wedding cake [all carrot cake]. Yeahhh... what was I saying about getting faster? Well Joan says there's another Dora to do for Sunday, the same exact cake, so I'm banking on going twice as fast now that I have most of the colors already mixed in tubs and I have an idea of what I'm doing. If nothing else, it will make for some good side-by-side comparisons a la Tinkerbell.

Finally, a project that has become my brainchild. A woman envisioned this big sheet cake incorporating their extensive family tree and an old photo for her mother's 80th birthday. She tried to describe it to Joan over the phone but ended up coming in to talk with me so I could draw out her whole family tree. We decided to do a large tree in the background with all the family member's names on little fondant tags, and stemming from the couple in the photo at the base of the tree.
I airbrushed the background to resemble faded parchment paper and swirled on a tree silhouette.
We had the photo printed on edible paper which I put onto a fondant "plaque" that I had cut out. I also cut out 25+ fondant tags for the names [they just look like big pieces of gum] and then went about writing all the family members in teeny - hopefully legible - cursive icing.
I'm letting the fondant pieces harden overnight and in the morning, I'll add it all to the cake. Hopefully including every person and in the right location.

vanilla can be nice, but if the truth be told ...

2009-07-30T20:52:00.017-04:00

Joan doesn't usually do too many cakes with chocolate frosting, but she does offer that option. It's simply made by adding sifted cocoa to a bowl of regular buttercream frosting:

and mix well.

First up was a 7-layer chocolate cake. This is done by taking a regular round cake and slicing it into 7 equal layers [using the ever-nifty cake leveler]:
Then you rebuild the cake layer by layer with chocolate frosting between each [a lesser amount than if you were filling between just 2 layers of cake, because there are 7 layers in this thing]. And prepped with chocolate icing.
People have done 7 layer cakes, 10 layer cakes, even 15 layer cakes. I wonder why they stop at 15 though, the sky's the limit with these [literally] - just use multiple cakes and you may also need to add cake boards and dowels as you go but those would make for some awesome-looking cake slices.

And with final decoration and border:
Next up, another chocolate cake. This one, a 16" diameter round cake. It is HUGE. Soda can for size reference:
And you need a HUGE spatula to smooth it with. Regular 8" spatula for size reference:
Covering this took almost a whole bowl of frosting. If you can stand it, here's some basic calculations (R = 8"):

First we have the sides:

Area = [circumference around the cake x height of the cake]
= [PI * 2 * R] x [4"]
= 200 sq. in

And the top:

Area = [PI * R2]
= another 200 sq. in

so that's 400 sq. in of surface area to cover, and if the frosting is 0.25-0.5 in deep [as it should be], that's 50-100 cubic inches and that's between 1-2 liters of frosting, on one cake.

Anyways, to go with a chocolate cake, of course there is chocolate fondant. Which can be mixed with white for various chocolate shades and cut into circle shapes.
And put on to create a fun graduation cake:
Final task was icing 15 cupcakes for a baby shower. 12 were iced in regular buttercream frosting while the customer requested 3 to be whipped cream "frosting" which is really whipping cream that has been whipped until it's fluffy. It looks virtually the same as buttercream [L] but is much lighter [you feel like you're piping air when it's in the bag].
You're pretty limited with decorating possibilities when working with whipped cream, but it goes onto cupcakes splendidly. Topped the cupcakes with Joan's prefab fondant pieces, but the customer did request one stork so I attempted that:
That's it for today, not a very busy week overall. I believe there will be a 3D Dora tomorrow, maybe a family tree anniversary cake, and of course weddings on Saturday. But in the meantime, I am craving some real, dark, chocolate.

Threadcakes: Round 2

2009-07-29T09:42:00.024-04:00

so this is my second and last entry into the Threadcakes competition and has been a month in the planning and a few days in the making. There's only a week left and there are already 400+ entries and some awesome ones at that. I would not want to be a judge for this, I can't imagine picking the best ones. This entry isn't up quite yet in their gallery, but here is lots of photo documentation and the whole story behind it:

So first there was the hit song: We Built this City [on Rock and Roll] by Jefferson Starship.
The song actually reached #1 on the Billboard Charts in 1985 but for some reason I still don't understand, it was voted the #1 on VH1's Top 50 Worst Songs Ever a few years ago. You can judge for yourself.

Then came the Threadless t-shirt.
Someone was very clever to point out the obvious oversight, if a city were really to be built upon rock 'n roll. It's a funny shirt [one of which I own] and of course, based on a great 80s song.

So when it came to making a cake, I drew inspiration from the song + music video, the t-shirt, and my growing knowledge of cakery. I decided to do a 2-tier cake where the top is the 'city' as represented by a skyline, the bottom is 'rock 'n roll' as represented by a rock concert crowd of some sorts, and the whole thing is a topsy-turvy cake - making it appear structually unsound.
I had Google Image searched for some images to help me on my mission. I ended working from images of the New York skyline for the top cake, though looking back - the song is all about San Francisco - it's even in the music video - so I actually should have done that with the Golden Gate Bridge silhouette, but oh well. And my crowd isn't quite as rockin' as I had hoped but you get the idea:
So I gathered all my supplies, baked the cakes [3 x 8" red velvet for the bottom, 3 x 6" dark chocolate for the top]:
Mixed up and colored several pounds of buttercream frosting:
Started layering: cake-frosting-cake-frosting-cake-cut at a slant-dowels-cake-frosting-cake-frosting-cake-cut at a slant-prep the whole thing.
A brief overview of topsy turvy cakes [also called 'Wonky' cakes or 'Mad Hatter' cakes - the cakes look like the shape of his hat] is that you stack up 2-3 cakes, then you cut the top one at an angle but also cut a smaller circle so that the next tier will actually sit flat [and on dowels]. Plus you can carve away at the lower parts of each tier to increase the distortion. It's all about illusion. I probably could have exaggerated the slants a bit more, but this was the first time I had tried this personally so now I know.

Then came time for the surface treatment. The top was going to be an evening sky background for the skyline so I mixed up some lavender-blue-dark blue, spread it on by gradually mixing the colors for a gradient effect [it's like painting], then hot knifed so it would be blended and smooth. Did the same for the bottom with yellow, gold, and orange.
Time to add the details:
Piped on the skyline, filled with icing, and smoothed:
Added the "crowd" [though some look more like aliens than human beings] and "stage equipment" to the bottom tier.
Of course, the whole process as a series:
Final step was to add the text from the shirt to bring it all together. I'm slowly mastering my icing writing and it was a challenge to mimic the font, but here are some final shots:

an almost-360 view:

Some last parting shots:

and thanks to everyone who helped in the making and eating:
The Giblers were in town for the week from Texas so we made a whole day out of the cake-making extravaganze. While I worked on this cake, Carma and Grace tackled making a Texas cake from 2 marbled round cakes. They got to learn about assembling the cake, prepping, icing, and working with fondant [covering the cake and doing cut-outs]. I don't have any of their process pictures [and there are many] but here's the final cake:

Looks cute and tastes delicious!

three weddings [and no funeral]... and a fish and a football

2009-07-25T21:58:00.019-04:00

We had quite the assembly line going on this morning with Joan covering and stacking wedding cakes as fast as I decorated them. We cranked these out in about 2-3 hours.
Wedding numero uno was a new style for me - some pretty scrollwork done in royal icing based on some linework that Joan had drawn out on trace paper.
With wedding cakes, we always mark the "back" of the cake with a toothpick so the "front" is facing forward when it's set up at the reception hall. The back is also where we have the seam of the ribbon and it's where you start your icing designs so it hides any overlaps, you get all your kinks out, etc. However, this design needed to start in the front so it was aligned and symmetrical. Therefore, by the time I finally got into the groove, my good scrollwork was in the back. Oh well.
Next wedding cake was another Swiss dot. I know I keep saying that I'm getting faster and better, but let's do a side-by-side comparison from the Swiss dot cake I did a mere 4 weeks ago:
Now you may not think there's much room for improvement for something as simple as dots, but as you can see, some of the ones in the photo on the left resemble "growths" more than dots.

Finally, saved the easiest for last - just a 3-tier fondant with ribbon and fresh flowers. As easy and simply and modern as it looks, it's actually more pressure to make the surface as clean and pristine as possible. Joan likens it to wearing a skintight dress where every dimple, divot, and bulge is revealed. So instead of icing work, I spent most of my time smoothing, popping air bubbles in the fondant, and filling in cracks and crevices.

See? Nothing is perfect.

Luckily, flowers can help hide some of the "problem areas" and makes the whole thing beautiful:
Back to the anglerfish from yesterday. Joan had gone to the hardware store and brought back copper wire and plastic tubing. Perfect, because bending the wire inside helped the tubing keep its shape. Put a hole in his head. Used an advanced technique called finger-painting to ice the antenna to match the fish. Added a white fondant ball for the lure.

Put it all together aaaaaand:

Unfortunately I left the shop before the mother came to pick up this cake which is too bad because I really wanted to see her reaction! And quickly, Joan's Mrs. Beasley doll cake [for which I made the glasses]:
And last cake before I walked out the door, a simple football cake which I drew on top and Joan finished with borders:
Ok, that's it for cake shop cakes for a few days, until next week!

ANGLERFISH vs T-REX

2009-07-24T19:54:00.018-04:00

Sure, you have Freddy vs. Jason. And there's also been Alien vs. Predator. But the faceoff I really want to see would be between this week's scary creature cakes:

Anglerfish vs. T-Rex

I was really excited to get back to this cake, so took the prepped body:
Iced it burgundy, did the mouth + tongue, shaped fins, etc:
Finished up the details and it's a dead ringer for the source stuffed animal:
Joan's going to run to the hardware store tonight to get some bendy plumbing tubing for the antenna and we'll add it in the morning. Obviously, the "lure" is what makes this fish unique and how it attracts its prey. Even though I think these fish are bottom-dwellers that live in the dark depths of the sea, Joan wanted to expand on the fish theme so I iced the board like ocean surf with some neon floating chocolate coral pieces.
While I worked from this toy, Joan worked on a cake based on a Mrs. Beasley doll. As I learned from Joan, the Mrs. Beasley doll belonged to a girl on Family Affair in the late 60s and the customer brought in her own doll for Joan to model the after. It has been sitting on the counter all week and almost every woman that comes into the shop has reacted "Oh my goodness, haven't seen one of those in years!" "Is that Mrs. Beasly?!" One woman even went out to the car to get her mother to show her; they even said they might want to order a Mrs. Beasley cake in the future. There you go - Joan single-handedly bringing Beasley back.

Anyways, Joan was working on the cake [Wonder cake pan, natch] and needed me to model her black square frame glasses, so I took some floral wire + needlenose pliers + black airbrushing and it's hard to tell the difference, if I do say so myself. It's interesting how an arts + crafts background is just as important as having the baking know-how in order to make all of these cakes!
Final one of the day was a simple baby shower cake based on a picture found by the customer.
Fondant covered with dots was easy, added border and fondant ribbon.
I learned how to make a fondant bow [using paper towels to form the loops open until the fondant get stiff] and also made some fondant baby blocks [which took 2% of the time of these babies].
And a final look [we've been so ahead of schedule that Al boxed up all the cakes before I could get them on the table for pictures]:
Not too much else going on this week, just some weddings to do tomorrow and then "weekend" for me!!

down the shore

2009-07-23T21:36:00.011-04:00

Onto a 3-tier sandcastle cake for a bridal shower. The industry secret is to use crushed Nilla Wafers [or similar generic brand, of course] for sand. So I food-processed a box and I was left with a bowl of beautifully fine grained sand that smelled much more delicious than the real thing.

Assembled and iced the cake, then came time to "apply" the sand. First I tried patting small patches but it kept slipping off. Then came a "throwing" or "splatting" technique, but that didn't get me anywhere either. I think what finally worked was grabbing a handful of sand, pretty much cupping the side of the cake, and smushing. Started at the top and worked my way down, and it's a bit uneven and splotchy, but hey - no sandcastle is perfect. Mmm, maybe I take that back.
Then time to accessorize. Iced and sanded my sugar cone turrets and made some sand dollars out of fondant. Joan also has these nifty white chocolate shells that I slightly airbrushed afterwards [there's a ton of nifty things around the shop]

Added a few more details:

And then scattered the shells, etc. in the excess sand around the base. You'll have to excuse the closet background, I'm planning on taking better pictures tomorrow before it goes out.
I had a good time with this one, I generally like beach-themed things so this cake was right up my alley. I think that sand castles are usually more crenellated based on the buckets and tools you use to make them, but obviously easier out of sand than cake and icing [though they do sell elaborate cake pans that make perfect castles]. Still, very fun and summery overall.

I am also really excited for this next cake. The story started a few weeks when a woman came in to request a fish cake for her son, but not just any fish. Her son is turning 5 and love loves anglerfish. Now of all cuddly creatures that a child could fall in love with, this boy likes a fish and more specifically one like this:
Yeah, that's a little terrifying. Especially when they go after little clown fish ... Anywho, last year the mother had a special stuffed animal made for the boy's birthday:
Aww that's better. And, the woman who made the stuffed animal is actually an architect who has this little creative business on the side. Hmm... So we'll be making a cake based on the stuffed animal and she brought it in so we could photograph it. Started with a big round cake and a small square one:
Cut off the sides of the round, stacked the square, added fins, and used the excess to shape it out:
Prepped with icing and set in the back to finish tomorrow:
Carving cakes is easily becoming one of my favorite things to do at the shop. To start with whatever Joan puts in front of me, it's like a puzzle to figure out which cuts to make and how to use each piece, and it always looks like a mess until it's prepped and iced. But I'm finding it is possible to fulfill most people's cake requests, no matter what they may be.

RAWR

2009-07-22T20:10:00.017-04:00

My new routine for going into the shop early in the week is to check in with Joan for any things I need to Google Image Search for the week, help attack the mounds of dirty pans from Baking Tuesdays, and review [read: decipher] the slips and lists for the week so I have a heads up for what's coming my way.

So the lists - there's two of them: the baking list and the decorating list, and all cakes need to go on both lists. I actually took an order this weekend by email [a new thing for the cake shop] and wrote out the cake slip, stapled on a picture that the customer had attached, and added it to the pile. "Did you add that to the baking list?" Joan asks. Uh, no? Guess I should... They baked most of the cakes for the week yesterday, but she'll check the list every night for new orders that come in, so I add what I'll need and she'll bake it tonight. "And is it on the decorating list?" That would be a negative. It's just as, if not more, important that each cake makes it onto the decorating list as well so that it gets, well, decorated. Example of this was last Saturday when Joan realized that a baby shower cake hadn't been decorated and was due to be picked up in 30 minutes [disclaimer: I had no part in this]. Luckily, the cakes had been baked and it's a baby bassinet design that she's done a million times so she whipped it out just before her deadline [though the customer picked it up later anyways]. But a reminder to all - put it on the listS.

So first cake was a simple 8" round that Joan gave me to swirl, based on one she had in her display cabinet. Added a ribbon, tag, and frosting flowers:

Then came the fun. The task was a 3D Tyrannosaurus Rex cake, with the Wonder cake and 3 stacked cupcakes for the head - very unusual. For guidance, Joan gave me a little toy T-Rex torso - awesome. The previous T-Rex cake from her book - not so much. Sure it looks like a dinosaur, but where's the T-Rex in him?! He needs the big head, short stubby arms, and the TEETH.
So started icing, adding limbs, and claws. Like most characters made with the Wonder pan, he suffers from T-Rex syndrome, but hey it's fitting this time, for obvious reasons.
Let's get a 360 view:Then came time for the folded cardboard mouth, kind of like putting in dentures. But he looks pretty duck-like...
Lots of dinosaurs out there, so again the question: cute or scary? He's a T-Rex so definitely go with scary. Maybe even a little Godzilla-like. The cardboard was great for propping the mouth open enough that I could add the tongue and teeth. At this point, I've been at the cake for awhile, Joan looks over, and I'm afraid that I've been taking too long but she goes, "He's so cute! Take a picture and we'll update the book!" So here it is, T-Rex v.2.0:

Some details:

And my favorite shot of the day:

So Wednesdays are great because they have become my play days. There's usually only a few cakes to work on, so I have some creative freedom before the stress of the weekend push. We have another T-Rex and roast pig to do for next week, so the hours that go into figuring them out for the first time will pay off because they'll go faster the next time around. Other cakes this week that I'm super-excited for are a sandcastle cake for a bridal shower [similar to this, but using crushed-up Nilla Wafers] and an anglerfish based on a boy's stuffed animal. But this one will definitely be cute, not scary.

saturday wrap-up

2009-07-18T22:58:00.009-04:00

Ahh what a week, tying up lots of loose ends today. There actually weren't too many crazy new cakes this week - instead we had 5 wedding cakes which involves a totally different system and workflow. Obviously, all the individual cakes get baked, then they need to get stacked into tiers [either with buttercream or sometimes fruit filling], prepped, iced, possibly covered in fondant, then each tier needs to be doweled and stacked - then it's usually passed off to me for the "decorating." The point is, I have some "down time" while all these other steps are getting done but there's plenty to do with answering the phone, checking out customers, covering cake boards, boxing cakes, finishing my Hannah Montana guitar:
Then I dotted another wedding cake - this time on a 3-tier ivory buttercream cake. See, you don't necessarily need fondant - the buttercream can look just as smooth!
Then I helped Joan prep these red velvet cakes for a wedding. I had made 2 red velvet cakes last Christmas and was curious about its origin. Basically, it's a chocolate cake that is dyed red for effect or sometimes naturally from an acidic reaction with some types of cocoa. Some say it originates from the South, there's also stories of bakers using beets to "enhance" their cakes during rations in WWII - check it out at Wikipedia. I'm sure you can make it from scratch but it's easier from the box, it tastes wonderful, and is suprising to the eye when cut from a pristine white wedding cake. Anyways, it's really difficult to prep - obviously the first layer of frosting is to catch all the cake crumbs so that they don't surface on the top layer of frosting but you have to be really careful with the spatula so you don't kick up any of the red spots - looks like a rash or tiny mites - yuck.
Joan was finishing up another graduation cake and asked me to write out a quick diploma to place on top. So I busted out the felt tip marker, performed some calligraphy, rolled it up, and voila:
I still remember one day in sixth grade when our teacher [Mrs. Nelson aka the Nelsonator] had our class of 11- to 12-year-olds spend a whole school day learning how to do calligraphy. I still have no idea why, but we did, she brought in the special flat-tip markers and everything. Anywho, I actually really enjoyed it, probably bought my own calligraphy kit, and have since been able to do it and it paid off today in a small way. Joan was impressed with my marker "swirly skills" [her words, not mine], so she allowed me to do the swirls [in icing] on the red velvet wedding cake:

Very cool, it went really quick and looks quite nice.

Well it was quite a long week, baking on Tuesday seems like ages ago. I had burned myself a few times taking all the pans out of the oven and they have now developed into some lovely welts on my arm. Working 5 days at the shop has run me down a bit [I know those of you who actually work 5 days a week every week are rolling your eyes at me right now] and I'm caked out. I'm off to NYC in the morning to visit Jess, take a break from Troy, maybe get a start on some thesis reading, and maybe even get back into some architecture? We shall see...

fashion knock-offs

2009-07-17T20:41:00.005-04:00

Last night was time for another friend's birthday cake. For Andrew, who is never without his plaid flannel, I used the T-shirt cake pan + sleeves to recreate his beloved shirt.

It's a lot of fun to imitate something real, like trying to figure out the plaid pattern as closely as possible, and then figuring how to do it in icing. I also did that for Jenna's ugly horse sweater cake a few months ago:
These replica cakes require a bit of stalking on my part to find pictures to work from or the actual thing itself, but in the end the recipients don't seem to mind. So watch out - if you have a distinctive item of clothing, you could be next.

seeing spots

2009-07-17T20:07:00.013-04:00

First task of the day was to assemble the gigantor wedding cake. Joan had already covered each tier in fondant, so we started with the bottom one - inserted a HUGE PVC pipe along with wooden dowels so it wouldn't blow out under the all the weight, then added each tier, alternating squares and circles, and then I added the ribbon. Definitely an interesting twist on a standard cake.
Then came the dotting. The whole thing took me 42 minutes, not counting the 5 minute breaks after each tier to get the feeling back in my hands. So how this works is that I roll a parchment triangle to form a bag, snip off the end, insert a metal tip, fill it with icing, roll up the bag, and used this to draw on dots, lines, shapes, etc. and this referred to as piping. I can't really get pictures of myself doing these steps [and I think it would freak Joan out if I asked to take pictures of her doing it] so I'll refer to my handy Google Images:
So as I'm dotting, my right hand rolls and tightly clutches the end of the bag so it pushes icing towards the tip and my left hand guides where it comes out on the cake and sort of "starts" and "stops" each dot. My right hand usually goes numb first. Anyways, here's a shot of the final cake:
While I was doing this, Joan finished up the square 3-tier grad cake from yesterday. The images are printed on edible paper [at PChop] and the colored borders represent the past high school and the future college. Square cakes are a pain in the butt [in buttercream or fondant] because they're harder to make smooth, plumb, right-angled, perpendicular, straight, etc. In the end, the borders and other details usually hide the fact that everything isn't perfect. Ceramic baseball hat on top, felt '09' topper, and fondant stars.
THEN I got to do ... what else? The dots around the rest of this cake.
Lots of wedding cakes this week - 5 in total. Next up was a 7 PIECE cake - 3 get tiered together and then 2 sets of 2 are next to it, connected by crystal bridges. Something like this [but with no people on it].
Joan had done all the orange + white frilly borders on all the pieces so it was my job to apply the little flowers, flower centers, and leaves.
Final part of this project was making a fondant label with the couple's name to put on one of the tiers. I decided to cut it from a pattern, write on it flat [rather than having one shot to try writing it directly on the upright cake], and stick the fondant on. Practiced my penmanship on parchment a few times, wrote it out, carefully stuck it on, added a border, voila:
All these pieces get delivered to the reception hall and assembled there, so unfortunately no pictures of the final masterpiece but I'm sure it was beautiful, such bright colors!

And who wouldn't want to end off their day with a little Hannah Montana? Carved out her pink guitar, but it is only about 15-20 servings so it was cut out of a 7"x11" cake. Added some details, will finish it up and add guitar strings tomorrow, etc. Ok, I'm almost tired of cakes for the week, but we're actually pretty ahead of schedule so tomorrow shouldn't be too bad.

give a girl a fish cake...

2009-07-16T23:12:00.012-04:00

So first was the fish cake that I carved from a sheet cake yesterday. In my head, I saw how how carving all the corners away from the rectangular cake could then be sliced in half to make symmetrical tail pieces and appropriate fin parts, perfect. Prepped it and this morning I iced it according to a couple of fish magazine cut-outs that Joan had lying around. Spread on some icing and when you hot-knife it, it leaves a nice gradient effect.

I didn't know if I was supposed to make it realistic or cartoon-y so it's kind of a mix of both.

Fish eye [not too creepy], fish fin, and of course bubbles.

And some of the other projects from yesterday. First, the simple modern cake [think minimalistic ribbon on a package, without a bow of course]:

And my big fondant baby:

Another one from today - this woman wanted lots of pink, the number 11, and something with silver dragees, which are the edible metallic balls. We went through several ideas - scattering them on the 11 [like sparkles], putting them down the middle of each number, outlining them, etc. I finally went with creating a "drop shadow" effect and it looks pretty cool. Set each one in place with a pair of tweezers but didn't take too long.

Add a fondant tag, border, and flowers:

And voila:

To be decorated tomorrow, a 3-tier square graduation cake:

And a 4-tier 250+ serving wedding cake with my oh-so-favorite Swiss dots. I think I need to stop typing now so my hands can prepare for the torture.

wednesday

2009-07-15T21:33:00.005-04:00

Forgot my camera at the shop tonight so no pictures, but that's ok because we basically spent all day covering boards and prepping cakes for the week, so nothing too exciting yet. Though I did carve a pretty awesome fish cake. And decorated a simple, modern cake consisting of merely 4 continuous straight lines, the words' Happy Birthday' in legible handwriting, and a shell border that looks mostly the same all the way around - all in under 10 minutes [Joan was impressed too]. And I made a big-fondant-sleeping-baby-on-a-blanket-cake-topper today to go along with the baby-face cupcakes. It's about the size of my fist and is pretty darn cute. If architecture doesn't work out and cake-making falls through, maybe I'll try my hand at Claymation.

wrapper's delight

2009-07-14T21:27:00.008-04:00

Today I went in to help with the baking and prep work for the week. A nice, relatively cool day - perfect for having the oven on for hours and hours. Joan had organized her cake orders for the week and had the ultimate list of all the cakes that needed to be baked - by flavor, by pan shape and size, quantity, special instructions, etc. There were going to be so many yellow cakes that she actually mixed up batter in the huge mixer that usually makes 67 pounds of icing, that's a lot of cake. Then she fills up the cake pans, loads them on trays, puts them into the industrial oven, and sets an array of timers set to go off at different times for different size pans. It's quite a spectacle to watch but she definitely has the routine down by now.

So my job consisted of taking the cakes out of the oven, carrying them to the back room, flipping them out of the pans, and covering each in Saran Wrap and loading them in the cooler. This way, the Saran shrink-wraps to the cakes and prevents contact w/ the air so they stay fresh. Definitely got faster as the day went on which is good because we baked 70 CAKES today. The back room smelled delicious at first, but as the day went on it smelled a bit like melting plastic because the Saran goes on the cakes right after they come out of the oven and yeahhh. And it takes big Saran wrap to cover big cakes.

In between running back and forth from the oven to the cooler, I was tasked with cleaning out out old bags and tips of icing, washing some of the million pans we used, lining cupcake pans for the dozens of cupcakes we'll bake tomorrow, and making babies ...

ah whhhha?

Joan had an order for cupcakes topped with these fondant cuties for a baby shower but was running low, so I cranked out some more ["and make a few extra!"]. Faces are drawn on with edible marker and I find the little bald boys look a bit like Charlie Brown.

So the cakes are baked and wrapped and ready to go for the rest of the week. Off to the Harry Potter midnight premiere in a bit, wooohoooo.

can I graduate

2009-07-13T09:32:00.009-04:00

and now one of my own - a cake for a friend's sister's high school graduation party, loosely based on some of Joan's graduation cakes with a few of my own ideas. I gave in and bought mini Wonder cake pans to do a grad cap, on top of 3 x 10" round cakes for the bottom layer and 2 x 6" cakes for the top tier, posterboard for the mortarboard and tassel.

takin' care of business

2009-07-11T20:16:00.036-04:00

Where to even begin?! Saturdays are always crazy, always the most exciting, rewarding, and stressful days. I go in early to help finish up cakes that are going out later that day, box up other cakes, help customers that show up at 10 o'clock on the dot to pick up cakes, etc. Lots of my cakes were picked up today including Tink, My Little Pony, the race cars, and most importantly - all the luau pieces. Everyone seemed genuinely happy with their cakes so it does feel quite rewarding.

Ugh, my camera though. Won't turn on even though I charged the battery, switched the memory card, cleaned the sensors. I brought my old point-and-shoot to the cake shop to get pictures today and the AA batteries died after 2 pictures. Great. So then I resorted to Joan's camera again, but even her batteries started to run low. Really out of luck in the electronics department today I guess. There was a moment when I realized that without any cameras, I may not get any pictures of the awesome cakes we were going to do today, especially since it's end of the week and all cakes would be out the door in the next 12 hours. But Joan's camera pulled through, for today. Anyways, onto the cakes:

So, even though today was Saturday, I think it's time for a lesson I've learned about good business cakes and bad business cakes. So grab a cup of coffee, a beer, whatever floats your boat, and get ready to learn:

For the most part, the price is determined by the size of the cake and the # of servings it will produce [we'll call this the volume]. Then, there's the issue of time and labor involved with cakes and I've decided that this can be related to the idea of surface area in architecture: the "efficiency" of building depends on the amount of surface area exposed to the environment - the more area that is exposed, the more easily the building is affected by the sun, wind, etc and the lower the efficiency. Here is a great explanation of Surface Area to Volume, when it comes to buildings...and cakes. The bakers take care of producing the volume of the cake and as a decorator, I am responsible for making every square centimeter of the outside of these cakes look awesome. No pressure right?

So, let's start off with numero uno:

NAME: Weddings cakes
VOLUME: Sure, there is a lot of cake in there - this one is 175+ servings. The bottom layer is 2 x 3"high x 14"diameter round cakes, followed by 2 x 3" x 12", 2 x 3" x 10", and 2 x 3" x 8" cakes with buttercream in between each layer of each tier. So figure the material cost of that volume.
SURFACE AREA: Ok, surface area - 4 tiers covered in buttercream and then covered in ivory fondant. That's a pretty price there too. And the cost of cake boards and dowels in all the tiers. Labor-wise, maybe a few hours.
OTHER: Well there's the 'Fondant + Humidity = Lots of Stress + Swearing' factor because it's hard enough to roll out large and smooth, and almost nearly impossible in the summer weather. And there's also the 'Pressure Coefficient' because these need to be the cleanest and pristinest of all the cakes that go out the door. But in the end, the cakes are repeated almost every week so this helps speed up the process [I've already done 4-5 dotted wedding cakes and I must say, I'm getting much better].
PROFIT: Considering that fondant cakes go at $3.75/serving, you can figure for yourself what this will cost...

BOTTOM LINE: $$$$ / 5

Next up, let's look at another case:

NAME: Cupcakes
VOLUME: Cupcakes are great because they are pre-sized, individually-packed servings. There's no arguing how many servings you're getting, because you are clearly getting one cupcake per person. They still suck up quite a good amount of batter, but there's no structure / dowels / boards to consider [though you do have to account for the tin papers. whatever].
SURFACE AREA: Ok, even though you've taken the concept of a 'cake' and broken into lots of little pieces, surface area is still minimal because I am only responsible for decorating the top of each cupcake [duh]. All it takes is mixing up the right shade of icing, loading a bag, and swirling perfection onto each cupcake. The 30 cupcakes in the picture above took me about 15 mins from start to finish.
OTHER: Then again, some cupcakes involve more detail or in other cases, they can become excrutiating painful in mass quantities. And this is not taking into account the Frosting Flower Factor, because the hours she spends on these beautiful cupcakes raises both the price and the customer's level of happiness.
PROFIT: Not bad.

BOTTOM LINE: $$$

And finally, the cakes that I get to do most of the time:
NAME: Novelty Cakes
VOLUME: Varies, but they usually start out as basic round or sheet cakes [based on the chart of how many people it will serve], and end up being carved and shaped to resemble something else. These particular dragon cakes were only meant to serve 10 people each, so I only had an 8" round cake each to work with.
SURFACE AREA: By carving and re-building these cakes, they become more complex than the average cake and in most cases, there is all of a sudden more cake [surface area, not volume!] that I'm accountable for. For example, these dragon cakes started out as a round cake, cut in half, and stood upright side-by-side to form the body and then a cupcake for each head:

OTHER: So there's the time it takes to arrange and shape the cake so that it somewhat resembles what it's supposed to look like. About half of the time I am working from a picture in the book but the other half of the time, however, I am usually figuring it all out on my own. With these dragon cakes for example, I worked from images I had found online [she hadn't done any like these before] and quickly worked to make the globby masses look reptilian.

Then, there's the fact that these novelty cakes are usually something iconic, familiar, or at least recognizable. So there's the pressure not to screw it up so badly that it ends up on Cake Wrecks. For example, these cakes looked like iguanas at first, so I tried to make them more dragon-like with the details, scales texture, spikes, tendrils, anything!

They turned out alright, though now they look more like dinosaurs than dragons. Next time our dragons will have wings.
PROFIT: As you can tell, considering the time and labor is > than the material cost with these cakes and in my opinion, it's really hard to balance making a profit and making the cakes look really good. Again, that's where skill and efficiency come in so I need to always be better and faster.

BOTTOM LINE: $ or 0 or -$

Let's end off the day with a happy story. So it's 3:30 and there's one more cake for the weekend. We're and I are going to team up to get it done faster. It will be a large sheet cake covered in fondant to resemble a doctor's uniform like the image below.She tackles the big pieces of fondant for the blue shirt and collar and the white lab coat and lapels, while I do all the small fondant details including the pen, pocket, nametag, tie, and stethoscope [yayyy for metallic silver airbrushing]. It's just like working with clay - rolling, cutting, etc. And yes that is a fondant Bic Stic pen on the right.

The doctor gets dressed and ready for work:

In the end, it looks awesome and just like the one in the picture.

I mean, there's a lot of cake in there [60 servings] and quite a bit of fondant, but together, we got it done in just under 2 hours.

Ok, I'm exhausted and am done for now. Val is actually off next week so I am going in on Tuesday to help Joan bake all the cakes. She said to wearing running shoes because I will literally be wrapping cakes in Saran and running them back to the cooler ... should be interesting... But in the meantime, it is time to work on Chelsea's sister's graduation party cake, watch old Harry Potter movies on television [in anticipation of the Half Blood Prince premiere this week, of course], and pour myself a glass of wine. Ciao!

fruitcakes

2009-07-10T21:11:00.017-04:00

So today turns out to be a beautiful, gorgeous, perfect summer day! But I have to go to work. But it's ok, because my first task is the Hawaiian fruit which I'm pretty excited about. But then my camera doesn't turn on [even though yes, the battery is charged and I had just uploaded photos last night] so I'm worried I won't get process pictures of these cakes. But it's ok, I can use her camera. But then it's only a point and shoot camera, and the 'macro' setting doesn't work so the pictures don't really capture all the detail and close-ups. And so begins my day.

Making cakes look like food turns out to be really fun. Nothing has to be too too neat and the colors, textures, and techinques are interesting. For the pineapple, first covered it in green, then mixed various shades of yellow, gold, brown, and green, loaded them together into a bag w/ a star tip and squeezed pineapple leaves all around. Looks a bit poofy, but pretty realistic.

Next up, watermelon. Working from some lovely Google Images of watermelon, I mixed up the right shade of hot pink, spread it on, added white and green for the rind, and hot-knifed it smooth. The hot knife sort of acts like a soldering iron and melts the icing a bit, making the colors run together which is perfect. Melonized the slices and the half, placed them on the cake board, carefully lowered the pineapple in place as well. All in place, but still a bit bare.

Added the hardened fondant watermelon seeds and the frosted posterboard pineapple leaves, and arranged some frosting flowers like a lei.

An aerial view:

Not bad for 6 hours of work in total from carving and prepping to icing and decorating all of this. And this has probably been one of my favorite cakes / projects so far.

And finally, a rear view:

We left parts of the cakeboard empty so the woman can place her 50 cupcakes around the fruit cakes as well. Cupcakes:

Nah, just kidding, those wouldn't do at all. Here they are:

So that was that. Then I took a wedding cake [based on the black and white one in the photo but in a more summery peach color scheme] , added French dots in buttercream on the top layer and more dots on the bottom, then my favorite fondant circles in there also. Finally a ball border in buttercream and frosting flowers on top. Pretty!

Spent the rest of the afternoon working another book / hat combo grad cake in blue and white. You've seen it before but maybe I'll add pictures of the complete cake tomorrow. Speaking of which, I need to investigate that camera of mine...

another day, another Tink, another one bites the dust...

2009-07-09T21:54:00.028-04:00

Another day, another step towards completing the Hawaiian centerpiece, but not there yet. We had baked these 3 cakes for the pineapple:

However, after beginning to build them up, we realized that just 2 were really needed to make a life-size pineapple so carved away at the top and prepped it:

Then onto the watermelon. The melon halves, made from a simple round cake. And the half melon, made with the always-wonderful-Wonder cake pan turned on its side.

Hmm, we've observed the infinite cartoon characters that can be done with the Wonder cake pan sitting upright, but turning it on its side opens up a whole new world of possibilities:

Sure, this cake will be a melon. But you could also have a floodlight, an umbrella, maybe a spinning top? Or you can square it off for a dreidel. Maybe stick with the holiday theme and build a Thanksgiving cornucopia? Hmmm, perhaps I shall buy this cake pan next... I have seen them at Michael's and A.C.Moore stores and they actually market them as the dress pans for doll cakes. It looks like our family did own one at one point, my 4th birthday cake, by Mom:

Ok, to get back on track, so to speak, back to the food-coloring-less race car cake. Iced the cake white and added the track which is all posterboard and cardboard and and can be removed. The woman brought in the little toy cars this morning so applied those as well.

And Joan extracted these perfect checkered flags from the organized clutter, so I arranged these, and done! I'm happy with how fun it came out in the end.

Then a "quick" My Little Pony cake - half based on the photo in Joan's book and half based on the birthday girl's party napkin.
Joan gave me the cake already iced and outlined, so I made 3 lovely shades of pink, put them all into one bag and piped on the fluorescent tail and mane.

Added some cute flower and heart details, and one freakishly large eye...

and finito --

And finally, another day, another Tink. First of all, the customer had brought in their own napkins, invitations, and plates with Tinkerbell all over it. Joan sees them and goes, "Oh look, her eyes are so pretty. They really sparkle." I had read somewhere that Disney had given many of their characters a "makeover" so they would look modern on new DVD releases, packaging, merchandise, etc. But it's just funny to see the side-by-side difference. Oh what a difference 50+ years can make:

If you want true [read: expensive] art, you'll probably have to go somewhere else if you want your Tink to look like the one on the right. If you have me do it, it might look like the one on the left. If you're lucky:

Ahh, so a new pose.

Oops [splashed while airbrushing]

Oops [her face, got eyeliner?]

Oops [Tink lost her fashion sense but is ready to do hand shadow puppets]

Oh well. Add a border, some flowers, some sparkles and we're good to go.

And on the topic of beloved childhood characters and their portrayal as cakes, go to today's hilarious Cake Wrecks post about potential copyright infringements.... G'night!

who can it be now?

2009-07-08T17:47:00.013-04:00

The week started off with another 3D character cake with the ever-versatile Wonder cake pan. Joan says besides all the round cake pans she uses for tiered and wedding cakes, this is probably her most commonly used cake pan and I've said it before - it can make anything from superheroes to cuddly Sesame Street characters. So what / who will it be this time? Darth Vader? Minnie Mouse or an elephant? Mickey Mouse? Elmo or a teddy bear? a penguin? or will it be someone totally new this time?! While you ponder that over, here's a rundown of the rest of the day:

So Joan said the woman loved loved LOVED her roast pig from last week and as they were bringing it out, another customer came in to pick up their own cake, saw the pig, and said they were going to have to host their own pig roast just so they could order a cake like that. So it was a success, she can now add it to her catalog of show cakes, and I'll probably have another one to do by the end of the summer.

Next was starting a racetrack cake for a little boy. His mom is going to bring in some Matchbox cars to put on top, but the boy is allergic to food colorings so we can't use any coloring paste, airbrushing or anything on the cake or frosting so it will just be a big sheet cake iced in white. We'll make some accessories out of posterboard that can be removed before the kids eat it. Today I just cut out the racetrack and iced it black, tomorrow we'll add some more details, checkered flags, etc. Hopefully we can make it exciting and fun despite the restrictions.

A few weeks ago, a woman came in to discuss a Hawaiian themed centerpiece for a big luau she's hosting. She wanted a pineapple of some sort, other fruit, and lots of colored flowers so I actually sat down with her and sketched out some ideas. We boiled it down to a "3D pineapple" cake, a "half a watermelon" cake, and frosting flowers arranged on a board and then 50 cupcakes w/ frosting hibiscus flowers on top. It's a pretty ambitious and potentially time-consuming project so today I started on some of the non-edibles like the fronds [cut out of posterboard, curled, and covered in green icing] that will get stuck into the pineapple cake:

And then using chocolate fondant to make seeds for the watermelon. After getting into a pattern [roll small ball of fondant in palm, elongate, gently squish with fingers], they only took me about 10 seconds each to make so this went by quickly. They look so real, are completely edible, and will harden so they'll be easy to work with when I apply them on Saturday.

Now, did you guess the Wonder cake?

Tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff?

He's Winnie-the-Pooh. Winnie-the-Pooh. Willy, nilly, silly, old bear.

Here's the progression of Pooh. I iced the face with a spatula, then piped big cheeks on and smoothed, added a dowel for the icing of the nose to "sit" on and around, tried to smooth that out, and added the other details.

To add his shirt on top, I drew it in with a skewer, piped the outline in red a few times [it doesn't have to be too too neat], then filled in the rest and smoothed.

and of course Pooh needs his hunny:

Tune in tomorrow for more on the racetrack, the Hawaiian luau extravaganza, and ... another TINKERBELL.

july, july!

2009-07-07T12:57:00.013-04:00

well had a great weekend home full of fireworks, family + friends, FOOD, and Food Network Challenges. Also got to kayak, relax at the beach and enjoy the sun, finally do a crossword (!), and our team won 3rd place at Trivia Night. A few cakes in there too:

First, back in Troy, celebrating Christine's birthday with a mushroom / woods scene dedicated to her morel-mushroom-hunting adventures in Michigan.

and then, I was in Troy for Mom's actual birthday and she said that she didn't really need a cake from me when I came home, if it was going to be too much time or effort. But she never said anything about Sydney...

and trying to get Sydney to pose, first laying down, trying to eat it, and got it.

piggin' out

2009-07-03T23:12:00.013-04:00

First off, here's an awesome 4th cake that Joan did yesterday at the shop:

It came out so well and is really vibrant! She said the humidity made the fondant a pain to work with, and as much as I would love to say that I worked on this cake, I'm rather glad that I didn't have to cut out those stars.

Last week we received a call from a woman in Alabama who was coming up to New York for a big Hawaiian-luau-themed BBQ for the 4th of July weekend and was wondering if we could do a pig roast cake. She had seen this image from the Cake Engineer and wanted something similar, so that was my big task of the day. The following images aren't gruesome or gory by any means, but it is a little bit of a morbid cake. **Let it be known that no animals were harmed in the making of this cake.**

Started out with a flat sheet cake [as always], designated chunks for the body and the head, then started to layer and add appendages.

Then I channeled my inner Bernini and began to carve and sculpt until slllooooowwwwllllyyyy it became more pig-like, though pretty freaky-looking. It just reminds me of the evil pig characters from Sleeping Beauty or even worse - the pig mask from SAW. So I crumb-coated it, frosted it again, then Joan draped it with a large piece of ivory fondant and I set to work smoothing it over the cake, shaping around the arms, wedging it in the crevices for definition, etc. It was great because the fondant didn't have to be perfectly smooth and pristine like for a wedding cake; in fact, the more wrinkly and cracked it was - the more realistic. Shaped the snout, "nostrils," added fondant ears.

Next I got to do my new favorite thing - airbrush! Started out with black for shading around the bottom and joints, then went over in brown, and in the end it surprisingly looks like a turkey out of the oven.

Added a quick fondant apple for the mouth, and done. I think she'll really like it when she picks it up tomorrow.

This took about 3 hours and Joan said I really "whipped through that cake" so she is clearly used to me taking twice as long as necessary. Then I dotted another wedding cake like a few weeks ago.

Final project of the day and week was a golf bag for a 50th birthday. Joan had already shaped and prepped, so I frosted it blue, added trim and zippers, and piped the golf clubs.

The woman said her husband had a bunch of animal golf club head covers, so could we do a chicken one on one of the clubs? Well Joan didn't have any pictures of chickens lying around, so the guy got a rooster instead. More masculine anyways, right? I think that little guy is my favorite part of the whole cake. Then a fondant golf ball which I stippled for the typical golf ball texture.

And money shot:

Ok that's it for me, have a nice 4th of July weekend!

the gallery is up

2009-07-01T23:31:00.006-04:00

p.s. the Threadcakes gallery is now live. Right now, I have Alphabet Zoo in the [2D], maybe some 3D to come shortly ...? Check out all of these awesome cakes:

out-of-proportion and wide-eyed and disfigured is he!

2009-07-01T22:22:00.023-04:00

Today Joan showed me the baking + decorating list for the week and it was only one side of one sheet of paper. Not double-sided and multiple pages as usual. There's only one wedding cake, a few simple ones that she can whip through on her own, and 1 or 2 special 4th of July cakes that I'll help with. So day off tomorrow from the chateau [though I have a few projects of my own], back on Friday, and off for the 4th.

The day kicks off with another Spongebob, though this time the customer has brought in a photo of an upright Spongebob she found online. And Gary the Snail is along for the celebration this time also. These are the images and cakes Joan handed me to go with:

So I ice the 2 layers together, turn "Spongebob" upright, prep, hoist him onto the base cake. At this angle and these proportions, it looks more like a toaster than Spongebob [though ironically, they do sell those]. This is when I realize that this Spongebob is going to be a little wideset, thicker, and stouter than the little sponge we all know and love. Oh well, this version is more sturdy [plus he's sitting on a cakeboard supported by straws in the base cake and there's diagonal dowels running through the 2 cakes of his body].

Now is when I might post zoomed-in pictures to show the crispness and level of detail we achieved. Mmm not the case this time. Turns out drawing and icing when the figure is upright is much more difficult than when it's lying flat [think hairstylist or makeup artist rather than surgeon]. It felt more awkward and not as controlled. Below, on the left, it may appear that Gary has been flattened, when in fact he has yet to appear in full form. In the middle, you can see Spongebob's face that seems to be accidentally have been scaled horizontally... and he has really big irises? Finally, on the right [my favorite], while one of his hands turned out decent, it looks like his other hand got caught in some machinery or something. Frankenbob anybody? [they sell those too] So while these may be the lyrics for the true Spongebob theme song, I feel the title of this blog post is more appropo for this Spongebob...

Next, moving onto Gary, we thought to use straws for the antennae [?] and fondant balls for the eyes. So the progression:

Now for anyone who doesn't know, eyes make me very squeamish so I'm surprised I even took this picture:

**SHUDDER**
moving on...

Putting it all together, adding Gary's shell and details, and voila! Not perfect, but done - and that's the best part!

Next and last cake of the day ... another Tinkerbell! We all know I've struggled with her in the past on multiple occasions, but this was the chance to attempt a different pose:

Well, faster and better than usual. And at least she looks lean, feminine, and fairy-like this time. The face still gave me trouble, so I wiped it clean and Joan will show me her techniques when I go in again on Friday. So until then ...