A Stunning Wedding in July

I was asked a while ago (I think in January) by a friend of mine if I could do her wedding cake.  I of course said 'yes', I love doing wedding cakes!  We talked extensively via email, and as the day drew nearer, we met in person to go over flowers, colors, etc....  I brought some of my flowers to show her and we decided on the type of flowers (dendrobium orchids and tea cup roses) and the colors (teal-ish orchids and pink-ish roses).

So, I set about making the flowers.  The dendrobium orchids weren't so bad, I had the cutters for them and made the flowers.

I also made the tea cup roses, but unfortunately didn't take any pictures of them, lol.  I ended up using a wire with a floral tape bud on the end of it and the smallest 5 petal cutter in the PME cutter set.  Next time, I would use a slightly larger floral tape bud than the one that I used, but they turned out gorgeous!

After they were all dry, I dusted them.  The orchids were dusted on the edges with a teal blue, and the roses with a pale pink.







Here's a close up of the top of the cake - you can see the dusted tea cup roses and dendrobium orchids:

I taped the flowers into a long lei-type vine and draped them around the cake, starting at the top.  There were also smaller accent cakes that went with the big one.  Those got a small spray of one orchid and one tea cup rose.  For the sprays, I used some white and teal 1/8" ribbon and made some cute loops and taped them with the flowers.

Here is one of the smaller accent cakes:

The main cake was three layers, with alternating ribbon patterns around the bottom of the cakes.  The bride requested real ribbon, so that's what I used.  I took the color sample with me to the craft store, and luckily found the right color first shot!

I had wanted to elevate the main wedding cake and kind of have the accent cakes almost "under" the main cake.  I started thinking on how I could do that.  I ended up taking two 10" styrofoam round cake dummies, taped them together to get a height of 8".  I then draped some white satin material over them, followed by some sparkly teal fabric that I happened to have laying around the house (amazing, isn't it?  lol).

Here are some pictures of the finished cake and table all set up:

Let me tell you....as a cake decorator....it's pretty tough to impress yourself with a cake you've done.  Believe when I say, I finished the cake table, put my stuff away and grabbed my camera.  I turned around to take a picture and was absolutely STUNNED at how gorgeous the cake and table looked!

The last two pictures (and the one of the top of the cake earlier in the post) were sent to me by the bride.  It was so bright outside that day, that my camera just didn't take very nice pictures.  In her email with the pictures she also thanked me.  With her permission I am sharing what she wrote.  It just makes me, as a cake decorator, love what I do so much more when I get thanks like this from someone!

Thank you so much for everything you did! The cake was PERFECT! And there wasn't a single complaint from the peanut gallery. The fondant, icing, and all the cakes tasted fantastic! It was so pretty, I just couldn't have pictured it differently. If you didn't know the flowers were sugar, you wouldn't be able to tell till you touched them. Unbelievable.

So, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you thank you thank you so much for everything.

 ~Chelle

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

When you hear the words "Mother's Day" in conjunction with 'cake', if evoked images of flowery cakes and whatnot (at least it does to me).  Well, I asked my mom what kind of cake and decorating she'd like for Mother's Day.  She is a very easy person to please most of the time.  Her absolute favorite cake in the entire world is a yellow cake mix (undoctored) with Betty Crocker Milk Chocolate frosting on it.

Well...........how can you NOT give your mom what she wants for Mother's Day?!?!?!?!?!

Here's her cake!

She love it, and that's all that matters!  (even though, secretly, it KILLED me to frost with canned frosting!)

~Chelle

Christening Dresses

One of my best friends had her daughter's Christening in June.  She asked if I would make her cake, and I of course said yes!  I was also asked to be her Godmother!  I am sooooo excited!!!!

We talked about cake ideas, and settled on one that looked like her Christening dress.  I baked sheet cakes for the basic dress, then carved the cakes to get a dress shape.  The cake was white cake with a raspberry filling.  I mixed Polaner All Fruit Raspberry into my regular buttercream recipe for the filling - it was sooooooooo delicious!!!!!!!!!

I put the cake together, covered it in fondant and dusted to look like the dress.  It needed something else, so I added some of my leftover flowers from a previous competition to the cake.  They were just what it needed!

Here are pictures of the finished cake:

~Chelle

Ahoy Matey!!!!!!!

I was asked to do a Pirate-themed birthday cake....a pirate ship if I could swing it.  So...I went off to iParty to see what type of pirate-y things they had (Yes, I think I made up a word there, lol).  I found a package of pirate things (skeletons, cannons, treasure box, barrells, etc..) and also some individual pirates.  So I bought an assortment and headed home.

I ended up using the small oval Wilton pans for the ship, since it did not need to feed a lot of people.  I baked, cooled and stacked the cake, then cut/carved them into a ship shape.  Buttercream was requested (rather than fondant), so I did an interpretation of the basket weave method of piping.  I then placed the pirate items around the ship.  Since pirate ships don't reside on land, I colored some piping get blue and spread it around the cake to resemble water.  I put some skeletons in the water, as well as a rowboat with the treasure in it!

The recipient LOVED the cake!!!!  Here are some pictures of the finished cake:

~Chelle

Flower Cupcakes

Since we did not attend the baby shower for our friend's daughter, we decided to throw a small "Grandma Shower" for our friend.  We had been meeting pretty regularly for lunches, so for one of them, we decided it would be a shower, lol.

Rather than make a cake for only 5 of us, I decided instead to do some cupcakes.  I used purple and piped a generic flower on it, and then piped some leaves on it.   I found some cute basket-type cupcake papers at a local cake store.  The handles didn't really end up looking that nice, so I just used the wrapper part.

~Chelle

Baby Shower "Cake"

Did you notice the "" around the word Cake in the title?   Well......there's a very good reason for that.  CakeCrazy and I decided to surprise our friend and show up the morning of the baby shower to help set up and everything.  We knew if we told her, she'd tell us not to come to help.  So, we decided to just show up, lol.

We didn't want to show up empty-handed, and wanted to get something for the mom-to-be.

We decided....since we are cake artists, why not a Diaper Cake!

We went out shopping to get the necessary supplies, then headed back to Cake Crazy's house to put it together.

We first had rolled all the diapers into cylinders, and held them together with hair elastics:

We then used a bottle as the center and 41 diapers surrounding it to make up the bottom layer.  The middle layer consisted of 21 diapers and the top layer had 7 diapers around another bottle.

Cake Crazy had some plastic trays, and I had some tuk-n-ruffle (stop gagging! lol), so we created a pretty plate to put the diaper cake on:

We tried to be create with the items we had purchased.  For instance....Cake crazy figured out how to fold and roll some socks into roses and green ribbon into leaves!

Here is the final cake that we came up with:

~Chelle

Baby Shower Corsages

A good friend (we'll call her CakeCrazy) and I have a friend that was throwing a baby shower for her daughter.  We offered to help with whatever she needed, and I was asked to make some corsages for the mom-to-be and the grandmothers.

She didn't really have a preference of flowers, and since I had some leftover roses and hydrangeas, I asked if those would be fine.  She said sure!  She did say the color theme was purple - the mom-to-be doesn't like pink. 

So, I went home, dug out the roses and hydrangeas and all of my purple dusting colors.

I know it looks like a lot, but after taking a wonderfully fabulous dusting class from Ruth Rickey I have learned the magic secret to getting lifelike colored flowers (hint: layering!)  So, I started with pale blue hydrangeas (hey, it's what I had, lol!), and layered on each purple color, using the darkest on only the edges.

Here's the progression of colors at each stage:

I also used some of the paler shades and dusted the rose a pale lavendar.  I had some purple toulle I found, as well as some purple gingham ribbon and a fabulous sparkly purple butterfly that CakeCrazy gave me to use!  I put them all together and came up with this:

I was nice, but it still needed something.  I send the picture to Cake Crazy and gave her a call to toss around some ideas.  Her first suggestion was it needed green.  She had also given me a baby items mold, and we thought that a few of those items would look cute sticking out the top of the corsage.  So, I went ahead and followed her suggestions.

I had some leaves that were leftover, so I dusted them (yes, multiple shades of greens and other colors) and put them together with the flowers.  I also made some baby booties and baby bottles and added those to the corsages:

Now they looked fabulous!!!!!!!!

Here's a close-up of the flowers:

Here's a close-up of the baby items and leaves:

Finally, here are all three together:

Our friend did not see them until they were all completed.  She absolutely loved them!!!   That's the best compliment a cake/sugar artist can ask for!

~Chelle

Armed Forces Day

Here is the post you've all been eagerly waiting for!!!!   Pictures of the finished cake that I entered at the Great American Cake Show in Westminster Maryland back in the beginning of May.

The cake was not assembled prior to transporting it to Maryland.  Not because I didn't think it would make it, but rather because I ran out of time, lol!  Also because I suck at arranging flowers, and needed the advice of some good friends that were at the show with me.

So..........without further ado, here it is, in all it's glory!

I'm sure you're all asking yourselves one question...."Well....how did the cake do???"  Fortunately for you, I'll tell you, lol!

The awards ceremony for the show is held on the last day of the show, at about 4pm.  They go through all the divisional awards, and then they do the Wedding Cake Division.  They only announce the top 10 wedding cakes (there were about 50-70 this year). 

As they were going through the cakes (from 10 to 1), the closer they kept getting to 1, the less chance I figured that my cake was in the top 10.  Definitely by the time they got to 6th place, I had pretty much convinced myself that I didn't get in the top 10 this year.  I've always said I would be happy to be in the top 10, I seriously don't think I've ever win 1st place, the other competitors are just too good.  Well...........they called 5th place and THEY CALLED MY NAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I was so stunned I actually screamed!  Oh yes I did!  My friends congratulated me and I was on cloud nine!  I think I was still on it after I got home from the show, lol.  My friend's took this picture shortly after they called my name:

So, needless to day, the show was a great success, lol!  

~Chelle

I have not given up!! :)

Hello Everyone!  I know....it's been a long time (a REALLY long time) since I posted, and I left you all hanging about the cake I was doing for Great American Cake Show in Westminster Maryland.  What can I say......life happens, lol!

I am working to post the rest of the information about the cake, as well as cakes I've done since then.

Stay tuned!

~Chelle