Art on a cake

I had a different kind of request a few weeks ago.

The client who contacted me was requesting a cake for her grandfather's 100th birthday- which I though was pretty cool. That's when it got, well, strange. She proceeded to tell me her grandfather had passed away a few years ago. Hmmmm. This had my curiosity!

She then told me the story of her grandfather- who was an artist. A sculptor to be exact. She wondered whether I could do a cake with that in mind. Then she forwarded me a few pictures and I was astounded! He was not only a sculptor, but of marble. Large women and men carved by her grandfather's hand are scattered all over St Louis MO.

The time line I had to work on this cake was short, so she gave me a design to work with. I managed to put it on the cake with royal icing, which took nearly 5 hrs to pipe!
I love the finished product and think it is awesome that this man made such an impact, reaching out and loving his family, that they decided to honor him even after he is gone. (They traveled with cake in tow to St Louis and spent the weekend touring his works!)

An exciting weekend

In case you haven't noticed, the world of cakes is becoming VERY popular these days. All the good channels have at least 1 cake show on.
This results in a few things:
#1- More people are getting interested in having a custom cake and awesome creation at their event. Never have more people known what can be accomplished with cake, and never before have people realized that a great cake is KEY to a great party. (My humble opinion!)


#2- More people are finding and calling people like me to create the cakes they see made on these shows. This can be both good and bad. The good part is listed in #1, the bad however, is that many people WANT awesome cakes, but aren't interested in spending money. We call it the Walmart budget in the cake biz.
I am happy to work with people on a budget, however, to do SUPER fantastic things it takes special supplies that can be expensive, the knowledge on how to use them properly, and TIME. LOTS of it! TV doesn't tell you the price of these,nor how much time actually goes into them.
For instance, Duff Goldman's cake START at $1000.00. Anything you see on Ace of Cakes cost AT LEAST that.

#3- More people are recognizing the art of all things sugar, and are wanting to learn themselves. (See link below for great learning tools!)

#4- Cake people are getting famous! Their are SO many talented, wonderful amazing decorators out there- and this is their day (Or year, or however long the high lasts.)

Which brings me to my post. This weekend I had the chance to attend a cake conference. It was fantastic. 2 days of learning techniques from the pros. How great it was that they shared their wealth of knowledge! Among the demonstrators were Pat Jacoby who renetly won a TLC competition w/ her lovely Uncle Sam cake; Jennifer Dontz who is amaazingly talented and will be on an episode of TLC's "Cake Off" next week; and Sharon Zambito who will be featured in another episode of the TLC's hit show on Oct. 5th. (Sharon makes fantastic vidoes for those of you who want to learn at home and sells them at http://www.sugaredproductions.com/Sugar_Ed_Productions.html )
The icing on the cake (pun intended) was Bronwen Weber (she has been and won numerous food network challenges) teaching us a scuplted cat cake. I will never do my sculpted cakes the same now that she has shared her wisdom! (The picture is me with Bronwen.)
It was inspiring and humbling to be in the midst of such talent, and I hope to make the 4 hr drive to the Oklahoma Cake Show to see more incredible works of art.
I am still buzzing from my weekend of sugar, and have so many ideas that I am dying to try. So come on people- order your cakes now!

Topsy-Turvy

A dear friend of mine recently celebrated a milestone Birthday. Another friend had a party to help her ring in the special day, and of course I couldn't let the big day slip by without a cake.

My friend is an AWESOME mom to 5 kids- that's right- 5! She is an amazing mom who always puts her kids first. Totally self-less. She's fun to be around, a little nutty, and never spends money on herself. It was an honor to make a cake for such a lady, and the design was based off her fun-loving personality!

Unfortunately, I didn't allow my gumpaste to set up long enough, and I watch in horror as I was delivering it and the vibration from my tires broke the "4".
I managed to fix it once I got there but I couldn't stand it up again. Bummer!

Mickey's back!

Today I finished another Mickey cake.

This time it was in honor of the cutest little 1 yr old boy.


I had to deliver this and to my shock, a lot of the driving was on gravel road- NOT the kind of road you want to travel on when you are carrying an edible work of art!
I had to hold my breath the whole way while gripping the steering wheel with fingers that were turning blue. I was thrilled when we got the cake in and on the table- still in one piece!