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!