Ok Sugar Show 2009

This Past weekend was the date of one of the most fabulous sugar art competitions that exist in America.... The Oklahoma Sugar Art Show. It takes place during the state fair in Tulsa.
Sound familiar? Food Network usually does a special following a few of the competitors.

People not only come from all over the country to put their cake on display- but from all over the world. The talent is good, really good!

Fortunately for me, Tulsa isn't very far away from where I live. Unfortunately for me, I had a wedding cake that needed to be set up right in the middle o the day so there was no swinging me going to the fabulous competition.
Fortunately, I have other cake people who take and post photos of what I missed. This year the theme was "Of Sea and Shore".

I'm not posting any pics of the winners, just a few photos of cakes that are amazing. Stay tuned for the winning cakes!

The first photo is hand painted- WOW! Not to mention the detail on the bottom of the cake!
The second photo is an amazing mix of either royal or a new product called Sugarveil, and fondant. Gorgeous and modern. Perfect for todays brides!
The third pic I think is a stencil. Hard to manage those, and it is done wonderfully. I love the golden hue against the chocolate brown fondant. LOVE IT!

Ok- I'm done for today, go practice your cake skills and you can plan to be at this competion next year!

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!

A week of Firsts

Hard to believe that it is mid January already.

Your mom told the truth: Time flies when you get old!

This was a week of historical firsts for our country as we have the first black president, and it was also a week of firsts in our home. We got our first kitten. She still remains name-less at this point after 1 week of being part of our family, but she is well loved and brings a certain joy to our home as she pounces to attack our toes in the middle of the night.

In honor of firsts, I also tried another new cake flavor and I encourage you to make your own at home!
The cake itself was dark chocolate, dosed in a blackberry simple syrup. For the filling, I used my special dark chocolate ganache, and while it was still soft, I topped it with fresh blackberries- cut in half. ALOT of blackberries.
So simple, yet remarkably great tasting.

In honor of this special week of firsts, here is a first birthday cake. Made with delicate royal icing butterflies and sprayed with pearl sparkle, I hope it was a hit for the little girl's special day!

Something fishey going on here

Well, with turkey day almost here, I am busy runnign around like a chicken with it's head cut off. (Speaking of which poor turkey- we are resposible for the killing of 2 birds this year!)

The cake above was done this week- for someone flying in from out of town to surprise their mom for their 60th birthday.

It was beautiful, shimmery and looked like an enchanted underwater cake.

All the fish were hand cute, the pearls hand painted, and it had tiny royal icing detail. The inspiration for this was from a Colette Peter's book. when I first saw that book I loved the colors of that cake and I'm glad to have finally gotten a chance to make it!

Well, I have eggnog to make, tidying up to do. Happy Thanksgiving!

Monkeying around?

Ok- so it has been a while since I last posted anything.

I've not been doing much- well, as not-much as I can do with 4 children.

We've been able to have some fun times monkeying around lately. All that sugar from Halloween that we have *still* been consuming has left our body in extremes highs- followed by the all familiar sugar crash.
Picture 4 kids, all crazily bouncing off of couches- walls, balls, screaming, shrieking,laughing evil laughs..... followed by crying, more screaming, bleeding, bruising, and bumped.
Yup- that's been my house since the first day of November!
I'm not sure why we even allow that dreaded holiday really!
No kidding!

So on the topic of monkeying around I thought I'd post this cute cake I made recently. I loved making this thing and think it turned out so cute! All my kids decided this is the cake THEY want for THEIR birthday.

For those who are curious- it's a wondermold sitting on an 8" cake, followed by a mini ball pan for he head and a fondant "cone" smothered in icing and covered in fondant. Of course, cardboard is placed though-out as well as dowls and one big dowel through the whole thing.
Everything else is fondant too.

Well daddy took the huge bag of candy t work today and I say "good-bye! good riddens!" Now maybe our house can get back to semi-peaceful!

Which brings me to the monkey cake

Happy Halloween!

It's the day for candy and spooky things. I don't know about you, but I feel blessed to have 4 children on this day. They get to go beg for treats and I have quadruple the amount of candy to choose from at the end of the night!
In honor of Halloween I'm posting this cake.
I recently made this and while normally this would have been fairly simple, I was going for realism. You see, this cake was for an ophthalmologist! A man who looks at eyeballs all day would be looking with scrutiny at my cake. I HAD to make this eyeball realistic!

With a round cake sitting on top of an 8" cake, I carved it a bit, and then added all the details. It took layers and layers of painting with food coloring in different colors to achieve the look. Then I finished it with clear piping gel for a "glisten".

It left me thinking that maybe one day I'll host a Halloween party. If I do, this is the cake I'll be making!

Micky

Ok, so here is one of the cutest cakes I did over the weekend.
Talk about a bunch of little tiny parts to be made! Wow!

I love how it turned out, although I did have some trouble as one of the cakes I baked fell apart, I had to rebake at the last minute pushing all the other decorating out too- which was a push since I had other cakes scheduled. Alas, it all turned out fine after a few nervous breakdowns. :) I also made a cute little smash cake but forgot to snap a photo before I boxed it up. Maybe the recipient has a photo they could send me?

Today I am off to shop fo a comfy outfit to wear home from the hospital, and I am busy making a big stack of meals to be frozen so that we have food when I am unable to cook.

Tomorrow I'll be posting a picture of a simple cake I did but it was oh-so-cute!