        
Archive for the ‘Cakes’ Category
Monday, March 1st, 2010
As you may know, I’ve been on a writing sabbatical for the past while. It’s been interesting to spend SO much time *out* of my commercial kitchen – either in my home office, banging out my upcoming cookbook… or in my own, home kitchen, working on recipes for the book.
The time hasn’t been completely cake-less.. the Hannibal cake broke up the writing mojo for a bit… and then a friend celebrated a birthday. Such a crazy, unique individual, couldn’t resist crafting something that suited her. I’ll post more write up later, but a bit of background: Melissa – AKA “Queen of the Lizard People” – is an avid photographer. Recently, she’s taken on a few long term projects, photographing fortune cookie papers, and conversation hearts (separately!)
The cake was entirely edible – The camera & lizard bodies were carved from fresh lemon cake (which was brushed with a fresh lemon syrup, and filled with our tangy fresh lemon swiss meringue buttercream! – she wanted “in-your-face” lemon flavor!), with the camera lens and lizard head sculpted from Rice Krispie Treat. The black fondant was chocolate, the orange fondant was lemon flavored. Yum! Additionally, the “conversation hearts” were made from fondant, and the crown / fortunes were made from gum paste.
Check out the photos!
Posted in Cakes | No Comments »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
So here it is! Tonight, we delivered our entry for the Minnesota Monthly Food & Wine Experience – the Czar of Cakes Challenge.
Bit of a spoiler – it’s not getting judged till Saturday, but I’m confident in declaring that we’re all getting our asses handed to us by Gateaux. Seriously. I’d recently heard a rumor that Robin from Gateaux had sold her soul to the devil. DEFINITELY starting to believe that one. (Though, when I asked her about it, she did tell me that the devil actually sold HIS soul to HER… that may explain MORE!).
Anyway, I HAVE to post photos! It’s been killing me to keep my theme and pics all hush-hush before the competition.
So, here’s the deal. In the course of our brainstorming: “What are our favorite foods?” “What would make a kick ass cake?” “What would be funny/different?”, etc.. we got slightly off track and thought maybe to look to other media for inspiration, rather than just restaurants and grocery stores. Any songs that feature a food theme? How about movies?
Well, at the suggestion of food related movies, one of us popped off a quote about Liver, fava beans, and a nice Chianti (there may have been alcohol involved in this brainstorming session).. and AWAY WE WERE. An idea that we were virtually GUARANTEED that no one else would think of, much less actually use: A Silence of the Lambs Cake
Like I mentioned in my latest blog entry, I honestly did float a few other ideas by a WHOLE BUNCH of people, a little part of me thinking I should probably be talked down from this idea. Nope. Bunch of enablers! Love em!
So, I set about working on all the fussy little details.. a bottle of Chianti (in the traditional style bottle!).. sugar “death’s head” moths, painted in cocoa… liver & fava beans out of fondant.. a fondant “radish rose” and sugarpaste sprig of basil for garnish… a fondant plate, gumpaste cutlery (all airbrushed with edible metallic silver luster!).. Hannibal Lecter’s mask.. and a brain. Muahaha!
(Editted to add – Been asked about the size a few times. The “man” is actually life sized, everything else is also “real” sized. The moths are about 5″ across, the cutlery all proper sized.. it was a monster of a cake!)
I will shut up and post photos now!
Obviously not a traditional interpretation of a “Food and Wine” themed cake, but hey.. Looking forward to seeing what the audience and judges’ reactions will be!
Posted in Cakes, Commentary, News & Events, Random | 3 Comments »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Back in my figure skating days, I learned an important lesson: “When you’re going into a competition where you know you have no chance of winning/placing, just be yourself, have a bunch of fun, maybe do something crazy.. and no matter where you place, you lose nothing”.
It was that kind of thinking that was behind my Tremors themed wedding cake, for the Chocolate Show competition. The theme was animals, I’d been looking for an excuse to make a Tremors cake… grabboids are animals, right? 
Anyway, if you follow me on twitter or are friends/fans on Facebook, you know that I’ve been preparing for the “Czar of Cakes” Challenge at the Minnesota Monthly Food & Wine Experience. The competition involves 6 local cake companies: Celebration Generation, Muddy Paws, Gateaux, Jessica’s Cakes, Queen of Cakes, and .. that other one. Only real rule is that the cakes have to be food / wine themed.
It took me well over 3 weeks to settle on a theme! We started with an initial brainstorming session, which produced 3 reasonably great ideas, and one “spectacular.. but has NO chance of winning, may get us escorted out, and probably will prevent us from ever getting invited back!” idea.
I tried to get into my competitors heads, when it came to weeding through the ideas. One theme was one that I could see Jessica doing, for instance. Another was one that I could see Gateaux doing. The 3rd was a really sweet idea that I definitely couldn’t see anyone else doing.. but I got really attached to the “spectacular but crazy” idea. Didn’t help much that the vast majority of my friends – in several different circles – are also kinda crazy and weird, and are enablers. LOL. Crazy idea it is!
I just put the finishing touches on the cake, and I’m really excited now! We’ll be posting photos on Saturday, can’t wait!
Posted in Cakes, Commentary, News & Events, Random | 1 Comment »
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
So I was on Twitter today, minding my own business.
Well, that’s a bit inaccurate, isn’t it? The nature of Twitter and all… more like “I was on Twitter, reading about EVERYONE’S business”… anyway, I digress. I certainly wasn’t thinking I was gonna be gobsmacked by something so insanely craptacular, it would result in a blog post!
… and even less so, that it would result in a new “You know what would be awesome…?” post! Anyway. Digress…. again.
@bridetide tweeted the following: “Thoughts on this wedding cake table decor? ~ http://bit.ly/6GqsH3” For those of you unable to view the link at work, I’ll post the pic below:
My thoughts, all I could even semi-coherently put into words, were “WOW. Just.. wow”. So eloquent, I know. CakeorDeathCA put it a bit more succinctly – “Kind of .. a sin against humanity.”
I didn’t know where to start. I’m sure some of you know about the loathing I feel towards plastic fountains… but this photo really incorporates a bit of every “bad thing” I can think of, when it comes to 80s wedding decor. Balloons! Tulle Abuse! Cake staircases! Unnaturally colored silk florals! The cherry on top, of course, is that they used not one, but THREE fountains!
Closeup Cake Pic
I got to thinking.. “That HAD to be on purpose…” THEN I got to thinking..
You know what would be awesome? A wedding with “Bad 80s” as a theme. I mean “Wedding Singer”, and THEN some! To just basically go through every bad 80s nightmare / throwback, and incorporate EVERYTHING into the wedding! Think about it..
EVERYTHING dripping tulle. Oh yes. And not just white tulle.. but COLORED tulle. Like.. Fuchsia and Turquoise. Yes! To match the taffeta, pouffy bridesmaid dresses with BIG pouf sleeves and BUTT BOWS! Matching gloves and satin shoes too, of course. TONS OF HAIRSPRAY!
ALL the flowers would be dyed-to-match pink and turquoise silks. Like really cheap, dollar store variety – NOT the silks that actually look like what they’re supposed to. Except.. maybe some carnations! Yes!
The cake would have about 30 layers all over the place, and would need like 2 banquet tables to hold it all. Staircases and fountains and tulle everywhere! Turquoise royal icing roses on white! Plastic bridesmaids and groomsmen and everything. Adorning the cake table would be a ton of tulle, more plastic flowers, and… matching napkins with name/date/logo embossing on it. Maybe some personalized matchbooks, too!
OOH! And everyone can show up in 80s clothes.. the music would be fun – and really easy to decide on – oh yeah! All the stuff I’d probably wrinkle my nose at in any other situation. LOVE SHACK! Aw yeah!
Oh, I’m getting all worked up just thinking of all the possibilities! What a wedding! That would be a ton of fun. I bet it would be a lot of fun to either attend, or just to make the monstrosity of a cake for!
Actually.. man, I should talk my husband into marrying me again. I have WAY more ideas for how I’d redo our wedding, than he’d EVER humor me on, LOL. I’ll have to file this idea behind the “Go to Vegas and get married, drunk, by an Elvis impersonator” one, though.
Posted in "You know what would be awesome..?", Cakes, Commentary, Random | 2 Comments »
Monday, November 30th, 2009
I should start this off by a bit of background, maybe a disclaimer: I’ve never considered myself a Trekkie at all. Hell, until this past summer, I think I’d only seen 2 of the movies, and a few episodes of TNG. When hubby and I attended a big nerd convention in July, we found it weird that neither of us really fit a particular flavor of nerd/geek.. we weren’t Trekkies, we weren’t gamers.. etc. Just generic Nerds.
After this past Friday, I think we both became Trekkies. Well, maybe pre-Trekkies. Trekkies with training wheels. Yes!
Back at that convention, there was a Klingon wedding. We were totally kicking ourselves over not knowing that was gonna happen – I would have cut a steep discount for the opportunity to make a Klingon wedding cake! The ideas – “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” flew, and built on each other. Anyway, ever since then, I’ve been itching for the opportunity to make an epic Klingon cake.
At that same convention, we picked up a sparkly gold flyer for “A Klingon Christmas Carol”. Trekkies or not, it just sounded ridiculously cool to us. We’re big fans of people who get into something – anything – and just run with it. We love crazy ideas… and we ADORE crazy ideas seen through to fruition! So, we stuck the flyer on our fridge, and awaited the play’s opening.
If you haven’t heard of this – and we certainly hadn’t, before picking up that flyer – let me explain.
A Klingon Christmas Carol is a theater production put on by Commedia Beauregard. Their mission is to perform plays that are translated – from one language to another, or from one form into another. In the case of the Klingon Christmas Carol, they took a story from a book – “translated” it into a play.. tweaked it to have a Klingon theme (Scrooge has no honor!), and then translated it into Klingon. It’s performed in full Klingon garb, with English subtitles projected onto a screen on the stage. Awesome!
On a lark, I decided to get ahold of the Powers that Be at CB theatre.. one thing led to another, and we were on board for one hell of an epic cake! (Yes, this would be the same cake that we haven’t shut up about for the past two weeks, if you follow us on Twitter, or have me friended on Facebook!)
And we’ve come to the point where a fit of fangirl overtakes me, and I have no idea which direction to go with the rest of this blog entry. There is just SO much to say! Let me be lame and bullet-point it!
- The People. My husband and I had the opportunity to meet the cast and crew of Klingon Christmas Carol a couple of times before the event. Once was a rehearsal (and yes, the fanboy/fangirl in both of us came out BIGTIME as we watched them practice fight scenes, complete with Bat’leths!), and once was a meet and greet – featuring a viewing of “The Making of A Klingon Christmas Carol” – a documentary filmed the year before. It was all very exciting.. especially because everyone involved was *awesome*.
It was really interesting to watch their prep work for the show, and we have mad respect for them as a result of what we saw. I have NO idea how they managed to learn/memorize all of that Klingon. At the rehearsal, we followed along on the teleprompter.. wow, what a difficult looking language! Weird capitalization, very few vowels, and VERY interesting syntax.
We later had an opportunity to learn a couple words, when their Klingon language expert – and translator – taught us how to say “take the chocolate!” in Klingon. The idea was to have something to say as we served the cake. I never did master just the 2 words involved that Laura taught us (thanks again Laura!), but in the end, it didn’t matter. Serving the cake was such a crazy event, I didn’t have time to THINK, much less say anything!
- The Show. OH MY GOD. Where to start? The costumes are amazing! The makeup is amazing – everything looked straight out of an actual Star Trek movie – very convincing, very high quality. There is an Orion Slave Girl bellydancer! (Holly, who’s a total sweetie!). They do a cool “transporter” effect when taking Scrooge back in time! There’s a Vulcan character as the narrator.. and SHE is awesome too!
If you haven’t gone, you totally should – we’re going to see it a few times, and wouldn’t miss it for the world! Definitely a year (and career!) highlight for us!
- The Cake. Ah, the cake. We looked forward to this from the moment that our involvement was confirmed! Now that it’s all over, it’s sorta sad that we no longer have anything that insanely epic on our horizon!
The cake started out with looking for existing information on Bird of Prey ships. Luckily for us, Trekkies are thorough in their obsession, and we were easily able to find blueprint type views of the ship from various views. Score! Scaled the blueprints to fit our needs, and we were almost good to go!
Next, we had to build a custom cake board for it. With measurements in hand, I had to make a special trip to the theater to measure all doors, stairs, etc… to make sure that this was actually a logistical possibility. It was – but only very BARELY! The cake board ended up being just short of 4′ long, and just short of 3′ wide! What a monster!
My husband is in charge of all non-edible builds related to my cakes, and has now earned the title of “Chief Engineering Officer” here at Celebration Generation Cakes. Tee Hee. I swear I’m going to make him a CEO shirt to wear to events we do! Anyway, not only did he cut and finish the cake board, he built the structure of the wings – no small feat! I married well.
The our edible Bird of Prey ship made it’s maiden voyage – to the theatre – in fine form, with no problems at all. Though we had to tilt the board at a fairly severe angle to get it in the door (Though I’d measured the frame, I had neglected to take into account the door edge itself, the hinge placement, etc!), it made it to it’s table with no problem.
- The Whirlwind! The few hours between us arriving (prior to the show), and serving the cake (immediately after the show) were a whirlwind of fan activity. The warbird was definitely our most photographed cake ever, with streams of camera phones clicking away at any time. Little did we know, one of those camera phones ended up tweeting photos of the cake to Cake Wrecks, who ended up tweeting about the cake to their Over 1 MILLION followers! Thanks again, Cake Wrecks!
The insanity continued when we brought the cake up on stage after the show. All of the flashes going off were blinding! Very “paparazzi”!
- Serving the Cake! This should win for “Best Cake Cutting EVER!”. Seriously. Picture a gaggle of Klingons surrounding the cake, as Scrooge cuts the cake with his Bat’leth! Ah, no need to picture it, we have photos!
Awesome. Seriously, just… awesome. The whole thing. The memories of Friday night are going to make my husband and I grin for a very long time. They’ve got shows playing right through till December 13th, tickets are available online at http://www.cbtheatre.org.
My husband with a Vulcan, an Orion Slave Girl, and another Klingon enjoying Red Velvet cake!
More photos are available on our facebook gallery, http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10955&id=100000056868269&l=3928cc8bf1
Posted in Cakes, Interesting, News & Events | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
I recently had the opportunity to make my very first black wedding cake, for one of my absolute *favorite* brides of the year. Maybe ever.
I’d love to do a full blog entry on their wedding eventually – the visuals were so striking! The bride had a wonderful design vision, the venue was gorgeous… and you know I have a soft spot for brides who throw convention and “expectations” to the wind and really march to their own beat.
In the meantime, however… I’ll present you with photos of their cake! This cake was themed around their Halloween / Goth / NIN wedding through and through – it was Blood Orange Truffle flavored! (”Our deeply rich, dark chocolate cake is filled with alternating layers of blood orange chocolate truffle ganache, and blood orange buttercream.”). Not only specifically “Blood” orange – tee hee! – but that particular flavor cuts to a beautiful orange / deep dark chocolate brown. Seasonal colors!
The cake featured sugar roses in varying shades of gray, dusted with black accents. It also featured dark gray “lace” made from Sugar Veil icing – a unique product that allows a cake designer to pick up piped designs and drape it like fabric! Exciting… and meant that the entire cake was edible!
More detail photos of this cake can be seen on our Facebook site, Here
Posted in Brides, Cakes, Photography | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Man, who ever thought I’d actually be able to do a follow up to a “You Know What Would Be Awesome..?” post?
I mean, the whole point of that category is for be to babble on some of my weird ideas that are so wacky, they’d never be realized. No fruition expected!
Well, this past week was “The Affair”, formerly known as a the Twin Cities Chocolate Extravaganza. As was the case last year, the show featured a chocolate competition, overseen by the Pastry Professionals Association of MN.
Last year, I had grandiose plans for my 2 cake entries, but procrastinated / got distracted by higher priority stuff, and ended up just mailing it in with my entries. Total crap, and only earned me a certificate. This year, I planned to avoid that when I entered… but felt utterly uninspired by the theme: Animals. What was a girl to do?
Get weird with it.
So, after some thought, I decided to do a wedding cake based on the greatest monster movie of all time – Tremors. Grabboids are *totally* animals, right? LOL.
So check it out. A Tremors themed wedding cake!
The topper features Val & Earl’s truck being sucked into the ground.. Val in a sleeveless tuxedo tshirt and cowboy hat (as I imagined he’d wear if he were to get married!)..and Rhonda. Both cowering from a grabboid! So romantic.
The rest of the cake features 3 more grabboids, including the one that died when trying to chase Val & Earl through a concrete retaining wall. Yes!
I had been considering representing the 2nd-last-to-die grabboid – but I wasn’t sure the judges would appreciate “guts” on a wedding cake.
Hrmm.. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t appreciate a Tremors cake in general, so in hindsight.. maybe I shouldn’t have let that thought stop me!
In any case, they couldn’t have hated it too much – got me a silver medal for it! Woo!
Also, my favorite blogger featured the cake yesterday! Click here to check THAT out!
Now I just have to hope that next year’s theme is “plants”, so I have a good excuse to make a Triffids cake!
Posted in "You know what would be awesome..?", Cakes | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Even a small, fairly basic groom’s cake can be striking. Here’s a great example!
The yellow sugar rosebud “boutonniere” & accent rose matched the many sugar roses on this couple’s cake.
Posted in Cakes, Photography | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Detail photography spotlight again!
This cake was from a wedding in June 2008.. but I’ve always loved the close up detail shots, so I figure it’s about time to share!
This was a really cool cake to do, just very time and labor intensive! Each individual petal was piped in meringue, baked, assembled into flowers and held together with more meringue, then re-baked!
The meringue flowers were made from around 7 different shades of white, ivory, silver, and pink. Rather than being a load of frosting flowers all over this cake.. it was frosted with brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream, then covered in these crispy meringue cookies!
Very cool.
Posted in Cakes, Photography | No Comments »
|
Clarice – have the lambs stopped screaming?
Thursday, February 18th, 2010So here it is! Tonight, we delivered our entry for the Minnesota Monthly Food & Wine Experience – the Czar of Cakes Challenge.
Bit of a spoiler – it’s not getting judged till Saturday, but I’m confident in declaring that we’re all getting our asses handed to us by Gateaux. Seriously. I’d recently heard a rumor that Robin from Gateaux had sold her soul to the devil. DEFINITELY starting to believe that one. (Though, when I asked her about it, she did tell me that the devil actually sold HIS soul to HER… that may explain MORE!).
Anyway, I HAVE to post photos! It’s been killing me to keep my theme and pics all hush-hush before the competition.
So, here’s the deal. In the course of our brainstorming: “What are our favorite foods?” “What would make a kick ass cake?” “What would be funny/different?”, etc.. we got slightly off track and thought maybe to look to other media for inspiration, rather than just restaurants and grocery stores. Any songs that feature a food theme? How about movies?
Well, at the suggestion of food related movies, one of us popped off a quote about Liver, fava beans, and a nice Chianti (there may have been alcohol involved in this brainstorming session).. and AWAY WE WERE. An idea that we were virtually GUARANTEED that no one else would think of, much less actually use: A Silence of the Lambs Cake
Like I mentioned in my latest blog entry, I honestly did float a few other ideas by a WHOLE BUNCH of people, a little part of me thinking I should probably be talked down from this idea. Nope. Bunch of enablers! Love em!
So, I set about working on all the fussy little details.. a bottle of Chianti (in the traditional style bottle!).. sugar “death’s head” moths, painted in cocoa… liver & fava beans out of fondant.. a fondant “radish rose” and sugarpaste sprig of basil for garnish… a fondant plate, gumpaste cutlery (all airbrushed with edible metallic silver luster!).. Hannibal Lecter’s mask.. and a brain. Muahaha!
(Editted to add – Been asked about the size a few times. The “man” is actually life sized, everything else is also “real” sized. The moths are about 5″ across, the cutlery all proper sized.. it was a monster of a cake!)
I will shut up and post photos now!
Obviously not a traditional interpretation of a “Food and Wine” themed cake, but hey.. Looking forward to seeing what the audience and judges’ reactions will be!
Posted in Cakes, Commentary, News & Events, Random | 3 Comments »