Back in the beginning of March, I received an email from one of my tweeps. She excitedly told me that w00tstock was coming to Minneapolis, and “I don’t know about you, but I think w00tstock would be better with cake!”

Well, I had to agree, so I got a hold of Paul and Storm, the geeked out musical comedians in charge. Offered up some cake, they were interested, mentioned I’d have my husband – a photographer along with me to take pics… they asked if he’d be willing to be the official backstage photographer (Willing? Hell YES he was!)…
and we were on track for an adventure in epic geekery!

The plan was to make a surprise “Tardis” cake for Adam Savage & Wil Wheaton. Hubby would photograph the goings on, while I doled out samples of our caffeinated brownies and blondies (from our line of baking mixes. Cake would be served, geeking out would occur, and it would be an awesome night.

Monday was the day, finally! It had been difficult to not blab the details of the cake design itself, while I had been free to tweet that I would be DOING a cake. Everyone wants to know what it’ll look like, especially when it’s a.) Geeky, and b.) Intended for geek royalty! This blog entry is gonna get long and image-heavy, so click through to read & gawk!

The day got off to a bad start. Due to some dropped communication between the various parties involved, we ended up cakeblocked at the last minute. The Guthrie decided – between the time we left, and arriving at the loading dock – that 1″ samples would be too much competition for their concession stand, and we were left with 600 samples we could not serve. Damn!! Woulda been good to be told that – we briefly considered a tweetup sampling out of the back of our truck. LOL.

We loaded up the dolly with everything else, and set about to get the cake discreetly delivered to a room where Wil Wheaton wouldn’t see it. Of course, he was one of the very first people we came across. While a few people tried to guide him away from where we were, there were a few tense moments as we tried out best to stand in front of / conceal out delivery. My minion of the evening – Rachel – and I set about setting up our merch booth, while my husband went on the photography gig he’d been looking forward to awhile.

At that point, the rest of the evening kinda became a flurry of activity, so let me just point-form our highlights. This probably won’t be accurately chronological in any way!

- It was great to meet SO many of my tweeps! Thank you all for coming by the booth and identifying yourself as such! Kaji, TheGreenAvenger, PerpetualMind, NorthernGypsy, off the top of my head… hi!

- At one point, Wil Wheaton warned my husband (as the photographer, not knowing he was in any way related to me or the brownies backstage) that the brownies may taste really good, but watch out – they’re REALLY caffeinated!. Wil later told the story to me as well, saying that a little bit of one had him feeling like.. damn, I can’t remember how he put it. Like a hyper chipmunk or something. He was talking very fast

- Minutes before the big unveiling, I was told in no uncertain terms that Wil would “lose his shit when he sees the cake”. He did. It was great! Here are some pics:

(What happens when you present a geeky cake to a room full of geeks!)

For more pics of the cake & backstage presentation, check out our Facebook page – fan us while you’re at it!

- I took a really crappy cell phone pic of Wil on the floor, photographing his cake. Cake Wrecks retweeted it… Wil tweeted pics.. both (with a total combined follower number of 2,889,949!) including my username… and my twitter feed went apeshit. Here’s a more pro version of the Pic I tweeted:

(Being married to a photographer is handy!)

The cake, if you don’t recognize it, it the TARDIS from Dr Who. What made this cake really cool – and a stand out for my husband – is that the light on top was not only functional, it blinked. That meant a trip to Ax-Man – his favorite store in the world – as well as ripping apart a few different lights/components, and making custom electronics for it. He was in his glory We let Wil keep the blinky light!

Another interesting thing about the cake was the inside joke we piped on the back. If you follow either Wil Wheaton or Paul and Storm, you know what that’s all about I’m not describing here, as I don’t want to attract certain types of spam comment bots!

- Being approached by a friend of mine who’d seen Twitter just blow up over the cake – and all of the high-profilers tweeting about it – and the first thing she said to me was a rough quote of a local “bigshot” (in her mind) planner who told a friend of mine that I have no idea what I’m doing, that by catering to geeks and doing stuff like having Klingons as escorts at an Awards Night (see Here and Here, and Here), I was – quote – “throwing my business down the toilet”. Ah, sweet, sweet vindication. I’d actually forgotten all about that until the friend brought it up. I was very smug after that reminder, LOL.

- While he wouldn’t OFFICIALLY “bust the myth” of fondant tasting bad, (oh, how I was hoping for video of that!)… I was told that Adam Savage liked my fondant, and was totally unaware that fondant has a bad rep.

- We met two of the guys from Thaco! While hubby was photographing Wil with his cake, I went over to inform him that I noticed Bill Stiteler in the corner. You should have seen his grin! He loved that movie.. and had the “claim to fame” of being Thaco’s first review on Amazon. As Bill pointed out, that’s their ONLY review… so if you’ve seen it and loved it, go review it already! (That’s a totally unsolicited request/recommendation, by the way!)

Actually, I should be more accurate. Hubby met one of the Thaco guys, I met two – Duck came up to my booth. I have NO idea if he wanted info or anything, cause I immediately asked “Are you the guy in Thaco?”, and when he confirmed, I may have sort of screeched excitedly about my husband being a big fan, and asked for a photo with which I’d torment him. He graciously allowed it Hubby WAS jealous, just as I called it.

- Hubby had a GREAT time photographing the whole thing. His highlights included getting shoved on stage a few times to take pics, looking out on the audience and seeing a bunch of people he KNEW. That had to be pretty cool… we really did end up knowing a TON of people in attendance, too!

- You see this couple? They got engaged at W00tstock! On stage. I didn’t get to see it personally (was at my booth!), but I hear it was a geeked out moment of beauty! They later told me, at my booth, that my cakes were one of the first things they thought about after getting engaged. What a compliment! It was also cool for my husband, who was “shoved out on stage” to capture the moment. I think it’s the first engagement moment he’s been a part of, aside from his own!

- Speaking of couples getting married, guess who stopped by my booth? Check this out:

That’s a crappy cell phone pic I took of one of my favorite couples ever! They were actually anonymously “famous” that night, and have been for awhile – they’re Cory and Tori, the couple who ordered the Super Mario Brothers wedding cake for their wedding a year and a half ago! You know, the one on the front page of my site, and on most of my advertising… the one that something like 90% of the attendees at W00tstock geeked out over? Them! Awesome to see them again – and doubly awesome that he was wearing a Super Mario Bros shirt for the pic!

- We got a hell of a shoutout on stage from Paul and Storm. I’m used to very dry “we’d like to thank our sponsors” kinda mentions… this was nothing like that. I knew they were excited about the cake and enjoyed it, I didn’t expect it would come through SO much on stage. I was very honored.. and luckily, quick enough to capture most of it on video:

I CANNOT tell you how electrifying an experience it was when they crowd went SO nuts over the pics of the cake. I have goosebumps just typing about it. Thank you SO much, all of you. You made my night!!

- On the subject of unexpected ego boosts, holy crap – I read the comments on the cake pic Wil tweeted. Awesome, check it out!

- Being surrounded by not only almost every geek and nerd we know – which is ALWAYS a good time, we were surrounded by geek royalty, which was really cool. Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, Paul and Storm, as mentioned.. but also several “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ guys there: Trace Beaulieu, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy… authors John Scalzi, and James Kakalios – who I’m told COMPLETELY brought the house down with his Physics talk. (Twitter sure went nuts!), and more!

- I got to meet Neil Gaiman! I had gone back to the green room to look for my husband, poked my head in to ask for him.. where Neil was the one to answer. Neil thought that he knew where he was, and very kindly led me back. Very gentlemanly… and he actually contributed to my most surreal moment of the night. He stopped, turned around and extended a hand, and said “I’m Neil Gaiman”. Like I had NO idea who he was! Kinda caught me off guard.

I’ve met and/or worked with many celebrities over the years, and I’m pretty sure he’s the first to ever introduce himself. Many/most just expect it’s a given that I know who they are, even when that’s NOT the case – sports stars are particularly guilty of this. (Ironically, I’m usually quite guilty of not having a clue WHO they are!). I follow him on Twitter, as a result of SO many of my friends talking him up.. even though I’ve not had time to read fiction in.. wow, maybe a decade? He was just such a down to earth and nice guy! I think I’m gonna have to seek out one of his books and give it a go, as soon as I have a minute to breathe! (so probably end of July, by the current looks of things!). Any recommendations?

- As part of the show, artist Len Peralta (of the Geek A Week project) was on stage, seated at his computer… designing the official W00tstock poster. They set it up so that the audience could tweet suggestions as to what all should be on this poster… and yes, my Tardis cake ended up on it! How sweet is THAT? Thanks Len! You rock.

Wow, this entry is long and crazy. Trying to think if there was anything else?

Oh! At the end of the night, when the Geek Royalty was lined up at a table across the room, signing autographs.. 4 or 5 people came by my booth with their autographed poster.. and asked for MINE! Signed em and did a quick “Tardis cake” sketch. Fun!

All in all, a crazy awesome night!! What were your favorite memories of #w00tstock ?

3 Cakers – myself, Sheela from Cake Eater Bakery, and Thea from Perfect Day Cakes were each given photos of 2 dresses to work with, and very little in the way of guidelines , restrictions, or TIME (lol!), and set free to run wild with our imaginations.

Here are the two photos I was initially provided with:

The blue dress is from Blasphemina’s Closet. For this dress, L’Etoile requested something crazy, bright, and mad-hatterish, as they wanted to play up the “Alice in Wonderland” feel of it. The grey/orange dress is from Calpurnia Peach. Here’s what we came up with:

And here are the final shots from the fashion shoot:

So yeah, that was an interesting experience. I really liked the way that the grey and orange cake went so well with the Calpurnia Peach dress… but, if I had my time back, I think I would have pushed to do the other one blue and black, to better coordinate with the assigned dress.

Cool though.

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!

]]> http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2010/03/01/happy-birthday-melissa/feed/ 0 http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2010/02/18/clarice-have-the-lambs-stopped-screaming/ http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2010/02/18/clarice-have-the-lambs-stopped-screaming/#comments Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:25:06 +0000 admin http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/?p=238 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!

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!

Many wedding magazines will tell you that fruits, berries, sunny colors, etc are strictly the domain of spring and summer weddings. I’ve never been a fan of the “supposed to” kinda rules that the great wedding industry machine puts out.

This early January wedding cake was themed around lemons and raspberries, inside and out! The cake was lemon with raspberry buttercream, and the cake was a sunny lemon yellow, with lemons and raspberries sculpted from fondant as the accent.

You see, although it was cold, dark, grey, and – did I mention – COLD outside, lemons and raspberries had a personal significance to the bride and groom. When they met, she was working in a cafe… and he would come by sometimes 3 times a day to buy lemon raspberry squares from her! Very cute and meaningful!

As we set up the cake, we noticed that the table names were “sunny” and happy too – the one nearest the cake table was the Lemon table, featuring citrus fruits as a centerpiece! The scent of lemon wafted throughout the reception area, as the staff busily prepped the lemonade that would be served. Lemonade in January! Love it!

An interesting thing to note about this cake – the final product we left was not the same as what we showed up with, nor what we had decided on in the contract!

The originally contracted idea for this cake was a lemon yellow cake with yellow piping on the borders. As the bride seemed fun, and her lemon raspberry bars story was so cute, I convinced her to let me do raspberry and lemon detail work on the cake (which was not any more expensive than plain would have been!)

As I finished the cake on the morning of the wedding, I really felt it needed something more – some swirlies piped around the little lemon/raspberry arrangements. So, I filled a piping bag with yellow frosting, and crossed my fingers that the bride would agree with me.

I met her as she got ready for her ceremony, and she was completely open to letting me go wild with the cake. I piped the swirls that I envisioned, and everyone was thrilled with the result! See below for before and after photos. The cake was perfectly nice before the extra piping.. but the piping really gave it that final “Ooomph”, I think!

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… letting me run wild with an idea will always result in an amazing cake. I love it when my brides trust me and give me creative freedom!

Also, when it comes to planning colors, themes, flavors … break the rules! When done right, colors don’t have to be seasonal, and neither do flavors. Non-traditional venues can be a ton of fun, and self expression makes for a very memorable wedding.

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.

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

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

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!