Buttercream Wedding Cake

Took a break from thesis writing to create this wedding cake over the weekend.

I was happy with the overall visual impact and very relieved once it was all set up.  I was attending the wedding, and the ceremony and reception were in two different places, so I was a little frantic.


Two of the tiers are dark chocolate cake with godiva liqueur splash and espresso truffle filling.  The other two are butter cake with grand marnier splash, raspberry puree, and vanilla cream.  The cake did come out delicious!


There were a few challenges with this cake.  One, I iced all four tiers in swiss meringue buttercream.  Needless to say, with the chocolate/ vanilla/ crumbs/ etc., it was challenging to achieve perfect uniform cover.  I can't stand the taste of decorator's buttercream, even though it is 100 times easier to work with, so I'm still perfecting my techniques.  SMBC can be a little temperamental, and I mean that quite literally.  Temperature changes cause it to change its color/ texture slightly... enough to be very aggravating.

It's also a bit unforgiving to pipe with... it's not like royal icing where you're much more likely to achieve a perfect finish.  It's easy enough to do shells, but I found it much harder to do the scrolls, and of course piping the drop strings was a bit of a nuisance.

This was also my first time setting up a cake with fresh flowers.  Granted, I had a pretty tall space to fill (next time I'll make it smaller) but at least it gave the cake lots of height.  The problem with real flowers (as opposed to gum paste) is that they settle... quickly.  So one minute you've got all your roses shoved in there tightly and then there's a gap a few minutes later.  And a few hours later there's a bigger gap.

I'm sure many of us cake decorators have reached the point of blurring your eyes and taking a few steps back and just trying to enjoy the visual impact, because when I look closely I see flaws.  And only the flaws.

Things that mattered-- the bride and groom loved it.  The guests loved it.  Everyone thought it tasted delicious.  One guy walked in for the cake cutting (not knowing that the person who made it was in the room) and said "That cake must have cost $10,000."  I laughed.

And thank you to the friends of mine who helped me carry everything in and set up quickly-- I couldn't have done it without you guys.

By the time I do my next cake, my PhD dissertation should be done!!!!!!!

And the best news for me-- the next cake on my agenda is covered in fondant. ;)

Best to you all!

Birthday Shoebox Cake

On the 28th of January I celebrated my 28th birthday.  I've heard that's called your golden birthday, when you turn the same age as they day you were born.  So I guess I celebrated my golden birthday.

I share a birthday with my friend Tamera, so we opted to have a dual celebration.  Obviously a good cake was in order!

It all started with the cakes themselves, of course.  I did my own version of a black forest cake for the bottom shoe box and a butter cake with maple cream for the top shoe box.

Here are the cakes iced in the fridge:

Getting square corners: always a challenge.

By 3 AM Friday night, I had everything stacked.

Making enough room in the fridge: also always a challenge.  And I have 3 refrigerators.  Don't judge. ;)


A good sexy cake requires a good sexy new gum paste stiletto!

This stiletto features Sugarveil lace airbrushed black to create the mesh effect between the straps.

The cake took way too long to complete, but I was very happy with the final product, and I had a great time celebrating with friends.

Hope you enjoy!  And boy do I hope I graduate soon... :)

A Little More Over-piping

I made a little cake for a tasting/ dinner party this past weekend.  It felt good to be decorating again after a bit of a break over the holidays!

Anyway, I might have gotten a little over-excited (as is known to happen).  And my mild obsession with old-school piping and Lambeth method might have reared its little head.

This whole cake is piped with swiss meringue buttercream and finished with little fondant flowers.  The quadruple piped strings on the top sagged a little in transit, but it was in the car for a little while.  In real life, I'd use royal or at least refrigerate longer before traveling.

I tried to come up with my own variant on Lambeth for a bottom border.  It could still use some refining, but I like the vine and leaf organic movement coupled with the more traditional shell and overpiping.

The cake was butter cake with grand marnier syrup, fresh raspberry puree, and vanilla swiss meringue buttercream.  It was super tasty!

Hope you enjoy!

I do have many projects in the works for this year, but I am also very busy trying to finish my PhD by May.  So forgive me if my posts are a little spotty... ;) After I graduate, I've promised myself till the end of 2012 to a) relax and b) pursue cake and sugar endeavors!  That's right, I'm gonna do some investigating...

Best to you all!

Wrapping Elf Class with Susan Carberry

A couple weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be able to take a class with Susan Carberry at Studio B in the International Sugar Art Collection!  It was fun to go back to the student side after teaching there a few times this year.

I had a blast with the wonderful ladies in class and Susan is a wonderful, spirited, and funny teacher.  We made elves about 20" tall, and in context discussed structure and construction for 3D cakes.  The structure is primarily PVC pipes and connectors.

For purposes of the class, we used styrofoam dummies for the body and head.  All of the details are fondant with some hand painted gold accents.

It was fun to see how the whole room full of elves turned out-- since we used essentially no molds or cutters for the elf detailing, every elf had a different facial expression and personality.  The room definitely looked like Christmas with all the red and green!

Wishing all of you a wonderful holiday season!  Hopefully more sugar coming your way soon..

Blue Mason Jar Cake

I was asked to make a cake for a very fancy crafting party.  Their theme was centered around old style ball mason jars which actually come in a lovely light blue color, and their logo featured the phrase 'Queen of the Ball'-- as in ball mason jar.  The party was very elegant, and many details were given to me to include on this cake.

The good news is, it was right up my alley.
 'Can I have flowers?'
'Absolutely.'
'Oh and I love fondant bows.'
'Me too!' :)

So I sketched up my idea for the blue mason jar cake with its lid tilting off and flowers exploding out of it. The client also wanted their prize ribbons and logo to be featured on the cake, so I drew those in the middle of a big bow.  She also wanted a crown (you know, the 'queen' part of the theme) to be part of the design, which is how I decided to top the lid with a sugar crown.

Note that my little brain busily works on how exactly I'm going to execute these crazy cakes and looks for potential problems for quite some time before construction begins.  Like cakes wake me up in the night.  I should probably see someone about that.  Anyway...

I started the detail work well in advance.  I started with the extra large gum paste peony.

And hydrangea...

I dusted the bottoms of the ivory hyrangea with pink petal dust and the tops with just a touch of white sparkle.  I also made about 10 peony leaves and many hydrangea buds, as well as 2 smaller peonies and two peony buds.

Then I started on the prize ribbons, which I also made from gum paste.

Sorry for the glare from the flash.  The whole center is only about 2", so you can only imagine the fun I had painting that logo.  I probably should have ordered an edible image, but I only needed one and I don't have an edible ink printer... So I painted away!  Painstakingly small!  It does actually say 'Queen of the  ball' on the jar.  The teal gum paste surrounding the logo was painted with confectioners' glaze to make it shiny like a button, and I used bronze luster dust on the spiky circle... for lack of a technical term.

I also made the sugar crown from isomalt a few days prior to delivery:

This meant I got to use my awesome new blow torch!!! :)

While I made the crown, I also made some isomalt gems that I used to finish the board.

I didn't really take too many process pics once I got going.  I made the mason jar from 6" round butter cake layers and vanilla swiss meringue buttercream.  Notice the grooves on the lid?  I did those using fondant underlays... ;)

The jar and lid took 6 different layers, with a little cut away around the top of the jar to shape it correctly.  I covered the jar in light blue fondant and the lid in gray.  I airbrushed a little around the top and the bottom of the jar and airbrushed the lid with silver sheen.

I sprayed the jar with confectioners' glaze to give it a little sheen, then added the SugarVeil lace around the top before stacking on the floral separator and the lid.  I was pleased as punch with the SugarVeil lace... just makes a perfect a effect, I think! :)

Note that the jar is doweled throughout with tier separators and after everything was stacked I hammered in one final center dowel to hold everything in place.  Can't have our lids sliding off in transit.

I made the bow with teal gum paste and lace from the SugarVeil Circle Bouquets mat-- I just cut off the side designs and layered that over the gum paste.  I was thrilled with the effect.

I'm always nervous when I finally go to bed at 2 AM that the cake might spontaneously combust.  So I got out of bed and took a picture of it in the fridge... LOL :)

I left some foam and paper towels in place to let everything set up overnight and left the foam in place for transit as well.

Delivered cake set up on the dessert table.  Can't complain that it didn't fit the theme, lol! :)

Some close ups of the gum paste flowers:

I was really impressed with their setup... look at this dessert table:

I think the ladies who were there when I set up were pretty excited about the cake too-- I know I was.  :)

Happy Sunday, my fabulous readers!  :)

Butterfly Wedding Cake

On Saturday I delivered my first official wedding cake!

This cake featured over 40 gum paste butterflies in about 15 different colors, all hand dusted and painted with unique detailing.  The cake itself is a lemon butter cake with lemon swiss meringue buttercream, chambord flavor splash, and raspberry puree.

The bride picked out this cute little bunny topper, which is actually a ring holder (the rings go on the ears). Notice I wired up a little butterfly between his ears?  Yeah, thought I'd integrate the theme... :)

I started the butterflies well in advance and made a few of them on wires so they could 'fly' away from the cake.

I tried to plan for the right number of butterflies before the cake was made.

The bride did not want a smooth cake-- she wanted buttercream icing with some texture or sloppiness to it.    I used a paddling technique over the whole cake to give it the texture that you see.

The cakes were 10" round (~8.25" tall) and 6" round (~5" tall).  I delivered the cake like it was pictured above only I had already attached the ribbons to the cake board.  I carefully packed up all the butterflies and put them on when I got there; they were fragile enough that if they fell down in transit they were likely to break.

Fortunately, everything went pretty smoothly!  I set up the cake on what was to be the dessert bar-- it was surrounded by little pies and pastries on the platters.  I really like the rustic look of the whole setup.

I hope the bride and groom (and guests!) loved it. :)

Kickin' it Old School

This weekend I went to a dinner party and did a tasting for a wedding cake.  God forbid any of my cakes should be under-dressed (they might take after me a little), I decided it was a good opportunity to practice some old school overpiping.

This cake is a lemon butter cake with a framboise flavor splash, a fresh raspberry puree, and a light lemon swiss meringue buttercream.  With some minor adjustments, I'll be using these flavors for a wedding cake in a couple of weeks.

All the piping was done in the swiss meringue buttercream as well using PME tips 2,3 (round) and 6 (star).  The top border was done with 6 as a base, followed by 3, followed by 2. I have this set of 20 PME supatubes-- they are seamless and I love them for detailed piping: PME 20 Piece Icing Tube Boxed Set.  The cake was a big hit at the dinner party!

I also made a smaller version as a tasting cake:

I'm just fascinated by old school piping.  I'm dying to take a Lambeth class with Kathleen Lange-- maybe next summer! :)

More cakes in the works...