Fun Halloween Cake

 

Hope you had a fun Halloween! Since my oldest daughter was born on Halloween, I leave it up to her whether or not she wants a Halloween themed party. This year she wanted to all out for Halloween, so naturally the cake had to be a little spooky.  As the guests were all 6 and under, I designed the cake to be more cutesy than scary. 
I used a mix of cutters and freehand to create the imagery on the cake. The bats are piped on and the 3-d figures are gumpaste. I gave the Frankenstein monster a birthday cake to hold just to make sure the cake was obviously a birthday cake, too.

Big Bat Mitzvah weekend - Part One

This is part one of a 2-part posting. We made cakes, cookies and desserts for a huge bat mitzvah weekend in San Antonio early this month. The cakes I'm showing today are from the Saturday synagogue luncheon. The theme of the lunch was a fun festive candyland setting. We were asked to design a cake that embodied a fantastical candy filled cake. I designed a set of candy gift boxes and candy bags overflowing with iconic and easily recognizable candies. The cakes are actually 2 tiers each and were huge. The bags are fondant covered rice cereal. And the candy and lollipops? It's ALL handmade by us out of sugar paste! 

  
Here's a close up of the spilled candy. Each piece was painstakingly copied by us. The candy bars, Tootsie rolls, kisses, dots, etc. Not one is real. Yes, I know we're crazy. 
I was still in Austin working on the Saturday night cake and wasn't at the lunch, but my assistant told me that kids and old ladies were trying to sneak the candy thinking it was real! Next post will be the Saturday night party cake and cookies.

Longhorn Wedding

What better way to show you're a diehard Longhorn fan than a UT/burnt orange wedding cake and groom's cake? I never actually met the bride since she lives out of town, but she sent photos of ideas and knew exactly what she wanted for her cakes. Sometimes people order wedding cakes and custom cakes from out of town, sight unseen. I think it takes a brave and trusting person to do that!
The groom's cake is the iconic tower on UT campus. I love spending time on architectural details, so I had loads of fun with this cake. Add the stadium, trees and students, you've got an idea of what UT Austin is like. The windows are hard to see in this photo, but some are colored burnt orange to make an "R" for the initial.
The bride's cake is the traditional topsy turvy cake design with a burnt orange, brown and ivory color scheme. The roses are fun fondant ribbon roses to give the cake a lighthearted look. The reception itself was tastefully decorated with beige linens. The burnt orange was mostly in the cakes, which was a relief since that color can be a little overwhelming in large amounts.

Día de los Muertos Wedding Cake

A fun wedding cake for the Halloween season. The couple planned a lighthearted Día de los Muertos themed wedding and wanted a cute cake to match the overall theme. The skeleton topper was provided by the bride. The wedding started out as a family reunion but was turned into a wedding when the bride realized she could take advantage of all her family being in town at once. I'll post a pic of my daughter's Halloween birthday cake on Sunday!

Garden theme wedding cake

I know it's been an awfully long time since I've posted any cakes - or anything for that matter. We had our busiest month ever this October making cakes for weddings, birthdays and bat mitzvahs. Now that wedding season has officially slowed down in Austin, I can take a moment to catch up on some photos. I downloaded a ton of pics today from my camera (ok, about 100 were from my daughter's birthday party) so I've got a lot to sift through. 

 I'll just go backwards and start with this past weekend. We've been doing more cakes this past year with handmade sugarpaste flowers. In order to make sure the flowers look real, it takes a lot of patience and time to form them and dust them to achieve the right look. I think the most we've done on a cake recently was about 18 roses. This cake was on a whole new level of complexity. I think in the end we made 50 roses, 6 peonies, 4 hydrangea clusters, budding branches and about 60 leaves. Each peony has between 11 and 25 handformed individual petals, and each hydrangea cluster has about 7 handformed petals.

We started about 2 weeks before making the flowers so we wouldn't be stressed about them right before the wedding. Good planning paid off! They were all done and ready to go a few days before. Since it was our last delivery of the day, we were able to take our time arranging the flowers on the cake onsite at the Four Seasons.
The traditional design was an important factor for the bride. Her grandfather used to be a wedding cake decorator in the days when all cakes looked like this. She asked for  traditional piping techniques and lots of flowers in pinks, magentas and whites.
My goal is to post a new cake a day - let's see if I can manage that! We did so many beautiful and fun cakes the past 2 months that I want to share!