Kristen and Luke

This couple had such a beautiful, tailored event style that when Kristen mentioned her ideas for Luke's surprise grooms cake, I nearly fell off my chair!

Let's start with the invitations. We copied an engraved motif from their Kate Spade cake knife set to create a background graphic for their letterpressed invitations. Keeping with their chocolate brown and ivory color scheme, we dropped the motif behind the text in taupe ink. Once they were in, and stunning, we had to copy the same pattern onto their cake. We had sketched several designs for their cake prior to their invitation appointment (when the cake knife made its first appearance)but once we saw how beautifully the invitations turned out, I just had to offer them a matching cake design.

They loved the new cake design, so we switched over to it resulting in one of my favorite cakes of the year.

Now onto the craziness. Kristin wanted to surprise Luke with a cake in honor of his Alma Mater, so we sketched up a cheese-head shaped cake. As the secret appointment progressed, the cake developed quickly to reflect more about Luke than I ever thought a mere slab of cake/cheese could contain. We added the many sports he enjoys, their two pet cats, and then, the mob of neighborhood kids that seem to follow this poor guy around whenever he's out around their house. Kristen laughed about how Luke can hardly make it to their front door without several kids climbing on him asking him to come out and play.

I'll take it! With my usual caveat, that trying to make realisting people out of frosting can often result in just plain creepiness, I set off to make Luke (widow's peak and all) into a frosting cartoon. The random kids followed. Every time we walked into the shop there was a new face peeking out from the baker's rack at us. It took about two weeks to make all of the varying parts, let them dry, and then royal-icing them together. Needless to say, the day after the Groom's cake went out, I looked over to my favorite baker's rack peanut gallery and was saddened by the empty space. We really miss the gang, but I suppose that's just incentive to do an equally weird groom's cake again soon, if for nothing other than the companionship.