Twin Cities Icon Awards

We were so excited to see an industry award based on submitting work and independent judging. As most of you know, Gateaux remains "stubbornly small" taking only three event cakes per week. That leaves us with a pretty small client base. With most "best of" awards based on public votes, we always get creamed by the bigger bakeries. When we heard about the Icon awards, we were thrilled to submit five of our cakes from the past year for judging. The hardest part was narrowing it down, we had so many unique and amazing couples this year! We finally did manage to narrow it down, and are happy to report that we won the award for Best Wedding Cakes. It was especially cool to hear that Sylvia Weinstock was the judge. She's amazing!

Molly and Kevin

Molly and Kevin were married in early October. They had lots of beautiful elements planned for their wedding, so designing a cake was a breeze. Their color scheme of Green and Eggplant was a unique and beautiful starting point. Then, they showed me their beautiful invitations from A Milestone Paper Company, with a graphic scroll design in those same colors.

Once we decided to stencil the invitation pattern onto the cake, we finished it with gumpaste peonies in Ivory with green tips, and Eggplant Hydrangeas to bring in that beautiful deep tone.

A few weeks later, Molly came up with the fabulous idea to have us create sugar cookies frosted to replicate the cake. Each one was tagged with a place card, so each guest had a tiny little version of the beautiful cake to take home with them. You know what that means...Mini Stencil! Luckily, one of the Gateaux girls, Jenna got the hang of stenciling cookies right away. I, on the other hand, will stick with the hand-piped stuff.

Holiday Goodies from Gateaux

Well, after 13 years of resisting, we're finally giving in. We've had so many of our awesome former clients ask us to do Holiday goodies for them to share with their friends and coworkers that we had to do it. So here it is...the first annual Gateaux amazing treat boxes! Just click on the link below to see the cuteness! And give us a call if you need some sugar!

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs046/1102820648840/archive/1102827194402.html

Kari and Joey

I met Kari and Joey when Kari's mom was in town from Philadelphia on a wedding planning trip. Bonnie seemed distracted at the meeting, so I didn't think it went all that well. Later, I found out that they were trying to make it to the State Hockey tournament that day. Now, that's my kind of mom!
Happily, they became our clients, and were dream clients at that! We got to play around with custom invitations featuring the Minneapolis skyline (their reception was on the 50th floor of the IDS Building) and even got to add the silhouette of the church that they were married in (also Downtown).


Even better, we got to build an incredible skyline cake for their wedding reception. Kari thought it would be neat to add some other neighborhoods of Minneapolis onto the cake, so we added the silhouette of the Cherry and Spoon sculpture at the Walker Art Center, as well as some sailboats to represent Lake Calhoun, and the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.

Kari was sweet enough to send us this picture of her and Joey seeing the cake for the first time. I rarely get to see my clients' reactions to their cakes, so this was a special treat for me. Joey's expression is priceless!

Now, for something completely different...

I know you've all come to know us as a beacon of class and style in the Cake Business. So here's a quick reality check. I was just looking through some shots of our recent weddings for the next cake to post when I came upon this little number from a couple of weeks ago. You see, when it comes to cakes, we're quite good at taking on the design scheme, taste, and style of our clients. Happily, our clients tend to be incredibly stylish and tasteful ladies and gentlemen. Their Brothers, however...

It all started about two years ago. We were working on a wedding cake for Samantha and Andy. It was a beautiful fall color scheme with incredible burnt orange, burgundy and deep gold dogwood and branches. A true stunner. As it happens from time to time, a family member's birthday falls on the wedding day. This time it was Sam's brother Eric. We kicked around a few options for a birthday cake to surprise him at the reception. He happened to not only be a South Park fan, but also was named Eric. A Cartman cake was only natural. But not just any Cartman cake...Cartman dressed as his Big Wheel riding, "respect my authoritay" quoting obnoxious little self. We sent the bride to a local gift shop in search of anything with a sound chip so that our Cakey Cartman could talk. She came back with a bottle opener that we quickly frosted into the cake. When you pushed the button inside Cartman's mitten, he said a variety of phrases.

Fast forward two years. We get a phone call from Robin, Sam's mom. Turns out Eric is getting married now. Unfortunately for us, he's tying the knot in Las Vegas, so we can't make the wedding cake. But, Cartman must attend! So we whipped him up a tuxedo, packed him in a nice sturdy box, and he got to fly first class. No sound chip this time, might cause suspicion at airport security.

We got a lovely email that next week with a picture of our boy in Vegas. He made the trip without a scratch.

This isn't the kind of thing we're known for. As a matter of fact, we don't even do cakes this small unless accompanied by a wedding cake. But the picture that Robin sent me jumped out at me when I was perusing all of the wedding elegance that we have yet to post, and it made me smile. So I thought I'd pass it along. The more I think about it, in terms of class and style, I think this one makes the "A List".