Stacy Style

People always ask me how I come up with so many unique cake designs. Don't I ever run out of ideas? The answer is simple. Emerson knew it, and I live by it..."Genius borrows nobly". The only thing he forgot is the "Evil Cake" in front of Genius, but hey, we'll give him a break, he's Ralph Waldo Emerson (and, I'm actually making his great, great, grandson's wedding cake this October...but that's another story).

Onto my knack for Plaigiarism...

Stacy and Andy came into the shop with the usual "wedding file" bursting with inspiration for a hungry cake designer. I love these files, I've seen huge expandable accordion files, the usual ring binder, the latest...ipad wedding file, and my favorite of all time, Dawn Strauss (hi Dawnie!) who would show up at my shop with giant rubbermaid tubs full of inspiration. Stacy and Andy had a lot of beautiful inspiration, but it was their incredible hand-made inviations that grabbed me instantly. Each invitation would have one of four bold, beautiful fabrics ironed on to the back of the card. Enclosure cards as well, so that each invitation had a mixture of patterns packed into one lucky envelope.

Now, the cake lady has no eye for this stuff, I would never put together these varied patterns and colors, but I do know a good thing when I sees it, so I pounced. How about a four tier cake patterned with each of the four fabrics? The grey background with dots, would become grey fondant with 3-D spheres, the pale gingham with opaque polka dots would become airbrushed stripes with fondant applique dots and beads, and the floral patterns would stay in their floral-y glory.

We had a photo shoot coming up with Minneapolis St. Paul Weddings. Typically, I'll make them a dummy cake, but when I got the call, I offered one and only one cake. This one. Being the fabulous creative folks that they are, upon seeing the sketch, they sent out one of their photographers to shoot this little lovely on site...on a Sunday.

So, Stacy and Andy, chalk one more published cake to the Evil Cake Borrower, and thanks for giving me the inspiration for one of my favorite designs of all time.

Town and Country

So I just got an email from Town and Country Magazine. They're looking for cakes for an upcoming article. We're pretty lucky over here at Gateaux, and have had several of our lovelies published nationally. Town and Country is one of my favorites, because they actually ask us to submit photos from actual weddings...of actual cakes, which is what we actually do.

Last summer they published Ashley's beautiful antique blue and lace cake, it was to die for.

Anyway, this time, they're going for a theme. Town and Country, is looking for exactly that...City inspired cakes, and Country inspired cakes.

As I went sifting through my latest cakes for which to send over, it was pretty easy to plop them into city, city, country, country, city, categories...until I got to Ashley and Matt's cake. While it definitely is worthy of a look-see by the editors, it completely stumped me.

You see, we based this cake on the couples invitations, designed by the fabulous Amy at Mi Mi Weddings. They wanted a vintage look to the invites, and while the reception would be on the ledge of a lake, it's Lake Calhoun, smack-dab in the middle of Minneapolis (well, not really the middle, but you get the idea). So, what to do with an urban-vintage lake design scheme? They solved this design problem with an exquisite replication of a full-color, antique map of Minneapolis printed on vellum and included with the invitations. Beautiful!

Cake with said map...not possible. That's where the amazing TK comes into play. Those of you who know us, know that we come with a crew of thousands (people who will lend a hand for a handful of cake, that is) and TK is one of them. He took the map, and cleaned it up to a one color, screen-printable version. Don't ask me how, something to do with cloning, outputting, a little bit of burnt sage, a few chants, you know, artist stuff.


So, with our screens in hand, we laid out sections of the map, printed them, and the rest is a bunch of Jenna's amazing mitering skills.

So, where to put this cake, City or Country? I'm taking votes, but mine is that the article should remain the same, only change the layout to one photo...this one. Country, City, great cake, the editors can get off early and take a nice drive to the Lake.