Get me to the Reception on time

I'm late.  I'm always late...a "latepants" if you will.  Can't help it.  Any minute that I arrive early  to something is a minute that I could have been working on one of the ten-thousand other things I have on my to do list.  So, I'm either exactly on time, or late...mostly late. Except for cake deliveries.  In seventeen years of delivering cakes, I can think of two times that I ran late.  One was an unexpected traffic jam that snuck up on me, resulting in a hurried set up that caused the caterer to prolong the cocktail hour by ten minutes, the other was due to a tornado warning, in which, my husband, the Captain, had fortunately already arrived with the cake, and called me off from driving into the storm. Of course, my only question..."is the cake alright?" and my brilliant husband's response "It's on a kitchen cart in the basement of the hotel with me and the hotel staff and guests."  Apparently, it was the only inanimate object moved to safety...gotta love the Captain.

The trick to keeping Latepants from being late, is in the padding.  We arrive at each venue two hours before the guests arrive.  That gives me an hour and a half to set up the cake and take photos, and another half hour of cushion time in case the guest's arrive early, or we hit traffic, etc.

The only exception to this rule is at the Minnesota History Center.  We love it there.  Top notch staff, great food, friendly people.  The only hitch...it's a museum, therefore, open to the public until five o'clock each day.  So, when Jenna hired us for her wedding, and informed me that the guests would be arriving at 6:00, we had to throw our meticulously padded timing out the window.  Can we set up a cake in an hour.  Sure.  If we have to.

Jenna had a fabulous vintage aesthetic to her wedding.  Her sense of color is fabulous (one of my worst design traits) and her knack for personalization, amazing.  She should be a wedding planner... actually, she opened her own business this year...wedding planning.  She's great, if you need the number, give me a call!  We had a great design session, combining her and her fiance's love of travel, with their vintage look and color scheme and her vision that the cake should look like a stack of hat boxes.  I've always wanted to do a hatbox cake, and the beautiful vintage hatboxes that she found online as inspiration, made designing this little sweetie a sheer delight.  We added a band to match the waistline detail of her dress on the top tier, and the beautiful damask pattern from her hand-made table runners to another, and put lyrics from a song that she wrote for the wedding ceremony on the bottom.  Multi talented, much?  Finally, we found art from vintage post cards, and made frosting-backed travel stickers and postcards for the cakes to tell the couple's story in geography.

The day of the wedding came, we planned to arrive at the History Center at 4:30 (even though we couldn't get in until 5:00, we're persistent that way) and Jenna and I began our Caravan to the reception at 4:00, leaving 30 minutes to get from Plymouth to St. Paul.  A trip I've made more times than I can count.  Little did I know, that MNDOT had postponed the much publicized closing of I-94 from a week earlier due to rain...and didn't share this information with, well, it seems, ANYONE. 

When we got to 94, we were redirected to 94 west, and taking one look at the line of traffic trying to get back into Minneapolis on 94 east, I decided to drive through the city.  The Captain and I both went to the U of MN, and lived in Minneapolis for several years...so I called him so he could direct me to the next entrance onto 94.  Easy, we drove through downtown (which by the way, everyone else decided to do) and attempted to get onto 94 at the Metrodome, nope, that entrance was closed, Seven Corners, closed, the detour took people onto 35W North, but I'm smarter than the detour, right? Wrong.  Poor Jenna got the tour through Dinkytown, onto University Avenue, which, just out of coincidence, was not only shut down to one lane, but was covered with Fraternity and Sorority members having some kind of festival...

The idea was to get down to 280 and cut back over to 94, but with the lane closure on University, I was travelling an average of 4 miles per hour, and starting to FREAK OUT.  Finally, I remembered the entrance onto 94 that I used to take when I lived on Erie Street.  The Captain advised against the risk, but I was getting nowhere on University Avenue.  So, I made a last minute decision, and cut right, leaving Jenna to try to maneuver over.  I hung up with the Captain, and called Jenna to direct her to where I hoped we could make it onto the Highway.  And, by the grace of the cake gods, it was open.  The skies opened, and I think I heard the faint sounding of horns, as I made it onto I - 94 via the Huron entrance.  Which I had all to myself.  Nothing makes you recall every scene from every Post-Apocalyptic, and/or Zombie movie more than having Interstate 94 in Minneapolis, all to yourself.  Not a single car or construction vehicle, not a soul, besides me and my cake, from the U of MN Minneapolis campus all the way to Cretin/Vandalia.  A stretch of road that measures approximately 3 miles, and felt like 30 miles waiting for Mad Max and Tina Turner to come carry me off to Thunderdome. 

But, again, I digress.  Turns out, I arrived at the History center at 5:40, with Jenna a mere 2 minutes behind me.  We sprinted inside, found a flatbed, and set a new land-speed record for stacking a four tier wedding cake and putting all of the finishing touches on it in fifteen minutes.  I even had time to snap a few pictures of it before the guest's arrived.


Not my ideal day, but as these photos of the Bride and Groom show, no one was the wiser.  Until now...

Surprised by Love

"Like the bumptious meadow vole, the heart in its striving course is very often surprised by the sudden arrival of the Great Horned Owl of Love" -R.N.Allen
And so it happened. At least that's how Michael described it.

In my line of work, you talk about love a lot. How'd you meet? How'd you fall in love? How'd you know they were the one?

But Michael's take on love was summed up perfectly by this painting by R.N. Allen. Turns out, he was unsuspectingly blindsided by love. "Does that make Nicole the Great Horned Owl?" I asked. Well if the shoe(talon) fits...

When I met with Michael and Nicole, I could only take one more wedding cake for the weekend of their wedding. I had two couples to meet for that one spot, but it didn't take long for me to decide that I wanted these two to fill out that weekend.

When they came in, they brought a copy of their invitation. It was illustrated (by Michael's sister) with a bear and an owl. The bear and owl captured the spirit of their relationship from the get-go. And here's how it went.

Michael and Nicole had taken a trip up to the North Shore early in their dating. They were in a gallery, looking for some pieces by a family friend, when they were both drawn to one particular artist's work. That's where Rick Allen comes in. It was his prints, The Great Horned Owl of Love, and Burntwood Black, that captured the hearts of this couple. So much so, that they bought both pieces, and they remain in their home as souvenirs of the beginning of their relationship.
Not all of us are this lucky. While we all have our love's origins, they aren't always so incredibly helpful in designing a wedding cake. If that were the case, my wedding cake may have taken the form of my 19 year old ass in a pair of jeans (no, literally, just my ass) as my dear husband first took notice of me as I was bent over my roommate's fish tank in my dorm room. See, not terribly cake-able.

But back to a significantly more classy couple...

Michael related to the calm, lumbering bear in the Burntwood Black Painting, while Nicole was clearly the cunning owl. With a few tweaks to the design, the two paintings would combine to make one spectacular cake. We expanded the tree to the silhouette of the tree on their wedding invitations, and upon Nicole's request, made the owl a bit less menacing (after all, love had already done its swooping). Michael suggested keeping the "Surprised by Love" text on the bottom tier, but also thought to add their names in the woodcut pattern on the sides as an hommage to the artist's tendency to hide his own name in his work. We couldn't help but to keep our poor unsuspecting Vol somewhere on the cake, so we stashed him on the right side of one of the tiers...he deserves to see this happpy ending.

But one problem loomed over us. What kind of cake stand would be worthy of such an awesome cake design. I immediately gravitated toward wrought iron, and while our dear Magic Phil, certainly could deliver on this, it turned out, that Nicole's dad is a welder, and was creating wrought iron candle holders for all the reception tables. I quickly volunteered him for the task of creating the cake stand. Not only would it match the candle holders, but it would make a great keepsake for the couple if it were made by the bride's father.

Armed with the prints, I recognized the need for some professional help (no, not that kind) on this job. So, I brought in my trustey TK. Honestly, a cake decorator is only as good as their friends who will work for cake. TK fits this profile, he's a good friend, with incredible graphic design skills, and a voracious appetite for all things cakey. Good thing, too, because this project would take a lot of time. He built me a tree from the ground up, and created the couple's names in wood-block, he even got rid of the owl's crazy eyes. Armed with his artistic edits, we created the cake out of a mixture of frosting screen printing, airbrushing, and Jenna's mad fondant mitering skills.
We delivered the cake on a Sunday. A cake-decorator's only day off. Typically, I take these Sunday deliveries with my butt-loving husband in order to give the Gateaux girls a day off, but this cake was so cool that Jenna couldn't help herself, and volunteered for the shift. When we arrived, the wrought iron cake stand was waiting for us. Nicole's Dad hit it out of the park! Keepsake, schmeepsake, I wanted to steal it, but who am I to piss off a Bear and a Great Horned Owl?


Michael and Nicole were gracious and dare I say ecstatic about their cake. When I asked Michael to email me some photos of the cake for the Blog, this is his explanation of the cake cutting photo. "I had a very very hard time bringing myself to cut the cake. I feel like I spent minutes agonizing over where to cut into it before finally willing myself to cut into it on the back of the bottom tier, where I would notice it the least. Once I started cutting Nicole had to press down because I was so torn. It was wonderful, and absolutely delicious, but I never thought cutting the wedding cake would be that nerve wracking." Did I mention how much I love this guy?

As I was leaving the reception, Michael called me aside and handed me an envelope. Here's what was in it.
I carry it in my wallet. Never know when you're going to get pulled over for drawing naked people.