Kristine & Derek

Kristine and Derek were married in Stillwater on the most beautiful winter day. While there were no snowflakes falling from the sky, there was plenty of snow on the ground, and we made sure there were plenty of snowflakes, icicles, and sparkles on their beautiful sparkling wedding cake.


To finish off the theme, we provided snowflake cookies with silver sugar details as well. Our new recipe, my husband's Grandma Harriett's Casbah cookies. We don't know the origin of the cookie's name. Personally, I think it's because they "Rock the Casbah"...so delicious.

Thanks to Chloe Photography for these beautiful photos!

My Niece and Brides Magazine

We're so excited to be featured in Brides Magazine's latest cake article. It's on the news stands now, but we've been waiting what feels like a lifetime since the photo shoot in October.

We've had cakes featured in Brides before, and really get a kick out of having our little beauties show up in such a great magazine. This one was particularly satisfying for a couple of reasons. First, they weren't promising that any of the cakes that were brought in for the feature would make it through to the final layout. Last time we brought one to them, it was in an article called "America's 50 most beautiful cakes". This time, they still had 50 brought in, but (much to my surprise) the cover of the magazine called this article "23 cakes we love". We're honored to have made the cut!

But mostly, we're excited to have this particular cake featured. You see, we often get calls from magazines asking for cakes, but they are usually tied around a particular theme. Rarely, are we allowed to simply submit whatever our little cakey hearts desire. This was one of those rare opportunities. Turns out, I had just seen pictures of my Niece, Megan in her Homecoming dress about a month before the shoot. I fell in love with the pattern on her dress, and seeing as she is completely awesome, I thought it would be fun to base a cake on her.

Of course, as all of these grand ideas go, there were a few bumps in the road. Well, not so much bumps, as just a really, REALLY long road. All of the Applique on that cake had to be cut by hand, with an exacto knife to properly imitate Megan's dress. Doesn't seem too daunting, until you start cutting out each individual petal, and then have to take them all apart, and try to eyeball them back together on the side of a cake. About 60 hours of labor later, Voila!

And you should have seen my face when the box containing one of the tiers got jammed in the x-ray machine at MSP international airport. Not a pretty sight (or sound) but the cake made it just fine.

Food and Wine...and Cake

No really, it's all edible. We really should have charged a buck everytime someone asked us that this weekend. After all, there were around 10,000 people at the food and wine show and I really think every other one asked us that!

Those of you who faithfully follow the blog know that we figured out how to make incredibley realistic wood grain this summer, for Magic Phil's 70th Birthday. So, when the Food and Wine show contacted us for their first annual "Cake Czar" challenge, we couldn't help but use our new favorite technique to create crates of what else?...Food, and Wine. Don't worry, though, we didn't get off that easily. We had to figure out new techniques for standing the top wine bottle cake up on end, and for creating realistic looking scallops, clams, Pinot Grapes, and Caviar.




Overall, we were pretty happy with our entry, and are even happier to report that Gateaux is Officially the Twin Cities' first annual Cake Czar!

Best part of the whole experience, is that we created a new cake flavor for the event, that we are adding to the menu for our future Brides and Grooms. Our own version of a Black forest cake...Devil's food cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache and Vanilla Mousse surrounding a layer of Tart Cherries in a Port Wine Reduction. Yeah, it's pretty amazing! Took us three tries to make it go from "delicious" to "Crazy Delicious" (or some other descriptor that one of my favorite 2010 brides used to describe it) but hey, this is a family friendly blog, so I'll keep that one to myself.

Anne and Colin at the Walker

I met with Anne and Colin while they were in town on a wedding planning whirlwind tour. It's difficult enough to plan a wedding, but to plan one from a distance is a whole other complication. Luckily, they made an awesome team. I met with the two of them, then finished up the design session with Colin while Anne moved on to her next meeting.
It's not too often that the groom is involved in designing the cake, but (as I found with Colin) most guys really get into it if given the chance. We had good source material...their invitations had a beautiful floral vine motif, and the reception was at the ultra-modern Walker Art Center.

These two elements dictated a clean, sophisticated design. We sketched up several options varying the pattern from black to pale silver, and playing around with round vs. square tiers. The design finally evolved to a square fondant-panel cake with the pattern on alternating sides of the offset tiers. Colin came up with the coup de grace...the color of the pattern would deepen on each tier from pale silver to black. The cherry on top? Well, we were at the Walker, so how about a frosting version of that Iconic Cherry and Spoon Sculpture right outside the venue?


Everything was in place, until about two weeks before the wedding, when I laid out some cake pans to figure out the placement for the cake plate centerpost holes to be drilled. The original design was a three tier cake, but once I stacked the pans, it just didn't work. So, I emailed Anne, told her that I didn't like the silhouette, and changed it to a four tier. You'd think a last minute design change might make a bride a little jumpy, but she was all for it. And happily, all three of us got our dream cake!

They like us...they really like us.

Just got the word that we're a knot pick again this year!

Congratulations! Every year, brides on TheKnot.com vote for their favorite local wedding professionals, and this year, you were voted a Best of Weddings winner!

Black tie...pinstripes, buttons, and houndstooth.

Here's something refreshing! I've done my fair share of cakes that imitate wedding dresses, so when sitting across from these two incredibly well-dressed guys, the answer was simple. Create a cake entirely based on men's fashion and textiles. Why not? It fit their beautiful black tie wedding to a T! With a touch of yellow to make the decoration pop, this was one of the most striking cakes of the year.


A word to the fashion-wise...black tie is ever-evolving. Their invitations were done in my all time favorite alternative to black and white. A gunmetal silver and metallic yellow color scheme made these invitations sophisticated but completely unexpected and unique! We just love working with people who aren't afraid to take a risk...the payoff is so worth it!

Damn these Bitches can Bake Part II

Those of you who have loyally followed the blog already know what's coming next. First comes wedding season, then the Holidays, then...wait for it...Shameless self-promotion time! Hooray! Allright! Yeah baby! Woo and or Hoo.

So here it is. The Minnesota Bride Magazine "Best of 2010" Voting is now open to all who wish to vote. Simply go to Minnesota Bride's website, or click on our beautiful propaganda banner above to vote for Gateaux as your favorite Wedding Cake maker, or for our awesome invitations, favours, or if you really think we're neat...all around wedding vendor.

Last year, we had an incredible response from our clients to our pleas for votes. Alas, we were still edged out by a bakery who does over triple our volume of wedding cakes in a year. That's a whole lot more people to vote for you. Now, we're not being sour pusses about it...they're a plenty nice cake company. But this year, we'd like to take home the shiny, pretty plaque and the awesome publicity. So, if you like what we do, spread the word! Vote for us, and pass the word on to other fans that you know of. In the meantime, we'll stick to our "only three weddings per week" rule. While it may not get us the volume of votes, it sure gives us the time to make each of our wedding cakes as beautiful as it can be!