Who knew a barn in the middle of Wisconsin could be so beautiful?

Let's get this out of the way. The Gateaux ladies aren't outdoor-types. Especially yours truly. I am a city girl through and through. Not to mention, you should see Miss J. around any flying insect..it ain't pretty.

So, when we met with Madie, we knew that her barn wedding reception would be beautiful, but its location (about 20 miles from the middle of nowhere) would give me the willies.

Oh, how wrong we were! We pulled up to the Enchanted Barn, in Hillsdale, Wisconsin to the sight of our bride in a field having her photos taken with the most idyllic background of grazing horses. Once we got into the barn, it was beautiful, with hundreds of candles hanging from the ceiling, and an entire wall that opened up to that same amazing terrain. It was downright...well, Enchanting.

Anyway, with the barn inspriration in tow, when we did her wedding invitations, Maddie thought it would be cool to incorporate a woodgrain motif. Her colors were bright pink, orange, apple green and black (also, not your typical country wedding colors) so we decided to do black woodgrain, and a vintage-looking country font. It was a great look!


The cake would be covered in bright pink and orange flowers. Each one, hand cut, colored molded, and wired by my happy little staff. I have to admit, color isn't my strong-suit, and I'm a bit apprehensive of such a bold combination, but this little sweetie just worked! We hijacked the guestbook table (they tried to give us a cocktail table with a white linen) to finish the look, snapped some pictures, set up a monster candy buffet, and headed back towards civilization. Can't wait to see pictures from the bride! When we do, we'll be sure to post them!

Amy and Miles

Amy and Miles wanted an absolutely minimalist cake design. They really wanted the cake to feel sculptural, with some room between the tiers for their florists to pack in solid red flowers. Therefore, the cake needed to be clean, elegant, and non-fussy. What they really wanted, was a completely plain cake, which, we could have accommodated, but then...

It turns out that their inspiration for "sculptural" was based on the fact that they were planning on being married in Miles' grandmothers garden. Once we started talking, I learned that this is not your typical "granny's flower patch". He pulled up some pictures on his phone, and I realized that this woman had some serious style! Her garden was filled with beautiful, modern sculptures.

Once my enthusiasm for the art was made apparent by my squeals of delight, they realized that there were far more possibilities in wedding cake design than they had formerly realized. They pulled up several scuptures for inspiration, and we sketched up several cakes.

It wasn't until they had a photographer capture this photo of one of the sculptures, that we really understood what the cake should look like.

I have to admit, it was really hard for a cake lady who is obsessed with perfectly smooth fondant, to deliberately deface a perfectly porcelaine-like fondant cake. But once I got over the initial discomfort, we really go into it. And once we set the cake up with the beautiful red orchid separators that Bastian*Skoog assembled for us, we absolutely fell in cake-love with it!

Fortunately, the couple felt the same. Amy even mentioned that Miles' family caught the reference to the sculpture instantly! She even sent me a couple of cake cutting photos (check out her niece on the right side of the photo, in a state we like to call "Sugar-nirvana".

90th Birthday!

Sorry for the hiatus blog-friends, but the Evil Cake Genius has been in China for the last two weeks, where, she learned that...Chicken feet and whole turtles aren't just for breakfast anymore, and...there's another Gateaux cake shop out there...in Beijing! We stumbled upon this little shop in an old Hutong neighborhood that has become a shopping street. We exchanged business cards and a very limited conversation with lots of miming to try to communicate how cool it was that we had twin companies on opposite sides of the globe.
But on to more cakes! We got a call from Give My Regards To...Event Planning for a 90th Birthday cake. Sydney, our birthday boy has lived many lives in his 90 years, so the only way we could make it into one cake was to Box it up!Any of you who are from the Minneapolis area would recognize the top tier, and hopefully make the connection to the guest of honor's name. Yep, he was the owner of the Sydney's Pizza Cafe's that were dotted around the Twin Cities not too long ago. The pizza box and frosting slice of pizza were the obvious nod to this chapter of his life. The Hamm's Beer Case tier and Frosting Goodie Pop bottle on top of the cake referenced his years in the bottling business, and the crate tier covered the rest of his business endeavors as well as his love of travel. We added the fishing lures and Chris Craft boat flag because he's not all work! As usual, it's all edible!And the fortune cookies...when asked what he wanted to serve at his party, he chose Chinese food. Why not? And yes, it true Gateaux fashion, we made it harder than it had to be...the fortune cookies are frosting, and the fortunes too!The planner let us know that they had to put a sign on the cake table that said "Birthday Cake" because nobody knew it was a cake. We just love to hear that!

Maria's 60th Birthday

I've met some pretty fabulous people in my career. I'm lucky that way. Maria, was no exception. She emailed us about a cake for her 60th birthday party. It would be a beautiful affair celebrating her life "while I'm still around to enjoy it" as she told us. The more I got to know Maria, the more I loved her. She's an amazing woman, an educator at Mankato State, an independant, funny, successful woman, who isn't afraid to don a tiara for her birthday party. That's my kind of lady.

We made the cake opulent and striking, using her decor of gold, roses and grapes as our inspiration, I drew up several options, and she was immediately drawn to this one. A beautiful three tier Oval cake with hand-painted peach accents and 23 Karat gold painted scrollwork.

When we arrived to set up the cake, she was there with her family putting the finishing touches on the room, so we had the priviledge of spending some time with them. Maria is preparing for a trip to Africa to finish her Thesis on the multiple roles/identities played by African American Women in their lives. I'm sure I'm not doing her project justice, but really guys, I'm a cake lady, hardly a scholar. All I do know is that I'm fully on board for her 70th!

It better be a girl!

We met Cindy a few years ago, when she was hosting a baby shower. We made the most adorable patchwork jungle animal themed cake and cookies for that event. So, when she called this year, we knew we had our work cut out for us. This time, the shower was for her daughter...Cindy is going to be a Grandma! They already know it's a girl, and this shower is going to celebrate all things frilly, girly, pink, and precious!!

I'm in.

Cindy sent me a picture of a cake with three layers of garrett frills in varying shades of pink. It was a single tier cake and it had a frilly bassinette piped on the top of the cake. The cake was the perfect starting point to launch an amazing baby-girl-fest cake design. We changed the bassinette into a three dimensional bassinette, then decided that maybe the entire top tier should be the bassinette. We added a white teddy, a rattle, and a middle tier covered in hand-cut and piped eyelet.

There are so many times when I have to restrict myself on wedding cakes. After all, they can't be too girly, there is a groom, after all, and the kiss of death to a wedding cake design is if I deem it to be too "baby showerish". For that reason, we had a blast, unleashing all the too girly, too delicate, and too pink for a wedding cake ideas that have been swarming around my cakey brain for too many years.

Add some precious bassinette shaped cookies, and some teddy bear ones (for the men at the party, a little less frilly, but just as delicious) and we were ready to roll.

Now, I've seen some pretty awesome reactions to cakes in my day, but Cindy, well...she takes the cake. While trying not to peek until the cake was completely stacked, she accidentally looked up from her gift wrapping and caught a glimpse. The only reason I know this is because she let out a little shriek, and ran from the room. When the cake was ready, she came back in and was positively giddy. On the car ride back to Minneapolis (we delivered the cake 2 hours away) Jenna, my coworker, pointed out that she'd gladly drive every cake we ever made 2 hours away for a reaction like that. I can't help but agree.

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.