Love is Sweet

Matt and Andrea had a chic, sophisticated, modern look to their wedding. An intimate affair, held at an artist's studio, it would reflect the couple's style perfectly.
This is a slam dunk when it comes to cake design. It's simple. Take a few key elements (a monogram, a fabulous color scheme, a simple graphic) and turn them into a clean, crisp modern cake. How about this for minimalism...Instead of putting the pattern on the side of the cake, we cut out the pattern from the fondant panels to reveal another layer of colored fondant below. I showed the technique to these guys and they loved it, so we had a cake.

One disconnect to deal with, however. As it happens, Matt comes from a family of serious sugar-junkies. It wouldn't be a family celebration without a full dessert spread. To Andrea, however, this brought visions of country club brunch displays towering with petit fours and cream puff swans swimming around on lavish sterling silver stands. Delicious, yes, but completely NOT in line with the modern, clean design of the wedding.

Enter the cake lady, who, while has quite the respect and admiration for the well-executed cream puff fowl, has grown weary of their aesthetic. It's time for a makeover. So, we took all of the family favorites, Petit Fours, Fruit Tarts, Mini Eclairs, etc. and mixed in some new treats, Monogrammed Pecan Shortbread Cookies, French Macarons, and Cake Pops. Then, we added some coordinating candies, and had all new stands built. All acrylic and glass, no filigree, no mirrors, no swans!





The couple ran with it. We arrived to the studio, and the entire length of the streetfront window was reserved for the cake and desserts. They found amazing table linens, and strung the letters L-O-V-E -I-S- -S-W-E-E-T above the table so that it was visible from the street. The groom shared with us, that the night before, at their rehearsal, a couple stopped in to see if there was a new bakery opening in the space. I guess there kind of was, just "invitation only".

We had the pleasure of meeting the mother of the groom while we set up the desserts. When I commented on the sheer volume of desserts vs. the small guest list, she took full credit. "That was me" she said with a grin that only a true dessert-junkie could understand. And I did.

Fashionista

The cake lady's got style. There's no denying that. Unfortunately, my style is limited to the world of all things cakeable. The rest, we'll leave to that talented few, whose parents, in their infinite foresight knew to name them things like Coco, Donatella, and Yves. My parents had a thing for birds, I guess, which stopped my potential for a career in fashion dead in its tracks by the time I left the delivery room.

Jasmine, however...is a different story.

Jasmine had her "people" (sister Tahlia) call me to arrange a fabulous, designer 21st birthday cake worthy of her impeccable style. I was intrigued by the prospect of designing for a designer, so I sketched up an homage to all of her favorite things. The Chanel purse, nail polish, Dior lip gloss, and Juicy Couture charm bracelet were a gimme, but we felt the need to acknowledge this little Diva's own love of design. It turns out, our Jasmine has her own line of couture goodies, so we added a dressmaker dummy with her label "sewn" to it, as well as her Vaio laptop that aids her in the design process.

Of course, these items could only be properly carried in a "Big Brown Bag", so we had ourselves the perfect cake!

I will say, that upon talking to our little Jas, I couldn't help feeling a little "Diva" myself. She calls me "Miss Robin" in her awesome New Zealand accent, frequently refers to "glittering her knickers" when she's excited, and loves when I curse on "Amazing Wedding Cakes" because it "shows how much I care". I really do think I love her....

One more little addition to the cake, a frosting ipod, with of course, Madonna's "Vogue" on the screen. Go Jasmine, you've definitely got it down...and by the way, you rocked your little white pleated baby doll dress and emerald green sparkly shoes at your birthday party.

Amber and Katy Perry?

Okay, this is actually Amber and Randy's wedding cake, but stay with me people.

When I met with Amber, her mom, and her awesome wedding coordinator Stephanie from Table 6 productions, I instantly knew I wanted to make this wedding cake. Well, not instantly...about 7 minutes into the appointment to be exact.

That's when Amber pulled out of her bridal file, not only the photo of her lovely wedding gown, awesome sparkly shoes, but.....wait for it, people....a photo of Katy Perry.

Now, those of you who know the cake lady, know that her taste in music is nothing short of a little wacky. On any given day, you might hear Etta James, Natalie Merchant, Cake (of course), Greenday, or G Love and Special Sauce playing at the bakery. It wasn't until a few years ago, though, that I discovered Katy Perry, after seeing her don a fruit dress at the Grammys. Any girl who can keep a straight face, and work it, while wearing glittered bananas and strawberries has got my undying admiration and respect. I quickly borrowed her CD from Jenna (cake girly number two) and never gave it back.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to see Ms. Perry in someone's wedding file. But it was her dress that intrigued Amber. A beautiful little ombre number fading from blue to purple. While the bridesmaids would be wearing black at Amber's wedding, the rest of the decor would be inspired by this ombre effect. Lighting, floral, and of course, the cake!

I immediately agreed, and we designed a cake that I had absolutely no idea how to do. It would have the outline of the pattern that trailed down Amber's train, but the sides would be airbrushed ombre from blue to purple sheen. Awesome....terrifying....Awesifying!!!!

Better yet, we would do a dessert/candy buffet that would also transform from blue to purple. Gimme, gimme, gimme!

Much to my dismay, the combination of the cake and dessert buffet made the delivery too extensive for me to wear a fruit dress to the wedding, maybe next time.

Thanks to Ruth from Happily Ever After for these lovely photos!

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.

Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll, two out of three anyway.

We've had some interesting cakes at Gateaux over the years. Hell, we've had some interesting cakes at Gateaux over the weeks, days, etc. But sometimes, we get a week, where I look at the bakery rack of drying "cakesessories" and can't possibly wrap my head around how and why I've ended up with that particular mix of items in my shop. This was one of those weeks.
While the concept of drugs and heavy metal music aren't too foreign to each other, throw together an AC/DC amplifier and several boxes of (that's right, I'm gonna say it) suppositories, and my type "A" world starts to crumble.
It all started with a drop in from one of our favorite past brides, Krista. Her husband, Justin, was turning 30, and she wanted a cake for his surprise party that would rival his groom's cake. Justin happens to be quite the AC/DC fan (their daughter even has an AB/CD Pacifier, complete with the little lightning bolt) so she'd been kicking around the idea of theming the cake in that direction.
Now, the cake lady has pretty broad taste in music. On any given day, you can catch everything from Etta James, to G Love and Special Sauce, and of course, Cake, playing in the shop. But, I never developed the Heavy Metal side of my brain. So, some research was necessary. Google search AC/DC and you'll get a slew of inspiration. So, we sketched up a life-size amplifier, draped with a tour shirt (marked with important dates in Justin's life) and topped it with Hell's Bell (yup, I had no idea about that either). Add in a frosting vinyl record with custom label, a frosting copy of that adorable pacifier for daddy's little head-banger, and some blown off frosting boards (from what else, the frosting sticks of dynamite) and you've got yourself a cake worthy of holding up you saluting with your fist of rock while drinking from your goblet of rock, rock, rock, rock, ro....sorry, vinyl can skip from time to time.


Now that I think of it, I'm guessing that this week made more sense than I gave it credit for. After all, I'm guessing at their age, the members of AC/DC are probably more inclined to be dealing with prescription drugs than recreational drugs. So, onto cake number two (oh God, did I just make that inadvertent, and horrible, horrible pun?)
This cake was ordered to celebrate the owner's sale of his company to another company and subsequent going away party. They originally wanted a replica of the corporate headquarters, but I'm a cake lady, not an architect, so I talked them in a direction that was much more do-able, and kind of fun. I thought we could make the owner a stack of boxes that look like he's packing up his office and leaving. He collects African art, so we could have one of those pieces coming out of the top tier, and since he'll have plenty of time to ride his motorcycles now, we could make the middle tier shaped like a Harley Davidson saddle bag. The cake could be strewn with office supplies, Post-it notes, etc. scrawled with well-wish messages from his staff.
The party planning committee loved the concept, but thought the cake could represent the history of the company, and the products that put them on the map instead. So, we started with a big pharmeceutical tin of compouding powders, onto anti-poisoning remediers, and then onto their latest products, injectables and, yes...don't make me type it again...you know whats.
We added a message on the side of the cake via those edible Post-it Notes that I was pushing for earlier.

We delivered the cake to corporate headquarters, where...we had the most fun! These people were awesome. We had a constant influx of employees coming down to check out the cake set up, and don't let the lab coats fool you, these guys are one hell of a good time!

So, there you have it, two insanely different cakes, but one thing always ties things together...cake makes people happy, not just me, kind of everyone.

Nothing runs like a...(n) International Harvester

As a cake lady, you'd think I might not know all that much about tractors. You'd think right. You'd think I didn't know anything about AC/DC music either, but that's for another blog.
Enter Amy. Her fiance grew up in Iowa on a farm called, not making this up kids, "Lover's Lane Acres". He loves it there, and while that is not his chosen profession, he still spends a lot of time there, on his favorite tractor "Barney". Amy would like to have their wedding cake topped with a frosting replica of his beloved tractor.
So we meet. Surprisingly, Amy is a very fashionable, not-at-all-country girl. Upon hearing her wedding details (pink and orange gerbera daisies, white linen dining, a stunning wedding dress) I couldn't bring myself to top any wedding cake of hers with farm machinery. Fortunately, she had been leaning towards the tractor as a surprise groom's cake, so we had a deal. She provided me with photos of Barney, photos of Jake (not another tractor, their adorable doggy) and details that would be fun to include on the cake (how the groom loves to fish with his boys, etc.)
Since a tractor doesn't have much bulk to it, we decided to put a frosting replica of Barney on a cake shaped like a shipping crate, stamped with the name of the farm, as though it was sent up for the wedding.
Now the madness begins. How the hell do you make a tractor out of frosting. You start by calling in the big guns...Magic Phil...whose family owned an International Harvester dealership in Kansas when he was a kid. Thank god Barney wasn't a Green (ahem, you know who you are) tractor, or we would have lost Phil right away. We ordered a cast iron replica of what, after many hours of internet searching, I learned, was an International Harvester Farmall 756 Custom Diesel tractor. This, of course, only after looking through hundreds of tractor replica toys, and learning the subtle nuances of tractor design.
Once we got our little toy in the mail, we called in Phil to dismantle the sucker to cast some molds. He filled us in a whole lot more on tractor design, and tractor etiquette. Yes, there is such a thing.
It took us the better part of a week, and a final assembly mission involving all three cake ladies, royal icing, red chocolate, and a few cans of compressed air, but the tractor was assembled and happily, made the ride to St. Paul without a hitch (ha, no pun intended...the IH Farmall 756 Custom Diesel doesn't come with a hitch, silly urban folk).
Now onto the wedding cake. I've never made Gerbera Daisies out of frosting before. We've made cute little Shasta Daisies, and tons of little cartoony daisies, but never something as complex as these. We got them cut and imprinted, and let them dry for a day before assembling them, and learning the hard way, that they are insanely fragile. We needed three for the cake. We made six. Two days before the wedding, we made three more (just couldn't sleep without a few more extras). I know I can be paranoid, just ask the girls, but once the cake was set up, we had zero, yes, zero orange daisies left, and only one pink one. Gah!

Anyway, despite the daisy terror, this cake ended up being one of the most festive and just plain fun wedding cakes we've done. We set it up, hid out in the kitchen, and watched as the Bride and Groom entered. She was covering his eyes, so that she could surprise him with his groom's cake. So cute. And she informed me that he drove to the hotel that night with the tractor in a box, on her lap "like he had a newborn baby in the car". Now that's love.