Magic Phil turns 70

Anyone who knows Gateaux, knows that we take full advantage of those talented and supportive friends and family that we're blessed to be surrounded by. My own Mom takes great pride in finding me vintage cake plates at auctions, Jenna's boyfriend, Kyle is always around fixing things at the shop (I don't even know if his dad is aware that we have absconded with his band saw) and nothing would get done if it weren't for the incredible support of my husband (the Goo) who takes on the role of personal chef, dog-daddy, and personal therapist during the busy season every year. But one name stands out among many of our clients...Magic Phil. My retired father in law, who now spends his time helping everyone in the family with all things that may need fixing, is also a wonderful woodworker. He's been responsible for many of our cake stands, and has expanded his skills into stone mason, and Acrylic stand manufacture in the past several months.

Needless to say, when Phil turned 70, there had to be one hell of a cake!


We had the party in his workshop (something he finally built after years of dreaming about it). And what more suiting place for the handy man's party. Friends and relatives came in from all over the country, to hide in his workshop awaiting the chance to surprise him with a party and wonderful tribute to the guy who can fix anything.

We had a blast making his cake. First of all, how often can you make frosting duct tape and nails? Second of all, we got to actually wing the design, something that NEVER happens with anal-retentive me handling the orders. Everything was edible, of course, from the screw drivers and level, to the duct tape, peg board, and wood veneer. Best part was watching Jenna set up the cake with one of my nephews, Nick as foreman of the project (he's the one donning the hard hat).

The party was a good time. Best part was listening to people as we sat in a circle and they told their favorite "Phil fixed it" story. It's inspiring to hear how one person can touch so many, and make every one of us feel like he's all ours.

C'est le Gateau

Haven't posted in a while. Turns out the cake universe decided to throw us a little curve ball in the middle of our busy season, so we needed to get a few things straightened out before getting back to the fun stuff.

Short version...good refrigerator gets repaired for not holding proper temperature...becomes CAKE KILLER. Thankfully, no casualties, but two weeks of incredible uncertainty and drama as to if we would be able to continue to create the cakes that we love without risking their soggy demise in every commercial fridge we've tried. Thanks to the support of our ring of talented, tenacious, and fiercely loyal friends, family, fridge-tech, and cake nerd/diva network, we seem to have figured out a solution to the problem. Much thanks to the support of the staff at Colette's cakes, Kerry Vincent, Todd the awesome Fridge Tech, Dave the other awesome fridge tech, the staff at Appliance Smart, Envirotech, Redco, and of course, my awesome husband, for driving all over the twin cities with test-cakes and hygrometers.

Now, back to the fun stuff!

Ingrid and Jason were engaged at the top of Sacre Coeur in the MontMartre arondissement of Paris. They called looking for a cake in the shape of that awesome cathedral, but having been to that part of Paris, myself, I knew we had much more to work with. Turns out...on a five day trip to Paris for my tenth wedding anniversary, my husband naively trusted my navigational skills to get us to the airport via the Metro. We were well on our way, until he realized that I was taking us to Orly, when we actually needed to get to Charles De Gaulle. Tee hee. The upside to missing your flight out of Paris...missing your flight out of Paris! We found another hotel, threw down our bags, and headed of to see MontMartre. Best accidental vacation day I've ever had!

Now back to our lovely couple. Turns out, they adored that particular neighborhood of Paris as well, so we decided to top the cake with Sacre Coeur, but let the cake represent the fabulous hillside that makes up Montmartre, complete with its open air art market and quaint cafes.





We added a couple of personal details, like the couples darling doggy "Polo" tied to one of the lamp posts, as well as the actual hotel that the couple stayed at in Paris and the Carousel at the foot of Sacre Couer that they took a spin on after he popped Le Quesion. All done in a new technique that we came up with while working on a cartoon-style groom's cake shaped like Texas.


It took a lot of vision to translate the little cartoons from the grooms cake into a Paris-themed wedding cake, but Ingrid and Jason really embraced the idea, and I must say, this was an absolute joy to work on!

We had such fun painting the panels, that while in "fridge hell" this past two weeks, I seriously considered retiring from cakes and taking painting lessons instead. Fortunately for my clients, employees, and the sanity of my husband, I'm still on the job.

I'll bet it was a prop!

Christina was fun to meet with. She brought in several cake ideas from several sources, and we picked the best parts of all of them, combined them, and created our own over-the-top masterpiece. I love sessions like hers. What I don't love about sessions like hers, is that once she leaves, I have that moment of sheer panic when I realize that Cake Designer Robin has just SCREWED Cake Maker Robin.
You see, the main silhouette of this cake was based on a cake that Christina saw in the movie "27 Dresses". Easy, we thought...find out who made the cake for the movie, and they'll divulge where to find a stand that supports four tiers of cakey goodness while remaining virtually invisible. All of those little frosting scrolls between the layers look like they're holding up the next tier, but alas, they are merely gumpaste, and snap at the slightest provocation.
So I put my crack team of internet stalkers on the project. But everyone came up empty handed. It appears as if no one wants to take credit for the cake. We couldn't find any credit anywhere for it. So, we turned to our secret weapon..."Magic Phil". Now, anyone who knows cakes, knows that it takes a fair amount of engineering skill to pull off most designs, so how lucky am I that I married into a family with an electrical engineer. My father in law Phil is not only an engineer, but (and this is the important part) is also retired. The man can do anything, but most importantly, he loves a good cake challenge.

I gave him my wish list of what the stand needed to look like (invisible) and what it needed to do (hold about 75 pounds of cake) and he went at it. Two months later, he shows up at my house with an acrylic center post stand that looked like he'd been working in the medium his entire life. We set it up, oohed and aahed, and put it in a box until the week of the wedding.

The night before the wedding, we gave it a test run. The stand did exactly as promised. It held the cakes so that they were floating in mid air, it was spectacular...until anyone breathed near it...at which point it swayed like a jack-in-the-box. So after I regained consciousness, I sent the staff home, and called Magic Phil. What's better than an engineer? One who comes to your rescue at the drop of a hat. That next morning, he arrived with a load of various acrylic and steel tubing, and with four perectly sized clear supports for the 2nd tier, the cake was rock solid! We took that little beauty down to the reception, spent an hour and a half attaching all of its little frosting filigree "supports" and vowed never to do any cake that isn't a traditional direct-stack format ever again. Or at least until August.
Anyway, after all is said and done, I had a good friend look at the pictures who immediately came to the simple conclusion that the original cake on which we based this cake was probably a movie prop, and not a cake at all. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it is true. Oh well, maybe if they need a cake for "28 dresses" they'll give us a call. We've got the stand all ready to go.

By the way, here is Christina with her cake. I've seen a lot of wedding dresses in my day, but Wow! This one takes the cake (no pun intended). She's an amazing clothing designer, and made the dress herself. The bottom of the skirt was removable for the reception (her own engineering project I'm sure)and the dress turned into this sassy little cocktail number.

Screenprinting!

Most people would be shocked at how many "cake decorating" tools come from Home Depot. Fact is, I find the most incredible tools for my job at places that have nothing to do with restaurant/bakery supply. My newest adventure began when I met with Alex about her wedding invitations. We already knew that we would copy the incredible fabric rosettes from Alex's Monique Lhuillier wedding dress on the cake, but, once we picked the invitations, adding the beautiful motif and monogram to the cake became another priority.

I really had no idea how to transfer such a fine and intricate motif to a cake, especially if I wanted to maintain the delicate nature of the pattern. We've done lace and fine things before, but that is across an entire tier, and while this is one beautiful motif, it was just one element of an otherwise impeccably planned wedding, and we didn't want it to take over the entire cake.

We decided to just use the initials, and skip the motif. Until two days before the wedding, when I spotted something in my office that had completely slipped my mind. About five years ago, I was meeting with a bride who had bought a personal screen print machine in order to print her own wedding invitations in metallic gold. I was so intrigued, that I bought one, looked at how neat it was...and stored it in that great abyss that is my office.

But, its time had come! At eight o'clock at night, with purse-on-shoulder, about to leave...I dragged the thing down from the top shelf and spent the next two hours shooting a screen of Alex and Grant's motif, and figuring out how to completely misuse and abuse the poor little screen printer so that it would print with frosting instead of ink, onto fondant instead of paper.

It took a few tweaks, but eventuallly, it worked beautifully. I called Alex, who said 'kay, and we adjusted her cake design accordingly.
So there you have it, add screen printer to the resume. Thanks Alex and Grant, for letting me experiment on you!

By the way, I had the pleasure of seeing them at the wedding. I've been doing this for thirteen years now, and have seen a lot of brides. But something about Alex in her gown reminded me of what it felt like to be dressed in all of those layers of silk and crinolin all those years ago. I just love a bride! All that joy, love and possibility in one fluffy white dress.

Julia and Kenny

Julia and Kenny were wed at the Calhoun Beach club. Now, usually we don't have the pleasure of seeing our brides on their wedding day (which is a good thing, as cake ladies are usually not too terribly presentable by delivery day, after a week of long decorating days/nights). Typically, we are at the reception site while the wedding is happening elsewhere. But every once in a while, we have a one-location wedding/reception, and we get to see our brides in all of their splendor. Now, Julia knew that we'd be hiding out waiting for the room turnover, to set up the cake, so she told us to go up one floor to "the library" room that overlooks the Boulevard room so that we could watch the ceremony.
Not many people know this, but I was not always an Evil Cake Genius. I started out as a photographer, and have seen lots...and lots of weddings in my time. Am I jaded? Guess not, as I still love that incredible moment, where two people get up in front of all of their friends and family and make that incredible committment to each other. I get choked up every time, and this was no exception.

Now, onto the cakey goodness...
Julia and Kenny's wedding was an elegant affair with a modern-tailored feel. It was a blend of lavish and simplicity in the same event (no, really, you can have both).

We based the cake on their pale silver and white color scheme, incorporated their beautiful monogram, and copied a beautiful brooch that the bride wore on her gown. The bow on top came from a pair of shoes that she was planning to wear, we fell in love with, and then they turned out to be unwearable...but still cakeable!


We made the brooch entirely out of gumpaste and silver dragees, and the bow as well, so everything on the cake was edible. Not only edible...delicious. These two came up with their own cake flavor combination, Devil's food cake filled with dark chocolate ganache vanilla mousse and fresh raspberries.
But the best part of working with these two was this...they really got it. Wedding planning should be fun! From our first appointment to when they picked up their invitations, to the time they walked back down the aisle, these two were grinning ear to ear and having the time of their life. It's a real pleasure to work with couples like this, and I will say that I get more than my fair share.

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Grasslands at the McNamara Center

So if you've been to the McNamara Alumni Center at the U of MN, you know that it is one big sexy piece of architecture. But, it wasn't until I sat down with Rachel to plan her cake for her reception at the McNamara that I really "got it". The decor and structure of the building represents Minnesota in all of its elements. They've captured the Iron Range, the 10,000 lakes, the Northern lights, and the north shore. So, Rachel kept everything about her decor (including the cake) organic in design. We started with a magazine photo of a cake covered in shimmering frosting grass, but by the time she left, we'd made the design a little more, shall we say, Rachel (which, by the way, is happily, a lot more Gateaux).

By the time all was said and done, that cake contained individually cut blades of frosting grass made by a total of 4 people. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, anytime anyone had a spare second, they made grass. I have a newfound respect for mother nature on this one. Besides the grass, we added beautiful frosting Anemones, tiny ladybugs, dragonflies, caterpillars, a frosting cardinal, and (no, you're not seeing things) a pair of bumblebees donning a tophat and veil.

Never doubt my clients when it comes to FUN.