Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend

This week's cake was for a friend's mom who was celebrating a milestone birthday. My idea was a cake that was classy, feminine, and had a little bling. After all, how else should a girl celebrate a milestone birthday but with diamonds and chocolate.

The cake was chocolate with a whipped vanilla frosting and covered in Satin Ice buttercream fondant. The diamonds are isomalt which is a sugar substitute used to make hard candy, and I used a candy mold to get the shape.

Happy Birthday Marion!

Weddings of 2012

I was very pleased with the opportunities I had this year for creating wedding cake and cupcakes. Being a fulltime momma and a parttime small business owner has allotted me only so much time to create a handful of wedding cakes and I look back on the year with a thankful heart and excitement in seeing what 2013 will bring.

The first wedding was in the spring for a friend of mine. This was an exciting weekend because I wasn't her planned baker. The baker she chose had a family tragedy and I was asked to make her desserts the week before the wedding. Luckily I had done Mandy's engagement cake earlier in the spring and was familiar with the look they were going for:

        

The couple chose a bird and branch themed cake but only wanted a small cut-in cake and four different flavors of cupcakes for their guests. The bride really wanted a large cake without there being a lot of actual cake. My remedy was to create a three tiered cake with the top tier being actual cake. The bottom tiers are styrofoam covered with fondant. The branches are made of chocolate and the bride and groom bird and groom topper was made by the bride's mother.

 



The next wedding cake took place at the end of spring and was for another friend of mine who loves the fine arts. This was a fun cake to make because she gave me artistic freewill. Here's what I came up with, an ode to the great Henri Matisse:
   

       

The cake is hand painted with Americolor gel food coloring and the flowers are made of sugar.

The third wedding cake of the year took place in San Clemente which was my first traveling cake. Let me just take a moment to say that there is nothing more frightening in this business than traveling with a wedding cake. Of course Murphy's Law would state that disaster may strike on such an important day as this. The cake was a very tall four tier buttercream. I decided to stack the cake at the venue which was an outdoor event during the beginning of the summer. Upon arriving there was no wedding planner (which if I could just give any bride reading this some unsolicited advice, GET A WEDDING PLANNER), which usually means no one knows where the cake is going or who to talk to about such details. Once that was figured out, I was surprised with the cake being situated in direct sunlight for the next 4-5 hours. Luckily, by some miraculous intervention, even though I was told that the cake would be under a covered patio, I decided at the last minute that I would go with a whipped high ratio shortening frosting instead of traditional buttercream. Could you just imagine what a buttercream frosted cake would look like after sitting in the blazing hot sun for 4 hours?!? 

"Frosty the snowman knew

The sun was hot that day,

So he said, "Let's run and

We'll have some fun

Now before I melt away."

                                                                                          

Thank the good Lord the cake survived and still tasted great! The bottom tier is made of styrofoam and all four layers are frosted and piped with the whipped buttercream. the buntings are made with twine and scrapbooking paper. 

The last wedding I got to be a part of happened in mid July when I was already very pregnant. I wasn't planning on doing anymore weddings at that point but the bride was the daughter of a friend from church and I just couldn't resist a country/Kenyan (yes, I said Kenyan like from Africa) wedding. My lovely cupcakes were displayed next to the barbecued goat :-) It was awesome. I leave you with a little peak of just how pregnant I really was and the barbecued goat:

       

Chinese Brush Painted Koi Cake

Chinese brush painting is one of the earliest art forms known to man. The earliest brush painting is said to be dated as far back as 4000 BC. First though of as a craft, brush painting served a utilitarian purpose of documenting cultural and social examples of the times as well as demonstrating the use of symbolic references in nature. The koi fish is one such symbol created many times over the centuries. A symbol of good fortune, hope, prosperity, and wealth, the koi fish is one of the most painted natural symbols in Chinese brush painting.

I had the privilege of creating a birthday cake for a woman who enjoys reviving the ancient art of Chinese brushwork. Here was my ode to one of the oldest art forms on the planet. The artist is pictured at the left holding the cake server.

                             

The cake was a lemon cake rolled with fondant. The lily and pad were made from gumpaste and the fish were hand painted with Americolor gel food coloring. To achieve that watercolor effect I thinned the gel coloring with vodka. One could use any sort of spirit but vodka works best because it doesn't have a scent. Another alternative would be lemon extract.

Classy Yellow Engagement Cake

Yellow and white have had quite a historical love affair over these past centuries. In the earliest of times they were paired textures of brocade and lace or in damask wallpaper.

Later in the mid-century modern era we found yellow and white in Eames furniture and Wasily Kandinski paintings.

Today it reappears in fabric prints, clothing, furniture decor, and of course cakes.

This week's cake was a lemon coconut cake with french vanilla cream frosting. The outer adornment was festooned in canary yellow fondant, white gumpaste flowers and ribbons. 

Bows are fun to make and they add a nice elegant touch to any cake. I recently learned that while most bows are made from fondant, its best to use gumpaste if using other adornments in the same white color to color match. The flowers are white tiger tulips with yellow stamens, and each bloom was cut using flower cutters and their shape and detail created from a flower veiner and dried on large soup spoons. 

Jenn + Scott = Love at The Condor's Nest

Oh how I love weddings. What I love most about weddings, aside from the special union celebrated between two people in love, are the details. The flowers, the china, the wreaths and ribbons, the dress, and even the favors are all meticulously coordinated by the artistry and imagination of the little girl who spent her childhood dancing around in mom's white sheets only to grow up and live her dream of becoming the bride. The bride of this particular wedding is my friend Jenn to her beau of 4 years Scott. They we're married at the Condor's Nest out in the middle of no where California. If you'd like to catch a glimpse of the wedding, check out Jenn and Scott's wedding video clip by the amazing 618 Studios.

The cake turned out just as I had wanted after much hard work, deliberation, and a few tears. The inside was a light and tasty white pound with strawberry mousse filling and a vanilla cream crumb coat. Each layer was festooned with strips of barely colored fondant mimicking the fabric of Jenn's wedding gown. And before you think I came up with the idea myself I was inspired by the work of two artists- a sculptor named Elizabeth Turk and my cake infatuation Maggie Austen. The succulents, roses, jasmine, peony, and leaves were all made of gumpaste.

Some of you who follow me on Facebook may have seen a few late night, or I should say very early morning comments of over-tiredness and discouragement. In my recent decision to launch KM cakery I made the move to start working in a commercial kitchen. I used this wedding cake as an opportunity to do so and my first time was a little harder than I had anticipated. Working in a commercial kitchen has its advantages; commercial equipment, multiple sinks, lots of counter space, however it does come with a few downfalls such as having to work in a new kitchen, not knowing where anything is, and being capped for time. In the process of making this cake I managed to melt, crack, and massacre the entire bottom tier of the cake working well until 2:00am re-baking and re-making it again. A general rule of thumb and by far the smartest thing I did was to make a lot of extra cake batter.

Driving the cake to the site also posed a big challenge as the hills and curves of the country road near the nest doesn't make for ample driving with a 50 lb. three tier cake in the backseat of one's automobile. But after clenched teeth and sweaty palms the cake arrived safely in just enough time to arrange the flowers on and make it to the ceremony in time. I would say the greatest joy received from embarking on such an endeavor was the look on the bride and groom's face when they saw the cake for the first time as well as the approving comments made by the guests from taking that first bite.

Special thanks to Maggie Yurachek Photography for these great photos:

High Tea in the Chaparral

There is no better way to practice doing something then to sign up for a contest. In April (I know its been awhile since I blogged) I enrolled in my local cake design school's spring cake show. The theme of this year's contest was, "Flowers in Springtime." I decided to create a cake for spring high tea in the chaparral. The cake itself was a dummy on the inside (nothing more than styrofoam) rolled in fondant with gumpaste flowers. The layers of fondant was inspired by another artist named Maggie Austen. My inspiration, aside from Maggie Austen's pristine design was the rock face cliffs of the north county San Diego area where I live. The warm taupes and mauves juxtaposed against the cracked and tapered lines of rock formed a sense of symmetry in this cake. The flowers are native Matija poppy and monkey flower. Gumpaste flowers are not as easy to make as one may think. Modeling and forming is a fairly simple process, but drying and more importantly arranging can be a bit more challenging. Usually when one puts a bouquet of flowers together the petals have no problem keeping its shape while squished alongside other flowers. Gumpaste flowers on the other hand, dry hard, and will break when handled to rough. Rule of thumb is to always make extra flower petals and extra flowers (in case one breaks when adding them to the cake) are made.

This was a challenging experience that really pushed me to develop my skill in cake design. I'd love to end this blog with me parading my 1st place ribbon, but such is not the case. I did however come out knowing a little bit more about cake and a whole lot more about making flowers.