Gold Fantasy Flower Cake

I love finding a cake design that works well in a number of venues, this one does that! I love a good gold accent piece, but really love the way these gold lace flowers look to dress up a cake!

 Even more, I love that it looks good and even a little different in many settings!

 I love how warm it looks in a more rustic amber lighting,

As well as how fun it is pool side with some foliage beside it. The bionic cake design!

African Serengeti 40th Birthday Cake

I have planned this cake for a  few years. My husband spent 2 years in southern Africa in his twenty's serving a religious mission and doing much service work. He has always loved Africa and I've always wanted to give him an African cake. The opportunity came in the perfect way- his surprise 40th birthday party! I had a hard time coming up with a theme for the party, even after a year of trying to plan it, since he is a man of many loves!  Finally, after much though, I decided to theme the party around all his favorite things! What better way to represent Africa than the cake?!

 He loved, and speaks fondly of the many different Safaris he was able to travel on. He loved the animals and the scenery and the beauty of the colors. So for the cake, I decided to spotlight exactly those things!  I couldn't pick a favorite animal pattern, so I chose the cheetah and zebra.

 Photos of the African savannah always show the gorgeous red and orange sunsets, so I decided to highlight the sunsets and put the animals and trees in silhouette against the colors!

I wanted a simple but rustic way to separate the tiers so I simply tied some raffia around the bottom two tiers and loved how vibrant the colors turned out! One of my favorite cakes, I'd have to say!

Happy 40th to my wonderful hubby! Here are some pics from his fun Favorite Things party!

Musically Sweet Violin Cake

This cake was a challenge I was excited to take on! A cake was requested for the 20th anniversary celebration of a violin music studio, and she requested something classic but with a bit of a wow factor and also to include an edible violin on top.

It was fun to brainstorm ideas with her, and we came up with a simple top, highlighting the 3 dimensional violin to go on top, with a few red chocolate flowers to give the cake a pop of color.

For the bottom tier we went with classic white frosting rosettes. I thought it would be a nice element to give the cake some dimension with the mix of fondant and buttercream, plus I decided to airbrush a bit of gold luster dust to give it some shimmer- who doesn't love a little bling!

My favorite was the middle tier, which we decided to wrap in a type of sheet music. To accomplish this, I printed music sheets onto wafer rice paper and shredded it into bits. The process of "gluing" it on allowed for the paper to shrink up a little on the edges, giving it an aged and worn look. It was finished off with a touch of the gold luster dust  to match the bottom, giving the bottom two tiers more of an antique finish and spotlighting the violin on the top- fresh white- tier. I loved how the middle "aged" sheet music tier turned out!

 The violin was a new project for me, but I have done a handful of wood finishes so that part was fun as always. The struggle once I had the violin pieced together, was what to use for the strings. Sadly, everything edible was either too heavy, or would degrade (in the event of spun sugar) in the fridge which, due to a previously schedule trip, was where the cake would have to stay for 3 days before the event. I ended up using a heavy black thread, which suited it fine. I may have used a dark metal thread if I were to do it over again!

 
In the end, this was a fun cake to work on and I was more than thrilled to see it come together! Of course, the true verdict is in the clients face, and I was thrilled to see her slightly speechless when she picked it up!! Congrats to the Ruth Godfrey Violin and Viola Studios for a wonderful 20 years!

Mail- Cake Central Red Sequined Fashion Cake

Day 20 of theidearoom.com's photo-a-day theme is mail. Perfect timing because today is the day I can share an exciting email I received back in November! Being a baker my site is mostly an idea catalog for cakes and baked goods that I make for clients and try for myself, so I'm always excited when my work gets showcased somewhere else besides here. In November I was excited to open my email one night and see this memo line from Cake Central Magazine regarding a cake I did earlier in October:

You have been featured in Cake Central Magazine VOLUME 5 ISSUE 4

The Fashion Issue is always an interesting challenge. I was featured in the Fashion Issue last year, see this post, for a somewhat similar style dress. Go figure, I seem to get red cakes a lot, haha! This October when I was sent the invitation to submit once again for the issue, I was sent this dress 

quite an elaborate dress, especially considering the fact that once you receive the invitation you have one week to make, photograph and submit the cake. The deadline for the cake just happened to be the week before our annual Halloween Party for which I begin baking full time about 2 weeks before. I was a little stressed and almost considered not submitting this time due to lack of time, but I knew from experience if you don't submit when they send the invite, it is a LONG while before you receive an invite again. So, I set to work and after hours of making homemade red gelatin sequins and pulled sugar sprigs- I ended up with this cake....

and featured on pages 55-56 (Yay, a 2 page spread!) shown here:

So excited! I love mail! :)

Rustic Baby Wedding Cake

Fun idea for an anniversary- a mini replica of your wedding cake! So cute and tiny, this cake stood 4 inches tall and was topped with yummy chocolate ganache drizzled over the tops of each tier.

And the anniversary couple with their cute little baby cake!

    

Beautiful Autumn Mountain Wedding

Wedding Cake I recently did for my little sisters wedding. The colors were Black, Silver and White, with flowers done in vibrate autumn tones! I love how it turned out!

Flavors were French Vanilla with Lemon Frosting on 2 tiers, and Lemon Cake with Raspberry Buttercream on the other tier. 

and here are some pics from the beautiful day!

The New Mr. & Mrs. Olesiak

Beautiful Views from the Ceremony Site at Park City Mountain Resort

Cake Central Magazine!!!

I was thrilled to pieces when I opened my email tonight, amidst an extremely stressful week and saw:

 

High Fives All Around! Your work has been included in the September 2013, Volume 4 Issue 9 - "Fashion Inspiration 2013 - Valentino" section of Cake Central Magazine!

I had 2 weeks to think up, make and have photographed a cake inspired by this Valentino dress:

Luckily I'm friends with Mary Clark of DMC Studios, who does absolutely beautiful work, and she was nice enough to squeeze me in to photograph my cake!

And when all was said and done, I was featured on 2 full pages:

 

And a Bio!!