Hand Painted Wedding Cake

My Grandmother, Mother, and my brother were all painters, my brother loved illustrating, but I've never had the desire to put pen, pencil, or paintbrush to paper or any other medium until I stumbled upon Three Little Black Birds Bakery.  Then, she was featured on Craftsy's website with a hand painted cake tutorial, and I was hooked.  After watching the class and mixing lustre dust colors with airbrush sugar colors, I gave it a shot on the Lion King Cake.  Tedious, yes, intricate, definitely, right up my alley for sure.

Just the thought of transferring the patterns and illustrations in my head to a cake was fascinating.  Now, I am obsessed.

 
































I found the perfect opportunity with Melissa's cake.  A simple, small cutting cake for the bride and groom, turned into a hand painted project that consumed me for several hours, OK I admit it, a couple of  days.
The groom, Kenneth sent me his original outline of the couples' faces. A graphic designer, he had created this design himself for their wedding invitations. The open rosette design is a Frank Lloyd Wright design that I used to mimic the bride's gown, which featured an open rosette pattern on the skirt.  Painted with a silver, champagne, and white-on-white pattern, I covered three sides with the pattern.  A ruffled border and silver  finished the simple, elegant design, which is one of my favorites. Modern, retro and classic.

The cake pop stand, created by my wonderful husband, who puts up with way more than he should from me and my hair brainded ideas, was spectacular.  I love it! 120 cake pops, half were dark chocolate with peanut butter butter cream, and the other half were lemon with lemon curd and lemon butter cream.  Sparkly, elegant and smelled absolutely heavenly.  Thanks Melissa, for making me a special part of your day, we've been talking about it for so long, and today, you lived it!!  Hope you have a blast in Hawaii!!!

Couture Birthday + Bridal Shower Gift Box

So every week seems to hold a new cake surprise, like the gift box bridal shower cake and the couture first birthday cake.  I had a slight plan, but realistically, this has been such a busy month so far, that I barely knew the plan for these two cake orders.  They just sort of unfolded throughout the evening and very early morning.  I slept in most of Saturday afternoon and evening, which seems to be the norm lately.

The bridal shower cake was for a beautiful bride to be that I have already been in touch with.  She is celebrating her wedding at The Wright House in Mesa next month.  A vintage with a twist of bling design led to this elegant gift box cake which happened to be gluten free and dairy free.  I know, skepticism mounts, right?  Can a cake with no regular wheat flour and no milk or butter really please a roomful of women?  Apparently, yes, as I got a text from the bride's aunt expressing her delight with the cake.  She actually said that it was amazing and everyone loved it.

And, across the valley, and still in the beginning phases of her soon to be amazing life....a little girl turning one had a couture first birthday party with a yummy chocolate and raspberry birthday cake.  I have been wanting to make a cake with this little ruffle, and the perfect opportunity came along.  Happy Birthday Ellie.

Bridal Shower + Another 1st Birthday

Another busy weekend of cakes, brides and birthdays.  A really fun Bridal shower cake inspired by BEES and a first birthday celebration inspired by The Lion King.

The Bridal Shower Cake for Melissa was gluten free Vanilla cake with fresh Lemon Curd and Vanilla Bean Butter Cream with a Blueberry filling....

And the Lion King cake was way overboard for the cost, but I really wanted to try a painting technique that I learned on Craftsy recently. The smash cake was an added bonus for a dairy free birthday boy,

Little Pet Shop Cake

When my friend Ivy told me that her daughter was having a "Pet Shop Birthday"  I immediately thought of The littlest pet shop toys.  But, no, this was going to be an "adopt a pet party"  Each guest would adopt a furry little stuffed pet.  So I started to think about what a cute little six year old would find fabulous when it comes to cake, besides the frosting!  My grand daughter loves her little princess castle and the tiny little dolls, furniture and animals too, so I got the idea to make Oak her own little fairytale pet shop.  Because, lets be honest, if I was six, I would have a pet shop like no other pet shop.  The animals would be free to roam around, roll in the grass, enjoy the sunshine.  So, I gave Oak a little dream, and for a few hours, I got to be there too, I sort of got lost in the details, and the tiny little modeling chocolate animals. 
My grand daughter, Promise helped to make all the tiny little flowers, she's learning young, and is very talented already.  But, at seven years old, she already has her own plans...to be a Pediatrician, an American Idol, ballerina,  we'll see, as long as she's happy, and we can bake together every now and then.

Mickey Mouse + Winter Onederland

This weekend kicked off the year with a couple of very fun cakes...

Both of the cakes were for a First Birthday Party, which makes me feel very privileged! 
A Mickey Mouse Cake for 40 (plus) was awesome to create just because of the size of the cake board.
A 20"x20" to hold this big head was covered in yellow fondant to highlight the black letters. Hand cut pieces of fondant for his face makes this Mickey totally edible.

The second cake was for a little girl's Winter Onederland Party...what a great theme.
The little penguins, polar bear and mr Snowman were a lot of fun to make and resided on the work table for quite a few days before their snow covered cake became their new home at last.  The little one slipping down the second tier was my favorite.  Covered with silver sparkling disco dust and big chunky sugar made me wish it was snowing outside...not really, I really don't like the cold weather we are having right now.

Spider-man + Gluten free Cinammon Cake

Jet is the son of the amazing and talented Ivy of The Garage by Ivy Florals.  One of her daughters is now gluten free and the entire family supports her by eating gluten free.  I admire her for taking this bold step to support her little one.  So many people don't realize that being gluten free can be very easy once you've learned the basics of cooking this way.

Anyway, Jet loves cinnamon rolls, and is not a big cake fan, so we decided to do something different for his 7th birthday and surprise him with a gluten free cinnamon roll cake.  Filled with lots of warm cinnamon flavor and vanilla bean Italian butter cream, and a theme that was sure to delight him...his favorite Spider-man!

All edible (except the wires for the signs, the spider-man logo and letters are all hand cut from fondant.  The web is royal icing and the signs are gumpaste.

Vintage Rosette Cake + Happy New Year

happy New Year!  Well, almost!  As the New Year draws near, I felt the need to finally separate the bakery blog and the event design blog.  So moving forward, this blog will feature everything coming and going at the bakery. 

I thought I would start off with this ruffly little birthday cake for an 85th birthday recently celebrated at Citizen Public House in Old Town Scottsdale.  The vintage colors and style were my choice, as the client left it all up to me.  The cake was gluten free vanilla bean with classic vanilla bean butter cream, Italian BC as always.

I had seen the multicolor rosettes featured on a lot of cakes this year and decided to give it a try.  I love the way the apricot, caramel and white looked swirled together, it really gave the rosettes a lot more dimension than just one color.  Little pearls and classic roses on top gave it a vintage feel, so when I finished the plaque, I decided to "antique" it with some pearl dust.  Definitely one of my favorite cakes from 2012.  And coincidentally, my last. 

Looking forward to 2013, some new challenges, and a lot more cake!