Tasting Cakes

Have you ever done a cake tasting with us?  Well—you are missing out!  There is a tasting fee of $35.00, but what’s nice is that same $35.00 is used as your deposit….and that very same $35.00 comes off of the final price of your cake.  So, if you have a tasting and end up ordering your cake through Piping Dreams Cakery….your tasting is free!

Usually with tastings, you will just see slices of cake to try, but the bride for this cake was set on the idea of a Buttercream only cake and I was dead set on changing that!  Really, it would have been fine if she’d stayed with Buttercream—but there is an additional charge for a buttercream only cake due to the time it takes to ice each cake tier perfectly smooth.  So my plan was to make two cakes—buttercream on one and fondant with the edible sparkle dust on the other.  The same roses decorated the top–but I wanted her to LOVE the sparkle—and she did!   She actually ordered a beautiful wedding cake…in fondant!

Copy Cat

Yes…that’s me!

In the next couple of weeks I have several cakes due, but when they are done…this is the cake I want to make next!

I LOVE it!  I have been catching up with my Food Network Challenges, and Gateaux, Inc had one of the featured decorators (she took an amazing second place), but during her intro-they showed this cake.  I’m not sure I’ll make the wedding cake–I think I may try it in light pink, and only 2 tier–for a birthday cake or something.  But someday—-I will have tried this amazing cake!

The Utah Cake

Did you know I spent 3 weeks in Utah this summer?  Just out, visiting family and seeing all of the fun sites.  Well, the Wednesday before we were to head home (Sunday morning) I went to lunch with my cousin.  Her son was getting married 2.5 weeks after I left–and somehow we got to talking about their lack of  wedding cake ordering.   So me…the maker of the cakes…pops up with this fabulous idea.  Why don’t we get together while I’m still in Utah–and make the cake?  BRILLIANT!!  Yeah, but a wedding cake sitting around for 2.5 weeks might not be the yummiest of cakes.  So I came up with Rice Krispie Treat layers on the top two tiers and then the week of the wedding the mother of the groom could make the bottom “big” tier.  I would teach her how to make and use fondant while I was there—and all she would have to do is put them together, ribbon them, and add the flowers.  She took it a step further by creating the awesome cake platform to display the cake.  So without further ado….my our wedding cake!  (Ok, mostly hers!!!)

Now, what changed after we got there…the cakes needed to sit angled on top of each other, and the pans that we had would have left the tier above hanging over the side of the tier below.  So—we ditched the middle pan and made the top tier out of the littlest pan and the middle tier out of the biggest pan, which left us needing a larger cake pan for the bottom.  So we taped off a bigger square on her counter top, and as my cousin finished a batch of krispy treats—we molded them into the square shape while they cooled.  That bottom tier alone is like 8 batches of Krispy treats!!  But doesn’t it look awesome!

I felt really bad that I had gotten the mother of the groom in charge of making the cake (as though she had nothing better to do) and then ditched her with the project as I drove back to Chicago.  But look how fast she learned!  Boy….I must really be a good teacher!