The Preakness Winners Barn Party Cake

Hi Ya'll!

I am doing a quick post on the Preakness cake I did about 2 weeks ago for the winners of the Preakness held at Pimlico Race Track in Baltimore, Maryland. This cake was the biggest cake to date that I have ever done! It ended up serving about 300 people!!! And boy was this cake heavy!!! I can't tell you how much it weighed once it was completed but the hubby and I had a heck of time loading it into the van. It almost didn't fit out the front door of our house! We had to tilt it slightly sideways to get it to fit. At least I know what are the max dimensions I can fit through the door:)

I know some of you are thinking how did little ole me land such a big job..well it definitely goes back to making sure you please your clients. A client of mine, P, who I did her wedding cake last year, works for the Maryland Jockey Club (the organization that runs the Preakness). So she approached me back in the beginning of April and asked me if I would be interested in doing the Winners cake. She went on to say how she loved her wedding cake so much and how everyone raved about it that when she needed someone to do the Winners cake she thought of me first:) Of course I was very pleased that she thought of me instead of one of the local bakeries in Baltimore. So we talked over next couple of weeks about design and flavor. I had to send her some sketches and once she approved we were off to the races (lol)! She wanted a plain design with vanilla cake and vanilla buttercream in order to make sure everyone ate it. The final design changed slightly from the original but in the end she loved it and said all of her co-workers liked it and they will be using me from now on for the Winners cake! Such an exciting thing for my  business, we now have our first official corporate client:)

As you can see I did a lot of air brushing for this cake. I also made chocolate horse shoes that decorated the cake as well as fondant Black Eyed Susans.I had to include all 11 horses that were racing so those are the names scattered around the middle cake. The design is a lot plainer than what I normally do but she wanted to keep it simple for the first year and I am glad she did! The middle cake is a double stacked 12x18 airbrushed in brown. The 2 side cakes are 14, 10 and 8 inch rounds airbrushed in yellow. The signs on the top were made from fondant and had the Preakness 2012 logo on them. Each tier is wrapped in black ribbon.

My next post will be my carrot cake recipe and more information on my allergy free line:)

Peace & Blessings
Kima

Candyland

Good Morning Ya'll!

 This past weekend I had a very busy weekend for me in that I had a cake due on Saturday and then a big cake order due on Sunday. Next post I will talk about the cake on Saturday, but this post about the Candyland theme cake I made for Sunday afternoon. The cakes itself was not the problem, but rather the amount of detail that was on the cakes that was the problem. I can easily say this is the most detailed cake I have done in a long time. I had to make each of the lollipops, gumdrops, peppermint sticks, candy canes, suckers, etc on this cake by hand. So I started making them the night before and woke up early Sunday morning to continue making all of the items for the cake. I worked on these cakes up until 3pm and the delivery was scheduled for 4:30pm in Lancaster, PA. And on top of that I had to take a quick shower and get dress. So I was definitely running around the house like a mad woman. I have LEARNED my lesson! Start design details early on very detailed cakes.


The location of the delivery was to a place that I haven't delivered before, the Lancaster County Park in Lancaster, PA. So I typed in the address in the GPS on my phone and we were on our way. Now when we got there I was in for a surprise..this park is HUGE!!!!! I mean this park is sooo big it should be a state park or something. So I ended up being 5 minutes late for delivery because there aren't many signs in the park so the hubby and I were driving around the park trying to find direction signs to get to the right pavillion. But we got there and the client was over the moon happy! I love it when I can make a client that happy with my cakes:)

 3 tier cake- top tier is strawberry, middle is vanilla and bottom is red velvet. Customer took picture and sent it to me. For some reason I forgot to take a picture. Thank goodness my client took one.

Table set-up. A cake on the left is a 10 inch chocolate cake with stripes in coordinating colors and more lollipops shooting out the top. The cake on the right is vanilla covered in pink and decorated with fondant cupcakes. 

The place was decorated sooo cute! It had balloons that looked like lollipops and colored paper on the floor to look like the colored blocks like the game. They even had cotton hanging from the ceiling to look like clouds. Definitely one of the cutest birthday set ups I have delivered to so far. 

Peace & Blessings, 

Kima

3-D Alligator Cake Tutorial

Hi Ya'll!

So I have been keeping my promise and blog more often. Well last week I had a very challenging cake for a wedding at the York Country Club here in York, PA. This cake is hands down the most complicated cake I have done so far..everything else was a cake walk (pardon the pun) compares to this cake. The reason why this cake was soo difficult for me was that 1. my hubby decided that this was the cake I was going to learn how to sculpt cake all by myself with out any help from him (insert angry face here) 2. The cake needed to look very to close a picture that the bride provided to me  and 3. The cake was had a curve it and needed serious shading to it.... Well needless to say that I was feeling a bit overwhelm looking at all of the sheet cakes before me trying to figure out where to start first. Seeing my very confused face, the hubby did help me initially by helping me line up the head (hand molded by me and made from rice krispy treats) with the first sheet cake and started carving the outline. I thought at this point he was going to carve the whole thing but noooo..he passed me the knife and said "now is where you have to stop relying on me for the carving of 'your' cakes". Well of course I said a few choice words before I set to the task of carving this big mama of a cake.

In the middle of carving the idea came to me that I should make this a tutorial since I couldn't find any on the internet. I know that some other cake decorators have had this same problem before me and probably after me. By doing this tutorial, I hope to help someone else out too from going through the frustration that I went through to get this cake done. OHH and ALSO I forgot to mention that the bride wanted the cake to be 2 different flavors..yep you heard me 2 different flavors. So I have to mid-way through the carving process stop and glue together with buttercream the second half of the cake. Also the cake had 2 different fillings as well.. I wanted to hit my head up against a wall sandwiching the two sections together while trying to make it look seamless. The picture below is of the cake carved with just the first crumb coat of the two different flavors.

Once I let the cake sit over night then I added the second crumb coat layer which was vanilla bean buttercream.

Now after this point is where I forgot to take more pictures of the process. I was running a bit behind schedule for me. So I can tell you want I did from the crumb coat part. I first covered the cake in a dark green fondant which I made from white, brown and green colored fondant. Once the gator was covered I start with the spine and pinched (while trying to space is evenly) up sections of fondant to replicate the scales on the gator. I worked my way from the back to the front of the cake. I then took a sculpting tool and engaged the lines running in between each scale. After I did that, I then worked on putting in the details on the face and adding the eyes. After that was done I begin to do the shading of the cake by hand with petal dust. Now most decorators would probably use a air brush machine (its much faster), but since I don't have one yet. I had to do it by hand. The coloring was a mix of a dark green and brown dust colors. Once that was done, I think hand molded the legs and glued them to the cake. The final touch I did was mist the entire cake with water to add a sheen to the cake to make the skin look like skin.

All in all I think I did pretty good job. You all tell me what you think....

Well that's it. I took myself out for a much deserved nice dinner after delivering that cake.... :)

Until next time...
Peace & Blessings,
Kima

The Perils of Delivering Big Cakes!

Hello Again,
So as you can tell from the title of this post that I had some trouble with a big cake. Well I did indeed have some trouble. That is the problem when you run a business by yourself for the most part, you don't always have the help in the form that you want or need it in. So this past Saturday I had to deliver the biggest wedding cake to date, a four tier square cake covered in white fondant. Yes! White fondant! For those of you who don't understand the the problems with white fondant, let me just tell you this white fondant shows every little mark or dent or even lint that can be in the air..so I get a little paranoid when a client asks for a cake in white fondant. I have to use very clean gloves, wear short sleeve shirts and make sure that my working area is extra clean in order for the fondant not to pick anything up. So I had to be extra careful with all 4 tiers. You can imagine my stress level over this cake. So because the hubby was unable to help me deliver the cake, I had to ask my best friend for some help. With a cake that big and heavy its hard to move by yourself.

So I put the 2 heaviest tiers together and the top 2 tiers together, that way when I got to the venue I could just stack them, put on the flowers and go. If only it were that easy! Well when she comes there were extra people in the car that I didn't account for so I had to have someone hold the top 2 tiers that I put in a box (never have cake newbies hold cake, they don't know what they are doing or just don't care) while I held the bottom 2 tiers and the sugar orchids. Well when I get to the venue Heritage Hills in York, PA (which is a gorgeous outdoor space for a wedding), the person holding the cake didn't hold it right so my purple buttercream dots one side of the cake was smashed! Arrrgghhhh!!! I did bring extra buttercream so I was able to fix that problem. Then the cake table that was provided was lopsided! Lopsided table makes for a lopsided cake stand which makes a lopsided cake..see where I am going with this.... so I had to move the cake around until I got in as level as I could. It looked nice once I put the flowers on but I was soo upset over what happened I couldn't enjoy my hard work :( 

Once I got back home and looked at the pictures, I was proud that I was able to get it to look so nice even with all of the issues I had. Wedding season is great for business bad for the blood pressure. Any whooo here is the cake and some other back pictures that I haven't shown yet. Enjoy!

4 tier white wedding cake with purple buttercream dots and green orchids. 2 tiers are devil's food with butterfinger filling and the other 2 are vanilla with fresh raspberry filling. Delivered to Heritage Hills in York, PA.

50th Birthday Cupcakes- pumpkin spice, whopper, spiced apple, orange dreamsicle flavored cupcakes with the name and age of the birthday girl and pink/brown flowers. 

Star Wars Cupcakes- Oreo Overload, Chocolate, Red Velvet & French Vanilla flavored cupcakes. Toppers were based on some toppers that my client saw on another website. 

Gluten free & Diary Free Chocolate Cupcakes- I provide cakes and cupcakes to children and adults that have food allergies. These are one of many orders I have done. 

Well my lesson was learned and if I can't get the hubby to help me deliver then I will just deliver myself.  Oh and I am getting interns in about 2 weeks! I am soo excited to have the extra help. 

Until next time, 

Peace & Blessings

Kima