Vendor Spotlight- Christmas Party with Tunky Monkey

Good Morning Ya'll!
Boy do I have treat you guys this week! So I have rounded up some really good parties to share with you over the next couple of days:) Since Christmas was yesterday I wanted to keep with the theme and share with you some cute Christmas parties. This first party was submitted by Melissa of Tunky Monkey's Sweet Treats.  Melissa is based out of Portsmouth, Virginia so if you are in that area you should check her out. Every year, Melissa likes to give back to the community by hosting a party to in her words "give back to those who need a little extra sweetness in their lives." This particular party was given to celebrate her local military community. I for one think that is a great way to give back, celebrating those that have or are putting their lives on the line to protect this country.  I celebrate Melissa for taking on such a task especially during the holiday season when we all know just our regular lives can be a little hectic. So without further ado here are the pics!

Vendor Credit: Melissa- Tunky Monkey Sweet Treats
Website: TunkyMonkey
Blog: http://TunkyMonkey.blogspot.com
Twitter: @TunkyMonkey
Pinterest: TunkyMonkey


I will be featuring another post a tutorial on gingerbread houses by Sunny Duran this evening!

Peace & Blessings
Kima

Halloween Photo Shoot with CapesNCrowns

Hi Ya'll!

Sooooo I know it has been the longest and I mean the longest time since I have blogged! Life gets in the way and so does work and cakes. I have been collaborating on a lot of parties lately for photo shoots so that has filled up a lot of my time I would normally do things like this blog. So I wanted to take the time while I had some down time to blog about one of the photo shoots I participated in. You will see my toppers on the 3rd to last page from the bottom of the blog:)

Lauren from Capes and Crowns who is located in Alabama has a hand for the dramatic in a tasteful, creative way with her parties that she styles. She is quickly becoming a household name in the party styling sphere and to her credit she is one of the sweetest people that I know:) She has become so popular in a short span that Pottery Barn and yes I SAID Pottery Barn has brought her on board to use their products in her styled shoots. I happened to be one the lucky collaborators who participated in her Holy Monster'mony Styled Shoot that is now gracing the front cover of Party Style Magazine! I know Lauren is excited over all of the exposure the shoot has gotten and she deserves it because it is absolutely stunning.

Since Halloween is done every year it takes some serious talent to figure out a new twist on this holiday. Lauren has that in spades:) So without further ado here are some of the pictures from the photo shoot. If you would like to see all of the pictures please head over to Lauren's blog  and please feel free to leave a comment. Oh and that cute little Frankenstein is her son:)

Oh Baby Showers!

Hi Ya'll!
I have been doing a lot of caking lately so I have been busy but I have noticed that my baby shower orders typically come in clusters. I'll get a few scattered here and there and BAM! I'll client 3 or 4 clients asking about baby shower cakes in the same week. So I thought it would be fitting to do a post dedicated to baby shower cakes:)

First up we have the baby shower cake I just delivered this past weekend to the Springettsbury Township Park in Springettsbury, PA. It a really nice park and lots open space, so if you are an outdoor person and have a shower coming up I would recommend that location.

This cake really didn't have a theme, my client K saw a cake online and sent me the photo to replicate it. So you know how I feel about doing someone's else exact same cake so I put my whole little twist on it. The baby booties were different in that mind where hand made and not from a mold. I also made my gift box part of the cake a little different as well. The cake flavor was vanilla with vanilla buttercream.

The next baby shower cake I did a couple of months but since my photos were bad (need to get a better camera) I never posted them. My client actually sent me some photos yesterday when her sister in law wanted to place an order for guess what?? A baby shower cake for her niece:) So here are the pictures she sent me. The cake was an 11x15 sheet cake with an 8 inch square on top. For the life of me I can't remember what the flavors were but the theme was "Eat your Peas & Carrots" so I made the 8 inch square look like a garden with a hand molded baby (my babies look so much better now than this one) and some hand molded vegetables. The "dirt" was crushed oreo cookies.The cake was delivered to Shank's Mare in Wrightsville, PA. It is a store located on the bank of the Susquehanna River that specializes in outdoor equipment rentals and tours of the area. They also have a meeting facility upstairs that they rent out for events like baby showers!

The last baby shower cake was for a client D, I did about 2 weeks ago and was delivered locally to a bed n breakfast here in York City. The name of the bed and breakfast is Grace Manor B & B on West Market Street in York, PA. The inn so is cozy and has all of the detailing and sophistication of an earlier era. The cake in the shape of a lady's church hat in various shades of brown and beige with ruffle flowers and sugar beads. D also order cupcakes as well to go with the main cake which were decorated with little babies wearing hats.

So that is what I have been up to lately..more to come:)

Peace & Blessings
Kima

XBOX360 Cake

Good Evening Ya'll
   I don't know how I let so much time passed before I put up another post! I just happened to look at the last date and realize OMG it has been almost 2 weeks! So I am now back with new post:) So obviously from the title that the post about an XBOX360 cake that I did about 2/3 weeks ago for a local client. She ordered the cake for her son's birthday. She said he loves XBOX and that he specifically likes the black one (not the white one:( I think that one looks better lol). So of course I told her no problem. About a year ago I did a PS3 cake (with the help of the hubby), so I knew if I can do a PS3 then I knew I could do the XBOX360. She also asked for the controller but it wasn't a very important part of the cake so I decided to work more on the XBOX part of the cake than the controller. Next time if I get an order for a bigger one, I will definitely had more detail but the key to being a cake decorator is to not spend sooo much time on a design that you don't make money from it. Meaning since this was a smaller order I can't spend the same amount of time on it that I would for a bigger order (more expensive order). The key is to price accordingly to how many hours you think it would take to decorate that particular order plus the ingredients/supplies needed to make the cake. If I had my way I would work longer on all of my cakes, but then I wouldn't make any money lol. So yeah below are some pictures I took before the hubby delivered the cake.

White Chocolate cake with Vanilla Buttercream filling. 

Peace & Blessings
Kima

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

Super Mario Brothers Go Kart Cake

Hi Ya'll!
It seems like Super Mario Brothers is becoming popular again. This cake is my second Super Mario cake in the last couple of weeks. Not mention I have been getting inquiries about the Luigi and Mario 3D figures I placed up on my Etsy shop 2 weeks ago. Now I have about 5 different listings customers can choose from. Also now up in the shop is 2 characters from the cartoon Backyardigans; Pablo and Austin. Pablo is the penguin and Austin is the Kangaroo. I will be working on the other 3 characters in the coming weeks.

Back to the cake, this client of mine L, has been ordering all of kids cakes from me since last year. I think this is the 3rd or 4th cake I have done so far. I have noticed that each time the design of the cake gets more complicated which for me is a good thing because she is recognizing that I can do much more than she thought I could initially :) She always orders the same flavor combination 1/2 vanilla with oreo buttercream and 1/2 strawberry with vanilla buttercream. So this time was no different except the theme. This cake was for her son who turned 7 and he wanted a Super Mario Brothers theme cake. The twist was that he wanted Super Mario Go Kart theme. I am somewhat familiar with the game since the hubby plays video games so I had an idea, but I had to google the actual characters so I can see what the go karts looked like and how the characters sat in the go karts.

The cake was a 9x13 so I didn't have a whole lot of space to work with in terms on the number of characters I could put on the cake. I ended up with 3 though she wanted more and I had to show her way there was only 3 of them (which you will see with the picture). I love the way Mario and Luigi came out though Toad needs some work ( his mushroom cap was too heavy for his head..gotta find a way to make it lighter). Overall I am once again pleased with the cake and she was too.

My next post will the Gluten free tutorial I promised. This one was just faster to put up at the moment:)

Peace & Blessings
Kima

Light Week

Well so far this week. I only had one cake to do which is somewhat nice so I can work on the house. Every time I have a lot of cake orders, the things I did to do in the house gets behind. So I am able to check up this week :) The one cake order I had was for a sweet sixteen with a twist. She wasn't girlie at all and the mother said that she liked dark colors which really doesn't work when you are dyeing fondant. I told the mother that black fondant does not taste good when she said her daughter liked black. So we decided on purple and a darker green. The color combination looks a little willy wonka ish, if you ask me but hey I do what the clients want. So jazzed it up some swirls because it looked a little sparse. But you are on your worst critic.When I delivered it the dad was so surprised, he said he liked the way it looked.I did like the way the writing came out. My writer's swing is getting better and better. I also bent the wires this time to do something different, next time I think I will use some curled wire and see what happens. Another successful order completed!

I finished my second decorating class today and it felt great because the cake that I did, came out great! I also learned how to make about 7 different flowers using royal icing. This was something I was definitely lacking so now I am increasing my basic cake decorating knowledge which is definitely valuable especially doing wedding cakes. Below is finally class cake I had to make. It is pound cake with vanilla buttercream. The outside is done in a basket weave pattern with a border top and bottom. All of the flowers I did with royal icing. I signed up for the third class tonight before I came home and can't wait til it starts. I am going to learn more difficult flowers and some more borders. I don't get many orders for buttercream covered cakes, but when I do I want to be able to offer them just as many offers as I have with customers ordering cakes in fondant. I have to do another small cake tomorrow for my husband's friend's birthday. So I will posting those pics tomorrow. I also got my second wedding order for May. I want a small cake and a dessert buffet which is going to be fun for me to do because I get to be creative with the tablescape. I am also doing their centerpieces. Now I know that isn't konfection related but I want to get some aspects of event planning under my belt and I figured starting out small like making centerpieces will give me experience and let me be creative as well. She was telling me her idea for a centerpieces and I came up with a better option which she loved. Part 2 of this post coming tomorrow....