I'm Back!!!!!!!

I AM BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


As the title states I am back to blogging about cakes again! Life is funny and sometimes you have to roll with the punches.. You are probably like is she still doing cakes? YES! I never stopped doing cakes. I just have been very very busy over the last 2 years with life and raising a family and starting another business.. yes I started another business. Its a natural extension of what I do now so it wasn't a huge surprise to my family and friends. So I now run Kima's Konfections as well Kima's Paper Craft Creations! So I make papercrafts like party decor and other items like scrapbook mini albums that I see online and at craft fairs. So all of that is reason why I have been a very bad blogger:( But the haitus is over now and I am back to blogging about cakes. I might do some party spotlights here and there again since I have branched out am working with a number of local event planners here in Philadelphia so you will still some of that. And I am working on some more exciting news that I can't say yet as it is still being worked out but as soon as everything is finalized I will be blogging about it:)

Since I have done so many cakes over the last two years, I will just randomly start with a few more recent cakes and then go back to show some my favorites. Well this pretty was done back in January for a client in NJ (yes I do take clients that live close to Philadelphia in NJ). Its 3 tiers of vanilla bean cake with vanilla bean buttercream filling. I made crown myself over 2 days and let it dry and then brushed it with silver lust dust. I the same thing to the name and the other silver accent pieces on the cake. The bottom tier is a buttercream rosette design. The middle tier is a quilted pattern with silver dragees and then the top tier is all white with rhinestone wrap around the bottom.

This cake is pretty popular on my Facebook page which has got a slight overhaul and you can find it here, so much so that I am doing this cake again this weekend except in white and gold! So you know I will come back with pictures just to show the constrast of the two cakes.

Well I have to run but I will back this weekend to post more pretty cakes. Until next time.. 

New Year, New Directions!

Good Evening Ya'll! 

Or should I say Happy New Year!! I know I'm like a month late and all..but better late than never:) Since moving to Philadelphia, I have been trying to figure out what direction I want to take the my business. I have decided to stay a one woman business for now.. having an actual shop was a great experience one that I wouldn't give back, but I having had that experience I now know that the rigorous day to day of a shop while trying to balance family life is just to much for lil ole me. I prefer to stay small so I can still give my clients that personalize attention that I have known for as well as being able to take orders when I want to instead of taking on orders to pay bills.. I love what I do and I want to keep it that way:)

I have also been increasing my skill set to make myself more marketable in this new and much bigger market. So I have branched out into cookies:) I have always offered cookies among my products..but I never really marketed them before now. For the last six months I have been expanding my skill set with cookies tremendously and I am loving my new collection of cookies so much so that they are now in my Etsy shop here which you can find h. I am pleased as punch with them and will be steadily expanding my collection for the next couple of months. So for your viewing pleasure here are some of new cookies.

Until next time...
Peace & Blessings!

Oh How I Love Cake Pops!

Before I talk about my love for cake pops, I made a small personal cake for my husbands' friend's birthday. She likes the color blue so I covered her cake in blue fondant with purple so it looked like a swirl pattern. I also added squares on a diagonal with some yellow accent on top of the cake. I liked the way it came out though I would love for it to have been a two or three tier. I will post the pic in a couple of days after his friend gets her cake. On a side note, I got a phone call from a couple looking for a wedding cake today:) but the thing is that they asked me do I do wedding cakes when there is a section dedicated to wedding cakes on my site. The reason being is that there are no wedding cakes on my site. After he said it, I realized that I might not be getting all the phone calls that I could be getting due to the small amount of pictures on my site and the fact that there are no wedding cake pictures on there. So the cake dummies that I was going to use for the bridal show I will be using next week to take some wedding cake pictures so my web designer can put them on my site. I love doing weddings and I want to get as much business as possible. That phone call was a reminder of how much work that I still need to do to my site and my business.

On to my love of cake pops! I would say cake pops have become very fashionable in the world for the past two years. They are showing up everywhere from the average party to grand weddings. So what is so special about a cake pop? I think its because you can have your cake with out the mess of cutting a cake and using a fork to eat with. Cake pops are on a stick so all you do is just bite and enjoy the yummy goodness :) They can be decorated in a variety of ways and the chocolate coating just adds the special touch to make them irresistible. To make them even fancier, you can take them off the stick and now you have cake balls or cake truffles if you want to get really fancy. And you can make them in many different flavor combinations. So in honor of the cake pop, I will be running a special for the next couple of weeks of cake pops! Flavors coming later on today:)

The Beginning

So this is my post! I decided to start a blog because as a new mom and an aspiring baker I thought it would be nice to share my story. I know there are plenty of blogs out there and I do follow some, but there is only one that I have come across that has detailed how hard it is get into this business. I also thought it would be neat to chronicle my life as a first time mom. 

So let's start with the later first, my son's name is Jayden Makai and he is 8 weeks old. He was born November 6th, 2009. I love him to death, but it can be very trying at times. Right now it’s the whole putting him to sleep and getting him to sleep on his own without mommy and daddy. We start by holding him until he falls asleep, usually on my chest, and then I try to move him to his play pen because he won't sleep in his bassinet. That thing was such a waste of money.  The play pen (it has a sleeping compartment in it) worked for a little while and now he cries about ten minutes after I lay him down in there. So for now to get any type of sleep he ends up in the bed with us. Now I know plenty of people and doctors say don't have your baby sleep in the bed with you, but for us right now it works. He sleeps most of the night which is miracle for a child his age, so something is working. He sleeps on my side so I don't have to worry about his father rolling over on him, though I don't think that will happen, and I know that he is breathing okay. I am so paranoid about SIDS especially since he is sooo young. But now I think he is too comfortable sleeping in the bed and now I don't know what to do to get him to transition to his play pen or cradle when we get one.  I bought a sleep positioner and when he sleeps and stays sleep on it, it is great but he doesn't do that often. So I have placed it in the bed and trying to get him to sleep on it in the bed that way I can move it out of the bed and into the play pen hoping that will work. We shall see what happens.

On the reason for the blog. So I started baking early last year around February, right around the time that I found out I was pregnant with Jayden. I did a Valentine's Promotion and I learned very quickly a lot about pricing and advertising. I made a small profit which quickly got eaten up by buying more equipment. It was a lot of trial and error, but finally I learned that my specialty is cakes and cupcakes. I do some other things like brownies and such, but I shine with cakes and cupcakes. The idea was all my husband, Stefane, who felt that my baking was good enough to sell. He was right; people were interested in what I was offering. It was very thrilling.  To date, I have three cakes (one more this weekend), catered two events and sold a whole hosts of other goodies. Then I realized how much work is involved in this kind of business and all the things that it takes to be successful. Right now because of commercial space (the lack thereof) and other things I am baking out of my home and all of my customers know that but it doesn't diminish the quality of my baked goods, rather I think they are better because I can take my time and work on them until I feel satisfied (I am somewhat of a perfectionist). I do want to get all the licensing and get a commercial kitchen at some point hopefully before the year is over with, but right now economically I have to do it at home. I think a lot of people start off this way, they just don't admit it for obvious reasons but I feel that if you take the proper precautions when baking (which I am) then I am doing right by my customers. So I am interested in taking more decorating classes to get better and to become certified in some of things needed for licensure. I am also looking into renting a commercial kitchen; I will let you know how that goes. More adventures to follow......