Opening up another session of the FNCC! ALL levels of cakers are welcome to share their week, photos of their work, ask for help or provide help if they can!
Cat
Hi everyone!
It's been a very long week but a good one. I'm currently working on 80 wedding cupcakes for my God-daughters wedding tomorrow. The whole family is pitching in and my parts are the cupcakes and the photography. The cupcakes are simple lemon cake topped with "rose" buttercream then dusted with her wedding accent colors of pink and gold. Transporting them and the cake stands is more work than making them. LOL! Hope everyone has had a great week!
Cat
Have not posted for awhile... Was working on this cake this week, for someone who was born on the USA bicentennial year. I am delivering it tonight (wish me a smooth delivery!), late, and am not sure if I will be able to snap a photo of the whole thing assembled. The "crate" is the bottom tier, drum - middle, and hat is the top. All edible, except for the dowels inside bottom and middle tiers.
I took the photos of the tiers while they are separated, arranged slightly with the other elements of the cake. Pardon the boards - this is a disassembled cake, so the boards won't actually be there...
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@LelekBolek WOW! Truly WOW!! I'm simply blown away by this cake! Each section is just incredible! I'm sure they had no problem with it being late! Hope you are able to get a shot of it totally assembled.
I finished my 80 cupcakes at about 10pm. SO tired this morning but ready to head off to the wedding. I'm sitting wondering how I get myself into these things. Can't I just go to a wedding and enjoy it...as a guest? I keep getting roped into making the cake or photographing the wedding and I, apparently, have absolutely NO WILL POWER or ability to say NO. SIGH. Wish me luck. The upside is that the hubby and kid are staying home so I get a hotel room all to myself...yup, ALL to myself. AND I get to sleep in! LOL! It's the small things in life, right...LOL!
Catch you guys back here Sunday night...I won't be able to check in until then.
Cat
Oh, i meant - late tonight, i am to bring it there at 7:30 pm, which is when tgey set the venue up for an 8pm party.
Thank you for your compliments!
I realize, each section separately looks out of scale on photos :-)
Unique, realistic, fantastic cakes!! Outstanding patriotic cake theme @LelekBolek !!!!!!
@LelekBolek Stunning realism - just incredible!
I had two cakes this weekend. This cake was for a senior citizen's birthday. She loved to ice skate until she had a stroke.
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This was for an aunt throwing a party for her one month old niece born in the year of the monkey. My third monkey cake this year! I didn't put the monkey on top because it didn't fit in the box. I also realized after I took this picture this was a tiramisu inspired cake and I forgot to put the chocolate chips in the filling so I dotted the outside with chocolate chips.
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@LelekBolek awesome cake hope you can get a picture of it together. I am in awe. They all look great individually, but it will be amazing put together.
@Pastrybaglady Love your cakes as always, but that monkey is adorable.
I have been watching videos on making flowers and wondering how they can seem to always make it look so easy. I need to quit procrastinating and start making them.
adorable @Pastrybaglady you've really been making lovely cakes, lots of delicious buttercream!
@LelekBolek that cake is phenomenal! The details....crazy good!! I hope you have time to snap a photo of it assembled as I'd love to see it.
@catlharper I hear you on not being able to say no. Enjoy your night out to yourself :-)
@Pastrybaglady your buttercream skills are so impressive! The little monkey is adorable.
I had three cakes this week plus a dozen cupcakes. The first cake I made for the September birthdays in the department. I realky liked the banana choco hazelnut cake that I did the other week as the retirement cake so that's what I went with as my coworkers have never had it. For anyone who missed that cake, it's banana cake with chocolate ganache and Nutella SMBC. I added praline hazelnuts around the bottom edge and made candied hazelnuts (for the first time) for the top. After sitting overnight, my candied hazelnuts had melted a bit and weren't quite as dramatic by the time we ate the cake but nobody was the wiser. It was a big hit and everyone said it's their new favorite :-)
My second cake was a very nontraditional wedding cake. The couple was after my own heart when they asked me to do a sugar skull :-) They provided me with a photo of a sugar skull and the colors they wanted so the design is not my own creation other than a bit of improvisation with it such as adding the blue metallic sugar pearls. I started with the diamond and really wasn't sure about their color choice but it all came together and with the addition of the roses I was sold on it!
My last creation of the week was a rosette baby shower cake and cupcakes for a baby shower tomorrow. I'm not a fan of the rosette cakes (sorry to those of you who like them) but it's what they wanted and it turned out OK. Not happy with my cupcakes but I didn't feel like scraping off the icing and piping them again.
@catlharper I know exactly what you mean...sometimes it's hard to say NO. Hope you get some well deserved sleep and you will post some pictures of the cupcakes later...
@LolekBolek That cake is crazy. I had to take a close look to figure out it's NOT a real hat/ drum/ box...Can't wait to see it all assembled! Love all the details like the leather texture of the hat, the horse shoes and how you made the wood on the box look aged...just incredible!!!
@pastrybaglady Amazing that senior citizen was able to ice skate for long (last time I've done that is about 20 years ago LOL) and sad at the same time that she can't anymore. I like the colours of your monkey cake and the monkey itself is adorable! One can tell it's not the first you made hahaha
@kstevens Bravo! I know what you mean...rosettes are not my favorite cake look either but if it comes to time efficiency there's nothing that can beat some well piped rosettes in my opinion. And even with the ombre look it is (almost) a classic. The skull cake is very clean work but my favorite is the "simple" birthday cake. You had me when I read "...banana cake with chocolate ganache and Nutella SMBC" yummmmyyyy! And btw...you complain about your candid hazelnuts "melting a bit overnight"? I once dared to place some caramel decoration onto cupakes....they literally disappeared within 2 hours - argh!!!
Beautiful cakes, everyone!
I am still waiting to get a scull cake order - it is something I hope to decorate some time. I don't have the cake pan, so I would probably end up carving it out of a round, but those look like a great statement/centerpiece cakes!
I was able to take a photo of my cake fully assembled. It made the trip just fine - I was worried about the "drum" tier, but it was ok. Everyone was very pleased with it, and I heard a few jaws drop, so that's a praise. And after going through the whole creative process tortures, and over-criticizing of myself, I ended up kind of proud of it, too. It was fun to make, not that I think about it, and my favorite part was - time management, and schedule for it that I worked out well, so no stress in that department at all.
Here is a photo of the cake.
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@LelekBolek it looks awesome! So well done! The individual pieces looked great but put together, just wow! How did you do your horse shoes?
@julia1812 if you want to try the cake out yourself, here's what I followed:
http://thecakeblog.com/2014/07/banana-choco-hazelnut-cake.html
I didn't bother with the salted caramel sauce for mine. There is no cup amount for the bananas, just says three, and mine were large so I wasn't happy with how the cake turned out so I found another recipe with a cup amount:
http://cookiesandcups.com/best-banana-cake/
It is really good and doesn't dome up so makes assembly quick as no need to level the cakes. So, I use this recipe for the cake itself and then the ganache and SMBC from the first recipe link.
@kstevens Three bananas is definitely too much I think. Just compared it with my banana cake recipe - your other amounts are similar or LESS - and I use ONE banana. I feel if you use too much the cake has an unbaked texture. It doesn't sprinkle back to touch.
@LelekBolek that looks like something that should be in a museum, not something you cut up and eat with ice cream! Goodness gracious that's crazy...
WOW! Everyone! Such a great week! I'm constantly being blown away by this group.
As for me...the wedding was exhausting. The "coordinator" was awful. She had no idea what she was doing most of the time and was rude to the bride (as well as just about everyone else) and finally had to come to us for help. And it was a good thing I made the cupcakes because she hid the small wedding cake in the corner, no one knew it was there, and so only one slice was eaten of it...the one for the Bride and Groom. The rest of the guests all had the cupcakes! All but 2 of the 80 were gone by the time we left and there were only 50 guests so more than one went back for seconds. As the photographer I got first dibs on the photo opportunities which was wonderful since I love the Bride so much. Her new hubby is just the sweetest guy too. I not only did all the wedding photos but also all the "photo booth" photos too. 1350 images shot over 5 hours. I have a lot of editing to do. But here are the cupcakes! Nothing too special but everyone made a big deal out of them.
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@catlharper No wonder everyone went for your cupcakes. ..They look delicious! Did you sprinkle them with dust? It reminds me of some flowers (am not good with naming flowers), those white ones with like a big stemen in the middle. The petals are always full of the dust from the stem and that gives them an impressionistic look...
Sorry for the trouble with the planner...Some people definitely have the wrong job! Being rude to the bride??? Such a no no!
julia1812 Yup...dusted with pink and gold luster dust. Everyone loved them. As for the planner...sigh. It was some friend of hers who "knew what she was doing" but really, really didn't. She blew it so many times, like putting on the brides veil instead of having her mom do it...or sending the guests to the buffet line before the bride and groom got their food...it got to where we were stepping in before it was time for something and saying things like "So...time for the toasts?" or "Cutting of the cake next?" to help things along just to remove stress from the bride! Glad I could be there for her but I'm exhausted. Fortunately the two days I took were vacation so I only have one day of work before two days off. No cakes planned for a couple of weeks and then it's my own birthday cake! YEA!
Cat
Thank you all again.
The horseshoes are actually pretty simple - I have a mold, they are just chocolate, and dusted with little bit of petal dust to give a bit of color variation and aged "metallic" feel.
Sorry about the hectic wedding! "Volunteer" wedding coordinators can be disastrous, especially when they simply take cues from wedding shows and movies (just like cake shows confuse and hurt real life people). There is also an element of biting more than one can chew, that springs out of those - a lot of people these days consider a job very lightly, and think they can just wing it, no big deal, how hard can it be? For my cake, as I was putting it together, some guests asked the regular question of "how long did it take you to do this?" and I told them - at least a work week in hours of labor, full three days intense, full two days spaced over a month on things need drying out, plus coming up with design and structural elements (I made a special rig for the hat's brim to dry on into shape).
Supplies, schedules, designs, some testing to see it would actually work, etc. It is real work, aside from the creative and art element to it, which I love, but can also drive one up the wall (in the middle of creative process, before the thing looks like anything I want it to look, and I start doubting). I'm honest about it, make no mistake - you ask for a cake from me, it will be not cheap, and not half-assed either. Plus the delivery fee, if applicable, and required ordering with plenty of advance notice. LOL My kids are "drafting" their birthday cakes already now :-) One is in January, the other - next April, and they asked me when the deadline is for "no further changes are accepted" LOL. They are 7 and 4, and they already know - it isn't as simple, as it may look on tv )))
So yes, one of my biggest pet peeves is incompetence at a job taken on, while shrugging it off like it is nothing. Often substituting outward rudeness for being ashamed or sorry for personal cr a pp y performance.
I am sorry you had to step up and do more work than party at the wedding, @catlharper . Your cupcakes look darling though!
I have a couple of things to bake for this Wednesday, but nothing massive in projects for the weekend.
Wow, I was out of town this weekend and I've just logged in to CC. Lots of nice cakes this week!
@LelekBolek that cake is simply beautiful. The hat and drum are so realistic. Realy amazing work.
@pastrybaglady both cakes are beautiful, but the monkey one has to be my favorite. So sweet and tender.
@kstevens nice cakes! Your banana cake looks so elegant with the praline and the candied hazelnuts. You've just elevate banana cake to a new level! (Too bad I dont like nutella, 'cause that cake looks delicious)
@catlharper I love the setting for your cupcakes! All those differents sizes and shape of stands make those cupcakes realy special. Well done
@catlharper so the wedding coordinator was really just a bossy friend. That's too bad, but sounds like you stepped in to save the day - good job! But yeah, you need to recover now. Your cupcakes look really nice on all the different stands!
@kstevens wonderful work as always. The skull is quite the art project, but I love how sweet the baby shoes cake is! I swear you have more "business" than most professionals I know.
@kstevens - loving the candied hazelnuts cake! I did something similar for my brother's birthday cake last year and had the same issue with them melting when I did my trial run of them. In the end I took the ingredients with me and did them at the family gathering which they seemed to find impressive!
Last week I was busy busy working on my stall at a wedding fair, I'll attach some pics in a moment...
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