The Versatile Circle

So my sister, Tran's birthday was in August and of course I made her a cake. I love making cakes for my sister 'cause every year I ask her what she wants and every year she says, "whatever you want to make me" <--- cake designers love this answer :). Like me, my sister loves bold colors so last year, I made her the below two-tiered cake with simple red flowers that remains one of my favorites to this day.
This year, I noticed that Tran had accumulated a lot of green stuff (clothes, bags, accessories, etc.) and made a comment to that affect. She responded by saying that green was her favorite color and I instantly felt like a heel for not knowing my own sister's favorite color. But, I quickly got over it and decided to make her a green cake for her birthday to make up for it. =D

My sister's big day fell on a busy week, so I chose a design that was fairly quick to execute. In terms of cake design, fondant circle cutouts are unquestionably the most versatile, not to mention virtually foolproof design element a designer can use. It's as simple as cutting and pasting, literally. Circles can be placed in a myriad of patterns to achieve designs that are cute, whimsical, modern, retro, and just plain cool . For my sister's cake, I went with the traditional "pretty" with the extra bit of oomph coming from the oversized gumpaste flowers I had made the week prior.

Here's a shot of the cake with the flowers placed to the right. .....and now to the left. I prefer the flowers on the left, don't ask me why.

I've seen this circle pattern used many times on other cakes but mostly done with very pale colors on a white background so that the tone on tone coloring almost resembles a texture. With the darker colored circles that I used, your attention is definitely more drawn towards the negative space left by the circles. The overall effect calls to mind gingham checks, no?......which immediately makes me think this cake would be fabulous done in red for a country wedding, maybe displayed on a bed of apples. But, I digress...........here are some close-ups of the gumpaste flowers.

I had loaned out my 12" cake stand but still wanted an elevated look for this cake so I MacGyver'd a cake stand by placing a flat serving plate on top of an upside down bowl. And to prevent slippage, I threw in a small square of grip padding. Ta-da!

So the moral of this blog post? Fondant circles are your friend and you can make a cake stand with almost anything. To end, a pic of my beautiful sister and her equally beautiful gal pals :).

Lien Sanchez

Crazy Cake Company

www.crazycakecompany.com

Less is more....

September passed by almost in a blur and boy do I have a lot of blogging to catch up on. First off, I must write about Amy and Kendall's wedding cake back in August. Amy loved the simple beauty of the April Reed style of cakes and showed me one in particular that she wanted to use as inspiration. Since she wasn't a fan of fondant, however, she asked if the smooth look of fondant can be achieved without actually using fondant. And always looking to please, of course I said yes.

I pride myself on precision sharp edges on my buttercream cakes so it was almost painful having to dull the edges to get the more contoured "fondant" look, but I wasn't feeling so bad after I saw how it softened the look of the cake. Below is a close-up. I absolutely love that Amy and Kendall chose to go with the natural look (and not to mention taste) of real vanilla bean buttercream. So divine. :)April Reed's designs exemplify the phrase "less is more" so the only thing needed to accent this 4-tier wedding cake were a few gumpaste peonies. The table set-up. Too bad the floating candles weren't lit, I bet that would casted a lovely glow.The cake table was lined up almost perfectly with a covered cable line on the wall and at just the right angle, we were able to capture this heavenly shot. Love, love, love it!! See, even in photography, less is more. :)

Lien Sanchez

Crazy Cake Company

http://www.crazycakecompany.com/

Black Fondant Wedding Cake

Like many couples, Christine and James started their wedding cake search with a general idea of what cake designs they liked but had nothing concrete in mind. So like a good spy, I asked a few probing questions about their event and particulary about the decor and theme. As you may have noticed by now, I love to incorporate wedding design elements into a wedding cake design. Invitations, in particular, can tell you a lot about the couple and the event and as cheesy as it sounds, invitations do set the tone for your event and in a way, gives the guests a glimpse into the ambience of the event, whether it's casual or formal, simple or elaborate,...you get the point.



Christine and James' invitations screamed "fun elegance" to me, meaning that it was going to be a beautiful wedding but gosh darn it, they're gonna have fun while they tied that knot..........or I could just be smoking crack and reading too much into those little white swirls, lol.

Based on their general likes and dislikes, I drew up a cake design that incorporated their monogram and their invitation design. When I got their blessing, I was almost giddy. I've always wanted to make a black fondant wedding cake. I think there's just something so elegant about contrasting colors against a black background but let's face it, not many brides are keen about having a black cake at their wedding, ya know? Fortunately for me, I always seem to have the most awesomest customers :)


A shot of the cake in progress...

Before the gold accents..

and the final result...Ta Da!! Don't you just love pedestal cake stands?

and you know I always have to throw in an angled up shot :)

Now if just one bride sees this cake and is inspired to have a black fondant wedding cake at her own wedding, then I think my life would have meaning. (I'm joking, of course, who cares about the color of your cake when there's millions of starving children out there............well, who, besides me, of course.....)

Lien Sanchez

http://www.crazycakecompany.com/

Classic But Not Boring

First off, I have to apologize for being MIA as of late. Life has been crazy busy. There always seems to be something on the "to do" list that is waiting to be checked off and unfortunately, as much as I like to blog, I'm just not one those natural writers that have prose flowing from their fingertips; it's more like the words are squeezed out like stiff royal icing through a #1 tip (or like pulling teeth for those of you who didn't get that analogy). I've got a bunch of post topics swirling around in my head that needs to make it's way onto this little blog so bear with me as I gradually sort through them.

The first topic that I'm super-excited to write about is my girlfriend, Kim's wedding this past Saturday. Kim is quite possibly the sweetest person on earth; I literally do not think that she has a mean bone in her body. Although, who knows, maybe those mean bones will start growing after a couple years of married life, lol.......I'm just kidding.....maybe..... I've been looking forward to making her wedding cake for months now and am so excited to finally be able to share it with all of you.

When Kim and I first started talking about designs, she basically told me that she wanted 1) a tall cake, at least 5 tiers 2) a classic but not boring design and 3) she wanted their monogram featured on the cake. Keeping "classic but not boring" in mind, we began by taking inspiration from her invitations which featured gold flourishes and pearls and then later incorporated the shape and beading from her dress. Below is the sketch of the cake design in a shadow box which incidentally, was one of my bridal shower gifts to her; hopefully, she'll find time later to add additional wedding momentos to it.

The dress from David's Bridal that inspired the shape and piping

So that's the design that we started out with but it's not what we ended up with. Last-minute inspiration struck as I was staring at the above picture of the dress and in the space of two seconds, the decision was made to mimic the the curves of the mermaid bottom in the bottom two tiers. Without further ado, the final design.

At 30" tall, it easily satisfied Kim's criteria of a tall cake. Here's a view of the back.

Other shots from different anglesOnce I started assembling the cake, there wasn't a whole lot of downtime, so unfortunately, I didn't get a lot in-process photos. However, I did manage to grab one of the gumpaste flowers as they were drying.

TIP: If you're cheap like me and don't want to buy and store a ton of celformers, just use shaped aluminum to dry your gumpaste flowers, =D

....and a pic of the piped monogram before the edible gold paint was applied. The wedding was held at the Laguna Town Hall in Elk Grove and there was a lot of great decor elements at the reception but the most impressive element was definitely the hanging flower arrangements. Strung from impossibly tall ceiling beams, it was an impressive sight as you walked in.Here's a shot of one of these hanging arrangements from my view as a seated guest.
On a side note: It's always interesting being a guest at a event where my handiwork is on display. On the one hand, it's great to see and hear everyone's reaction to the cake(s) and on the other hand, it's also excrutiating anticipating everyone's reaction to the cake(s). As much as I try to enjoy the event as a guest, I would be lying if I said that a good portion of my brain isn't trained on eavesdropping into people's conversations to hear comments (good or bad) about the cake(s). As I literally am my own worst critic, my eyes automatically zero in on all the little flaws and am continually amazed that others just don't see them. Yeah, as you may have guessed by now, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, lol.

With the abundance of good food, good company, and good wine (wine, like butter, makes everything better), it was difficult not to join in the couple's obvious happiness and have a jolly good time myself :-).

And as this post is already long, I'll leave you with a picture of me and the cake(s). Stay tuned as I blog about the groom's cake (a bottle of Opus One) next.
Lien Sanchez

http://www.crazycakecompany.com/

Gold Gilded Gateaux

When I first spoke to Josephine back in March, she mentioned her love for the simple yet impactful designs of April Reed. And as an April Reed fan myself, I was super excited to sit down with Josephine and her fiance Jimmy to design their wedding cake. They wanted something classic and elegant with three-tiers that incorporated their colors: ivory and antique gold. Below is the sketch of the design we decided on.

Ideally, we would have wanted to display the cake on a cake pedestal similar to the one in the sketch, however Chinese tradition (and the bride's mother) stipulated that the cake be either three or six tiers total to be considered lucky. The height of the pedestal would have counted as an additional tier so to achieve a larger presence, we later decided to increase the middle tier from 8" to 10" tall.

Speaking of the middle tier, I have to admit that I was a bit apprehensive about achieving a smooth fondant finish on it. Any cake decorator that works with fondant will tell you that tall narrow cakes are notoriously tricky to cover - the larger the ratio of height to width, the higher the risk of the fondant bunching and tearing in the process. I had a back-up plan to cover the middle tier in two separate pieces of fondant in case things went horribly wrong but luckily, I was able to achieve a fairly smooth covering on the first try. :-)


The 10" middle tier before fondant
and after

Now for the assembly starting with the bottom tier.
With tier 2 added. The post-it note was to mark where the front of the cake should be.All 3 tiers - a total of 21" tall
The bow's loop and the gardenia were left off and added on at the site to prevent damage

Josephine and Jimmy's wedding cake full assembled. The uplighting on the wall adds a nice dramatic touch, dontcha think?

Some artsy-fartsy shots....

Close-ups of the gardenia:

Just speaking to Josephine, I knew that her wedding would be beautiful with lots of personal touches but I was truly impressed by how amazing everything looked. First of all, both the wedding ceremony and reception was held at Casa Real at the Ruby Hill Winery (a brand-spankin' new winery in Pleasanton) and I gotta tell you this place is gorgeous inside and out!! Below is a pic of the ceremony site.

The reception was in the ballroom adjacent to the ceremony. Each table alternately featured tall and low flower centerpieces.
The low centerpieces with gold framed table numbers.

Dinner menu with gold tissue poms

Last but not least, the escort cards on a bed of wine corks.

I'm sure there were plenty of gorgeous elements that were set up after I had left but I was glad to have seen some of the decor and to know that their wedding cake fit in just perfectly :-)

Lien Sanchez

http://www.crazycakecompany.com/