Cake Concepts by Cathy: mini tiered wedding cake

Monday, August 23, 2010

Mini wedding cake for special couple...

Our friends, Sheila and Kim Cope were celebrating their 35th anniversary today. When they got married, Sheila flew out to Germany to meet Kim without any family. They first got married in Germany, which was required by the German government, and then were sealed in the Swiss LDS temple the following day. They never had much of a reception, and definitely no wedding cake. So, when I heard their story, I felt that they needed a wedding cake, even though small, for their 35th. So here is the cake, along with a picture of the cute couple. Sheila's favorite color is red, and since I don't like to use red icing decorations on my wedding cakes, I added red ribbon and fresh red roses from my garden. Happy Anniversary, Sheila and Kim! May you have many more.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

New Toys...

Yes, cake decorators get excited about new toys too...they are just different than what the average person may get excited about. My newest toy is my new Cricut Cake machine. For those of you familiar with the scrapbooking Cricut machines, this is the same except you use it to cut food products with. Instead of using a self-adhesive cutting mat like you would use with paper products, you use shortening to adhere your material to the mat. I'm still learning how to use it...experimenting with different materials and settings to get the results I want. I get a little frustrated sometimes when I can't get it to cut the way I want, but that's usually when I'm working on only a couple of hours or so of sleep after doing a wedding cake the night before. I've only had the machine for a couple of weeks...so far the things that I've been able to cut really well are Cricut frosting sheets, gumpaste, chocolate fondant with Tylose (if I can get it to the proper consistency after freezing it), and cheese slices...yes, cheddar cheese slices. It's really too bad that I can't decorate cakes with cheese, because that actually worked out better than anything thus far...unfortunately most customers don't want cheese on their cakes. I've done quite a bit of on-line research to see what seems to work. I ordered one product called Sugarveil that I will be experimenting with this week. If I can get it to work like I want, I will be posting the results with the instructions...a somewhat lengthy process, but worth the time if I can get it to work.

I have decorated two cakes so far using the Cricut Cake...the first with gumpaste and the second with the frosting sheets. I've been pretty happy with both results, but don't care much for the taste of the frosting sheets...and they are very pricey, so hope to use other products.

I am persistent, so I will keep working until I get the desired results, and then share my knowledge on my blog.