It's a Birthday Train :: Austin Birthday Cakes

So my full time job is as a nanny for the sweetest, funniest, wildest little boy, Nanny Baby.

I have been with Nanny Baby since he was an 8-week old, squishy, fuzzy, baby-powder-scented newborn. He's like my own kid.

A couple of days after Christmas he turned 2 years old, so we had a birthday party for him at Extreme Fun. I think I had more fun at his party than he did...but whatever.

For his party theme, his dad chose Thomas the Train, since he gave him a big train track for Christmas. Of course Nanny Baby's cake had to follow suit.

I designed Nanny Baby his very own "Choo Choo Train" cake with different cars and a scenery of trees and bushes. Since I also had a wedding that same weekend, my sister helped out and actually did the execution of this cake. It took her about 24-hours since she has little to no experience with fondant...but she did a great job.

Nanny Baby loved it and started eating it as fast as he could!

Bright and Beautiful :: Austin Wedding Cakes

A lot of clients come to me because the don't want a traditional "white" wedding cake for their special day. While I enjoy creating traditional cake(actually just cakes period), creating a cake with color is a lot of fun because that is where the color matching and coordinating skills come in hand.

This was a spring wedding with the color palette bright pinks, oranges and greens. The cake perfectly summarizes this wedding. The bridesmaids had bright pink and oranges dresses, the bride had a traditional white dress with a pop of color as her bouquet, which looked exactly like the cake flowers.

This event was a couple of years ago, so I forget the flavors she chose, but I know she (and her groom) loved everything about it. The bride sent me a lovely thank you note about a month after her event.

It's those little tokens of appreciation that make me want to keep making cakes!

Modern Wedding Cake :: Austin Wedding Cakes

This cake was from this past weekend at Chapel Dulcinea, a free wedding chapel just southwest of Austin.

It came out better than I had imagined and the colors were very bright an vivid. The red flowers really made everything "pop".

This cake was the award-winning champagne cake with fresh strawberries(top and bottom tier) with rich German chocolate in the center.

Bite-Sized Beauties :: Austin Wedding Cakes

Petits Fours are small squares of cake that are very dainty, delicate and easy to eat. However, they do take several hours to complete. Due to the several steps and detail involved (each one is hand made and decorated by me), they are priced higher than a traditional cake or even cupcakes.

For this wedding our client wanted three different flavors of petit fours in place of a traditional wedding cake. To make it still look "wedding" like we provided a mini tower and a silver cake plateau to complete the look.

Normally we stay and complete our event setup, but the weather was still over 100 degrees outside at the time of this particular delivery. Even though fondant acts as a protective layer on the cake, having the the petit fours sitting out for 2 hours until the cake was served was not a good idea and would have led to melting (a layer of buttercream is underneath the fondant) and spoilage.

Thankfully the staff at Umlauf Sculpture Garden was very helpful and kept the petits fours inside and then set them up for me and the clients about 20 minutes before they were to be served.

In the beginning :: Austin Birthday Cakes

In the beginning I never wanted to be a cake baker. I enjoyed weddings, I enjoyed cake....but not together. I would make cakes for friends, or just because, and that was about it. I was actually working at IBM at the time. That seems so long ago now.

This photo is one of my very first cakes. It's not very good in terms of design....or the writing...gaaaahhhhhh!!! However, it was the beginning of "something" although I did not know it at the time.

I *think* this photo was taken in 2004. So here we are five years later.