The Last Dessert :: Austin Party Cakes

This cake was made for an old friend that was leaving the state. (I know what you are thinking....who is crazy enough to actually want to leave Texas? Especially Austin!)

The going away party was held at Thistle Cafe downtown and had a black and white theme. The challenge for this cake was to make it theme-specific cake without it being too feminine since it was for a guy.

The party was also around the same time as Forth of July so stars and stripes became the main focus of this cake. In the end it worked out and met all of the objectives and my friend loved the cake!

The flavor was a rich German chocolate with creamy coconut pecan filling.

Florals and Bows :: Austin Wedding Cakes

This custom creation was for a client on the East Coast who was getting married at the Omni Downtown. For whatever reason she forgot to book her wedding cake and hired me four days, yes, four days, before her event! Not to mention it was the weekend of New Year's Eve. (This was a couple of years ago.)

She sent me a photo of what she liked, told me the flavors she wanted, delivery time, and that was that. The easiest order ever.

The cake is white fondant with a Swiss dot pattern and handmade bows, each dusted with a pearl luster dust to create subtle shimmer.

It is the ultimate romantic, traditional, girly wedding cake. It is definitely one of my "Top 5" favorite cakes.

Pretty in Pink :: Austin Wedding Cakes

This is one of the very first wedding cakes that I made. It is a dummy cake, made out of Styrofoam and decorated with fondant. The purpose of a dummy cake is to practice new skills and techniques and to use them as models.

Dummy cakes are great for displays because you can easily change the details, such as the flower or ribbon to create a completely different look.

In the wedding industry, many people throw around the idea of using a dummy cake to save money. However, this is a really bad idea for several reasons.

1. Dummy's take the same amount of time to decorate as they do a real cake. The average wedding cake takes me approximately 2-3 to bake. The decorating time adds another 10-20 hours depending on the complexity of the design. That is why "wedding cake" cost is higher than a traditional cake.

2. Once you purchase the dummy cake, you still have pay for the supplemental cakes or desserts. Essentially you are paying twice for the same thing.

3. Dummy cakes are not environmentally friendly. Weddings produce a lot of waste and everything gets thrown out when it's over. Since the cake is Styrofoam, it gets tossed in a landfill and sits there, ruining our environment. You wouldn't want to be responsible for knowingly ruining our environment even more?

There are other reasons as well, but the main point is that dummy cakes are used as models only, not for actual use at an event.

P.S. All of the cakes featured in magazines are dummy cakes. I don't mean the cakes from actual weddings, but ones created for photo shoots and editorial type of content.

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.