Livin' and Learnin'

Angie is a friend of my cousin, Kelly, and works for the North Carolina Pork Council.  Since my dad is a hog farmer and I do research with pigs, Kelly thought that Angie would be interested in getting a cake from a girl with plenty of roots in the pork industry.  I would have NEVER thought that my connection with pigs would provide more cake opportunities, but you never know! 

When we met and talked about the cake over Chubby Tacos one day, Angie told me how she really wanted a simple, clean cake.  She designed the scheme for the whole wedding, and it was full of down home touches.  From what she described, it sounded beautiful!  I wrote down that the wedding was going to be on Saturday, September 5th, with the wedding at the Rose Garden and the reception at Art Space, a really neat gallery downtown. 

So, on Friday night, I start baking away!  The cake was a big cake, for 200 people, and the recipe I was using (to go along with the down-home theme) was actually her Grandmother's Lemon Pound Cake recipe with vanilla buttercream.  It smelled delicious!  My whole apartment complex smelled like sweet lemon....especially after I put too much batter in one pan and it baked out, all over the bottom of my oven.  Genius, Beth.  I opened all of my windows and doors, shut off the fire alarm, and kept right on trucking.

So I load all the cakes into my car and drive SLOWLY to ArtSpace downtown, and per Raleigh, can't find a parking space anywhere.  And you never know how bad the roads are until you've got 4 very fragile tiers of cake in your car!  I get to ArtSpace, walk in, and announce that I've got the cake for the wedding.  "What wedding?" the receptionist asked.  What wedding?? THE wedding!  Angie and Neal!  Saturday, September 5th! 

Another genius moment...Saturday, September 5th, 2010 does not exist.  Sunday, September 5th, does.  Whoops.  So moral of the story...I was REALLY on time for this cake delivery.  As in, 24 hours early.  Go me. 

I loaded the cake into the refrigerator at ArtSpace.  And what did I do with my free time Saturday afternoon?  Why, got to the NC STATE football season opener, of course!  We safely demolished Western Carolina and had a great time cheering on the pack.

Me and my friend Tyler, at the game!

My parents!  Mom and Dad are so much better at dressing for State games...

Sunday after church, rested and ready to assemble a cake, I headed over to ArtSpace.  The whole wedding party (plus several!) were there getting ready and decorating.  There were so many personal touches to all of the decorations...hand carved wooden votive holders, family made floral arrangements, and even a tree stump for a cake stand. 

This cake turned out so well, so elegant and clean!  I actually did the flowers myself, which was a learning experience...I need to take some lessons from a real florist!  Roses and curly willow, with some greenery, and on the top...fiber optics!  You can't really see in my picture, but there are tiny fiber optic lights coming out through the flowers in the cake topper.  Neat, huh? 

I always take too many pictures of the cakes that I love!!

I absolutely loved the wooden cake stand.  The bark and wood really gave the cake a rustic, homey feel.  It was a ton heavier than I anticipated...I'm not sure why I thought the stump of a 100 year old tree would be light....

Overall, several lessons learned.  1.  With batter....less is more.  Less is less smoke alarms, and smoke.  2.  Being on time is great, being early is better....but lets make sure the wedding date actually exists.  From the mouth of my Dad, "Well Beth, you hadn't made that mistake yet!"  Thanks Dad...and per usual, you're right :) 

All in all, this cake turned out great.  I was so excited to be a part of their big day, and I know the wedding was wonderful!

Cake and love,
Beth

Growing Up....

A year ago, I made Max his first birthday cake.  Max is the son of a resident here at the Vet school, and his mom wanted a monkey-themed birthday cake.  Now at age 1, he's probably never going to remember that cake...how it tasted, how it looked, or how it felt when he shoved his hands through the frosting to grab cake inside.  I will always remember that cute-as-a-button monkey cake, though, and how much fun it was to make it!

(cutest monkey ever)

Now, as time moves, little boys grow up into big boys!  And last week, I made his 2nd birthday cake...the big 2 years old!  Its so neat to be a part of someone's growing up....and as big boys go, this big boy didn't want a monkey cake.  He wanted a construction cake!  Very manly, you know. 

This cake was a super dense chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream.  I drew and painted the dump truck on the cake, and then added the road border.  You'd be amazed at how many different kinds of dump trucks there are, and of course I might have wanted to make it John Deere Green....but Max wanted a yellow truck, so Max got a yellow truck!

I'm on a crusade against black food coloring...so whenever I need to use black icing, I use black fondant instead!  I mean, do you know how much black food coloring it takes to make black icing??  You end up making gray icing, and to quote Steel Magnolias, "It's got gray icing, I can't even begin to think how you make gray icing!".  Using black fondant is MUCH easier, and better for everyone involved.  No black teeth or mouths, thank you very much. 

(I need to learn how to be a better photographer, so I won't leave shadows!)

I think it turned out so cute!  Excuse me, extremely mature and 'big-boy'. Regardless, Max loved it....and maybe he'll remember this one, who knows.  I hope that I can keep making cakes for him in the future! 

Love and Cake,
Beth

Weddings Squared, Chief Osceola, and Star Wars

This weekend was a wedding extravaganza!  Katie Westfall, a Harvard graduate student and friend from home, married her sweetheart (and soul mate!) Jeremy Green, a palaeontologist PhD.  Katie and I share many things....childhood, girl scout camping trips, a love for Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and a unashamedly nerdy crave for science! 

I've known Katie for most of my life, and I was so excited and honored when she asked me to make her wedding cake!  Now Katie's mom, Mrs Nancy, also makes delicious cakes....so I knew that this one had to be beautiful and delicious, especially so! 

Now this weekend was ALSO the wedding of one of my dear best friends, Olivia Bolen (now Olivia Beroth!).  I was so happy to stand with her and the other bridesmaids as a witness to their marriage on a gorgeous afternoon on the blue ridge parkway in Virginia.  Now, you might think, its a lot to do a rehersal dinner cake, a wedding cake, and be in a wedding in Virginia in the same weekend, right?  Impossible, you say?  Never!

I started cooking Katie's cake on Thursday afternoon and...after a minor incident with 2 nonresponsive convection ovens, one meeting with the board of trustees, and one meeting with sandhill gas company...I was cooking up a storm!  Eggs were flying, cakes were going everywhere!  Katie wanted several flavors:  chocolate, vanilla, carrot, red velvet, and lemon!  Lesson learned:  actually make sure the oven is heating before putting in the first 2 layers of cake....

While the cakes cooled, I iced the groom's cake.  I had no idea that Chief Osceola's face was so intricate....and I had no idea that it was going to turn out as good as it did!  I think that all of the Florida State Seminole fans were pleased!

Can you tell where the groom went to school?  :) 

(he's a very angry chief...he wants to win some football games!)

The rest of the night/morning was spent icing and teiring cakes like it was going out of style.  This cake soaked up 6 batches of buttercream....and you do NOT want to know how much crisco that is, trust me!  Magic buttercream, of course, with no calories...haha right :) 

Second lesson learned:  Label cake plates!  After I iced all of the teirs, I realized one vital fact....I had forgotten to label which cake was which flavor!  My mom and I stood in the kitchen for a solid 30 minutes, saying "This one is DEFINITELY chocolate.  Definitely, absolutely.  Or carrot..."  Funny, all the cakes were white, and nearly impossible to tell apart!

Before I knew it, it was time to blaze up to Virginia for Olivia and TJ's wedding, leaving my brave parents to deliver the cake.  And wouldn't you know, Mom, my sister Betsy, and my Dad did an awesome job!  It looks wonderful!

There was too much cake to get in one picture close up...so here we go! What do you think of the fountian? 

And lets be honest...this is a TON of cake.  Specifically, more like 100 lbs! 76 eggs, 30 lbs powdered sugar, etc etc....

 

Katie and Jeremy's wedding was full of personal touches.  As they marched down the aisle to the throne room suite from Star Wars, they also had 2 tributes to Chief Osceola, Mrs Wolf, and a fountain involved in their cake!  The flowers looked beautiful on it as well!

Dosen't Mrs Wolf look pretty with her veil? 

All in all--everyone loved the cake!  Having all of the different flavors to choose from is a great way to spice up the traditional wedding cake a little bit.  Its still up in the air which cake was the favorite...I'll have to poll the audience and see!

So pretty!  Congratulations, Katie and Jeremy!

To sum up:  2 broken and fixed ovens, 11 tiers of cake, 2 Cheif Osceolas, 1 Mrs Wolf, 2 beautiful weddings, 4 great friends, 2 great delivery ladies, and 1 tired cake decorator = 1 amazing weekend!

Love,

Beth

Cream Cheese Icing With a Side of Oh, Canada!

About 10 seconds, or shorter (if you are very astute) after you meet Bryan and Susanna, you realize that they are absolutely perfect for each other.  I was so honored when they asked me to make their cake...nothing but the best for these dear friends! 

Bryan is from Canada, and although many different ideas were tossed around as options for his groom's cake (talking robots, flying rocket ships christened 'the klingenburg', ice cream landing pads...) it was finally decided that a simple tribute to the home country was necessary. 

(all Canadians don't take pictures like this, just this Canadian...)

Thus, a red velvet Canadian Flag cake!  Bryan made absolutely sure that I got the flag right, and I definitely didn't want to insult the out of country guests by destroying their flag!

I think I got the flag right..... Bryan was worried that the American cake decorator would have trouble getting the correct design, so he emailed me a link to Wikipedia, just in case :) 

The next day was the wedding day dawned fresh and....rainy.  I have never delivered a cake in the rain before, let alone the thunderstorms that happened all day!  The wedding cake was a traditional white almond sour cream pound cake, but with a twist...cream cheese icing and chocolate chip cannoli filling!  This maybe my favorite filling I've ever tried....maybe because I love chocolate, maybe because its a fun surprise, or maybe because its just plain delicious.  Either way, it worked! 

All morning I worked on the cake teirs, watching the clounds roll by.  Thunder by.  Lightening by!!  I finally found a break in between the scary clounds and ran the cake tiers down 3 flights of stairs to my car, flew (carefully) to the North Carolina Museum of History, unloaded the cakes in the pouring down rain, teired the cake, changed into my dress in the bathroom and made it to the wedding with 4 minutes to spare!  Whew!

I think it turned out beautifully!  I LOVE fresh hydrangeas, and they suited this cake perfectly.  Some of these were from one of Susanna's family's garden, which made them all the more special! 

I loved being able to watch them cut the cake and eat their first bite together! 

All in all, my first cream cheese wedding cake, and my first delivery in a thunderstorm...I was proud of the outcome!  A delicious, beautiful cake for a wonderful couple.  I was so thankful to be a part of this!  Many happy blessings and wishes for the happy couple as they explore their 'new normal' together!! 

~Beth

No Tears in Cake!

This weekend I got to go to my first 'real' cake workshop....2 days, 24 hours of cake work, and so much information I'm about to bust! I learned so much and had the best time meeting other cake artists. Our theme was no cake fear...because there are no tears in cake! Over the course of the weekend, we made cakes that looked like designer purses. Such fun!

I tried to photo document the whole thing, not only so I can remember what I learned, but also so I could watch the transformation all over again. Many times when I reached for the camera I was too covered in modeling chocolate, luster dust, or cornstarch for pictures...but here are some of the ones I took!

We started out leveling and stacking our cakes, using dowel rods, foam core, butter cream, and bubble tea straws (one of my new favorite things!). This picture shows a semi-stable cake, ready for ganache (my next new favorite thing!)....but it doesn't show that I barely had enough cake, that my buttercream was too stiff, and that my cake was too soft and crummy. Needless to say, at this point I was a little concerned!

We next covered our cakes with a layer of chocolate ganache. Now, my ganache was not the best. And my cake had to be placed in the 'rehab freezer' for 'damage control' because it was so soft and runny. It got a little dicey at this point. So when I came in this morning and saw that the ganache had set up, I was SUPER happy! So happy that we snapped this spontaneous picture....

While our cakes were setting up, we went ahead and made chocolate champagne bottles for our purses to carry. We poured colored and melted chocolate, and then poured them into bottle molds. An hour later and a little carving later, poof! A chocolate champagne bottle!

Add a few sugar labels, and its pretty impressive. It looked so real, I absolutely love this bottle...can someone please ask for a bottle in their cake so I can do this again??

Once the ganache had set up, we covered it with fondant. Ganache makes fondanting SO easy...it looked great! Flawless (haha well, almost, and thats way better than nothing!) Chocolate fondant, I found, tastes SO much better than regular fondant. Even though fondant is not my preference, I learned this weekend that there ARE some delicious ways that it can be done. Chocolate is yummy, but there are other good vanilla options too! And now that I know more about this, maybe I can use it more!

Then I stitched the borders.....

And added thousands of hand cut, individually assembled and luster dusted logos...

A couple of handles, a champagne bottle, a blanket, and gum paste flowers...and I had a pretty darn cute bag! I am SO proud of this cake...obviously, as I took loads of pictures of it, but it was such hard work that really paid off. It was nice to remember why I love doing these.... and I can't wait to give this one another try sometime!

Me, super happy it turned out so well. I had the best time at this workshop, and learned so much!

Oh and did I mention....it was kind of delicious? :)

~Beth

Happy Birthday Mrs Verna Scott!

When you turn 80 years old, and you've never let anyone else make a cake for you for your birthday before....you might as well get a realllllly big cake!! Go big or go home, right?

So to celebrate the wonderful lady that she is, Mrs Verna got a huge pink, square, basket of flowers and butterflies!

I definitely underestimated the time it would take to make this cake. Without the help of my fantastic mom and sister, this cake would have taken me for-ever. As in well past 2:00 am, which is when I finished even with their help! Now, cracking 2 huge cake layers and messing up a large batch of buttercream didn't exactly put me on the fast track to success...

This cake was both White Almond Sour Cream and Carrot Cake...I had never made carrot cake before, but this one smelled amazing. I'm definitely going to have to eat some of it next time!

But I think it turned out rather well :) I love how the butterflies are hovering over the flowers! This is a bright and happy cake for a lady who has brought love and cheer to the lives of many. Happy Birthday Mrs. Verna!

~Beth

Thomas and Niki Leigh...Saxaphone Love!

So Thomas Cooper and I grew up together. He was my marching band drum major, and when he went off to college, he continued playing in the ECU marching band, tenor sax section. Thats where he met his wife, Niki Leigh! Their wedding was beautiful and full of life...and music! With a wedding like that, what you need is a saxaphone cake!!

It even has keys!! They're in the right spot for keys...but good luck making any music come out of this saxaphone :)

The cake was white almond sour cream, and made up the saxaphone case. The saxaphone itself was rice crispy treats and sugar! I molded the crispy treats into the shape of the sax, stabilized it with dowel rods, and then coated it with (several!) coats of royal icing, buttercream, and then gum paste. I used edible gold luster to make the shine!

I learned so much making this cake...and it was heavy! I hope they enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the challenge of making it!!