Cake Talk

Another Good Cake Week

What a great week for cakes.  A powder blue Fender guitar for Debbie Bond (of the Alabama Blues Project), a Star Wars cake (invitation said "Costumes Encouraged"), and a pretty black and white stacked cake.  These were just the tip of the iceberg.

In case you cannot tell from my photo of the Star Wars cake, the top tier looks like the uniform, with a black collar, blue torso, and logo.  The bottom two tiers are covered in black ganache and decorated with galaxies.

We also  had four weddings -- two on Friday and two on Saturday (Alabama plays Mississippi State in Starkville today).  One of the groom's cakes had a tree stump theme.  The acorns are made from marzipan.

 Plus a four tier cake for a 21st birthday (with sparkle dust), three football and/or "Alabama" themed cakes.  Several other cakes either matched the deco on custom invitations or just can't be easily described.

We have five cake decorators in the shop now , which is pretty amazing.  Ben and Rain have joined Pat, Kristi and me.  We can almost always leave the shop at a decent hour, even on busy cake days.

Next week is the last home football game of the season.  The Iron Bowl, held Thanksgiving weekend, is in Auburn this year, and the SEC playoff game on December 5th will be in Atlanta.  After that, who knows...

We're gearing up for Thanksgiving pies and cakes.  We'll make pumpkin, sweet potato, pecan, sweet potato-pecan, fudge, and fudge-pecan pies.  We'll also make cakes (to order), mainly red velvet, caramel and carrot cake.

Dickens Downtown is Tuesday, December 1 from 5-8 pm, which starts the Christmas season of cookies and other sweets.  We'll be giving away bread pudding outside the shop and we'll have cider, hot cocoa, soup and other goodies for sale inside.  Debbie Bond and the Creme Brulees will perform from 6-8 pm.  Dress up and come early to have your picture made with Father Christmas or the Queen Mother.

How to Pick-up a Cake

You have ordered a cake and now you are coming to pick it up.  Without overstating the obvious, here are some basic DO''S and DON'TS:

• DO tell us if you like your cake when you see it for the first time.  We love our cakes, and you will really make our day if you are as excited about your cake as we are.  We encourage "oohs" and "ahs." "Wow" and "awesome" are also perfectly acceptable.
  
• DON'T wait until you get home (or later) to tell us if your cake is not what you expected.  The best time for us to add, remove, or change something on your cake is while it is still in our shop.
  
• DO clean the junk out of your car before you come.  You do not want shoes, umbrellas, books and other heavy or unappetizing "stuff" falling on your cake.  We often have to prop the lid of the cake box up to accommodate a tall cake, flowers or a bow.  The plastic wrap covering the opening of the box is no match for your your gym bag, soccer ball or magazine collection.
• DON'T come in a compact car if you have ordered a large cake.  A cake box fits best on a flat surface such as the front passenger floorboard or the back of an SUV.  Placing a cake box on a seat or holding a large cake on your lap, even as a passenger, is dangerous for you and the cake.
• DO let us carry the cake out to your car.  We will find the safest place for a cake in your vehicle.  And besides, if we carry the cake out, then you are not responsible for it until after we hand it over. If we cannot find a suitable place in your vehicle for your cake, we can usually deliver it for a nominal fee.  Think of it as insurance.
• DON'T drive like a maniac with a cake in your car.  Now is NOT the time to show off your racing skills.  No two wheel turns or slamming on the brakes.  That means you should drive slow enough when approaching a stop sign or light that you can stop smoothly.  Remember the basic laws of physics...a cake in motion tends to stay in motion...

How we do it...
When we have to deliver a cake, we always put it on a flat surface (such as the back of my PT Cruiser).  I keep a non-slip cover over the carpet, and we use spongy shelf liner for extra traction.  I drive slowly and carefully, repeating to myself "there is a cake in the car" after every stop.  The "Cake on Board" signs on the sides and back of my car remind me (and everyone else) to be mindful of the task at hand.

When you get home..
And remember, cakes with cream cheese icing should be refrigerated or the icing will spoil after several hours.  However, cake tend to dry out in the refrigerator.  Since we do not use any egg products in our buttercream icing, refrigeration is not necessary for a buttercream cake.  That said, if you plan to keep the cake more than a day or two, wrap the cake (or cake box) securely in plastic wrap and put the whole thing in the freezer.

Zebra Prints

We go through design phases at the bakery. Right now, zebra prints are IN!  Here are just two examples, but we've done this design so much lately that I am considering buying black fondant, already mixed.

The design works for "boy" cakes as well as "girl" cakes.  For kids and adults.  And it goes well with just about any bright color, but especially hot pink, lime green, yellow and red.

We've even done brown stripes on white, and teal on chocolate, although those were not my favorite color combinations.

The cookies-as-decoration also work well, even though the palm trees are a bit fragile.  We have often converted the palm "tree" to a palm "bush" when the trunk broke at the neck.

Just remember, this is cake (or cookies) and not a permanent work of art.

Laptop Cake

Happy Birthday Matthew!  You are turning 30 and your wife thought, as you are a computer programmer, you might enjoy a new laptop for your birthday.  And, since you probably already have a real one (or two or three), how about one made entirely of cake and rice crispy treats?

The flip top is made of rice crispy treats and covered in fondant.  The keys are also fondant.  The main "cake" is chocolate, with peanut butter buttercream.

And all those 0's and 1's at the bottom.  I've been told they spell out "Happy Birthday" in binary code.

Good Cake Day

We had several nice cakes today, but these two are our favorites.

It's Halloween on Saturday, so a witch's hat is entirely on point.  The brim is a 14-inch round cake.  The top of the hat is a two-layer 6-inch round cake, topped with several inches of formed rice crispy treats.

The entire cake is covered in buttercream and topped with black ganache.  Then we sprinkled on lots of edible glitter before stacking the two parts.  Several skewers will keep the parts stacked straight for travel.

The little mice are made from fondant, and the spiderwebs are spun sugar.  We got to play with lots of fun stuff for this cake!!

The soccer ball cake is for one of the ladies on the University of Alabama soccer team.

The base is a simple chocolate cake and the soccer ball is molded from rice crispy treats (our new "favorite" molding medium).  The ball is covered with white fondant and black fondant pentagons were placed to finish the decoration. The bow is fondant; the stars are gum paste.

I must admit a soccer ball is not nearly as easy to make as a football, basketball, volleyball, golf ball, or just about any other kind of sport ball.

But we had fun and we get to do it again tomorrow.

Now THAT'S art!

We got a call several weeks ago asking if we could do a special cake for the 50th Anniversary of Indian Hills Country Club inTuscaloosa.

This is what they sent us.

Sure...(or kinda sure...), it looked do-able.  I've been to Indian Hills many, many time to deliver wedding cakes, but never really paid that much attention to what the outside of the building really looked like.

Now however, Kristi and I are intimately familiar with the detailed architecture of the facade.  We tried to capture the basic elements on two large sheet cakes, that were displayed side-by-side.  Everything -- from the bricks to the windows, shutters, roofing shingles and shadows, to the large trees and even the parking spaces -- was drawn by hand, first with a toothpick, then followed with chocolate, green and gray buttercream icing in pastry bags fitted with #1 tips.

It took the two of us the better part of a day to finish it up.  As I pulled up to the building with the cakes in the car, I paid a whole lot more attention to where I was and smiled.

Basketball and Sneakers

Now THIS is the kind of cake we love to make.  Definitely not run of the mill, it was a bit of a challenge, but not overly stressful.

Plus, since our kitchen and decorating area are totally open, it is also the kind of cake we like customers to see us decorating.

We did this one for a groom's cake on the Saturday of the Kentuck Festival.  It is all chocolate cake, except for the bottom third of the basketball, which is made from rice crispy treats (they provide better structural support than cake).

All of the cakes are covered in buttercream icing, with fondant accents for the basketball seams, white trim and laces on the shoes. The green buttercream "grass" hides the cake boards.

Antiques Roadshow

Happy Birthday Wendell Garrett.

The appraiser, of Antiques Roadshow fame, is celebrating his 80th birthday in Tuscaloosa today with cake from Mary's.

Three cakes -- strawberry, chocolate and white -- covered in marble fondant and luster dust, resemble old books.

We had the funnest time making them and hope he enjoys his birthday.  Wonder what kind of appraisal they will get...

Farm Cake

Who says you can't have your cake and veggies too?

We've done barns and boots and dirt bike trails and golf holes. Game day tents on icing "grass," logs, tree stumps, duck ponds, a volcano, a mountain, a lake and a construction site.

And now a field of fall veggies, all piped along neat rows of chocolate butter cream icing and chocolate cake crumb dirt.  On top of two layers of red velvet "red clay" soil.

There are beets and pumpkins, yellow squash, lettuce, red cabbage and sunflowers.

So if you are an organic farmer celebrating your birthday, what more could you possibly want?

Better Week

After last week's cake disasters, I needed a more positive experience.  We got that this week.  Adding to today's 53-7 win over North Texas, we had a good cake week.

I got my car back.

None of the cakes imploded.

The delivery to Birmingham not only went smoothly, but the folks at Gabriella Manor (where the wedding was being held) were utterly sweet, professional, and helpful.  The property is beautiful, and the staff thinks of every little detail.  They even offered that they were cutting the cake and asked if there was anything they should know about the way it was constructed.  Nobody EVER asks us that.  They had already set out boxes (out of sight) for any extra cake that might need to be packed and asked us what to do with the cake stands (give them to the bride's mother).  I could not have asked for a nicer or better prepared team to work with.

Melina's, the new restaurant on the corner of 5th and Main Avenue opened yesterday, with a soft opening (friends and family) on Thursday.  The food is fabulous.  I had to chuckle when the server told me about the wonderful red velvet cake and cappuccinn gelato they had for dessert. (I chose the creme brulee, which we did NOT make, but was perfection -- just the right combination of cold custard and warm just-torched sugar.  Yum. We wish them well.

All the cakes got picked-up, on time.

A man who had bounced a check a few weeks ago even came by to apologize and make it good.

We got two large orders for mid-week next week -- one for a sorority and one for a University of Alabama event.  Roll Tide!!

Oh yeah, and we got a call, out of the blue, from Cakes Across America.  They are a service much like Teleflora where you can order a cake to be delivered anywhere in the country (probably not ANYWHERE...).  They had an order for Tuscaloosa that they wanted us to fill.  And paid us our full price (wow! no discount necessary).

So, there you are.  A week sans-disaster.

Tomorrow I'm going to Leeds (just east of Birmingham) to hear Bobby Horton.

Monday I'll be a student again, taking the ServSafe course and exam.

And here is a photo of today's wedding cake as a finishing touch.  Have a nice weekend!