Cake Talk

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.

Four Weddings and Our Guitar Collection

Yes, four! Three today and one yesterday. One is a couple actually GETTING MARRIED in our Garden Room (or in the garden if it stops raining by 4:00).

This first one we have done several version of in the past.  It is always pretty.  The black mini calla lilies (dark purple ones mixed with the orange minis) which are also in the bouquets and arrangements cost almost as much as the cake!

The groom's cake was a Gibson Les Paul Standard Black Top guitar.  It was slightly shorter than the real length of 39-inches, only because the glass we had to place it on was only 36-inches long.

That's the real guitar on the left, with our cake version below.  We got a smile of approval from the groom which meant a lot to us since, after all, it is just cake. After last week's mandolin, which also turned out rather nice, we are amassing quite a collection of musical instrument groom cakes.  This one had strings though, as I learned my lesson and made sure the neck was in-line with the body so the strings would be straight.

The Saturday wedding had a cake on top of a fountain.  Since I am not crazy about that set-up, I'll refrain from posting a photo here.  It was red and white, five tiers, with the top tier separated from the bottom four. The entire cake was stacked on top of a large fountain.  Crimson fondant flowers were placed on top, but I really had to stretch my 5-10 frame to even reach the top.

 We had a slight scare when we plugged in the fountain and nothing happened. There would be no way to deal with the fountain without taking the cake down, but (according to the instructions in the package) there was not enough water in the bowl.  Added a bit more and presto, bubbling fountain.

The third wedding was actually a 50th anniversary.  A blue-and-white cake plus some coconut bar "dominoes."

The last event starts in about an hour. Besides providing the venue, we made chicken salad and cheese straws.  The bride made cupcakes and it looks to be a lovely celebration.

The Culture Fest, which threatened to distract from the peaceful celebration planned for today, was postponed until November due to rain.  

Tuesday it is back to cookies and pastries and birthday cakes. And homecoming and the Kentuck Festival. Besides a small groom's cake (3-d sneakers and a basketball) on the 17th, we do not have another wedding for almost three weeks!

September Weddings

We made some pretty wedding cakes in September.  In fact we had eight weddings this month.  Fewer than the "peak" months of May and June, but more that you might expect for a month with three home football games.

Besides the cake at Gabriella Manor, and the cake we had to put back together, here are some of the other wedding cakes we did.

The was the combination square-round-square-round-square cake we did last weekend (groom's cake was peanutbutter and chocolate).

Then the mandolin groom's cake (bride's cake was a simple stacked square cake).

Then there was the series of floating cakes in pale turquoise over white with gold luster dust sprayed over the roses (no groom's cake).

And there was the cake we had to bring up a VERY VERY steep driveway (sign at the bottom said "put your car in low gear and DON'T stop!).  Not sure why we didn't take a photo of that one.

Then there was the dice (I know that is plural but I cannot bring myself to describe a "die" cake.  Even for a groom. The bride's cake was a series of stacked rounds.

And the last one delivered to a private home, no deco, just simple stacked rounds.

October starts fast with three weddings the first weekend, but we'll switch gears later in the month with homecoming and the Kentuck festival.

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!

Cake 911

If any bakery ever tells you nothing bad has ever happened to their cakes, DON'T BELIEVE THEM!!  We've had 24 hours worth of disasters and I am thankful we'll be closed the next two days.

It started when I sent Ben, one of my very good workers, over to the Bryant Museum, in my car, to pick up the cake stands from their birthday celebration for Coach Paul W. "Bear" Bryant.

"The car sputtered and died" reported Ben over the phone about ten minutes later.

OK, well the car has been acting weird lately, but not being very car-savvy, I guess I didn't realize the severity of its little hiccups, thinking they could be cured with gas additive.  (That approach HAS worked in the past.)

It's 4pm on Friday before the first home football game and Ben is holding up traffic. And, as just another guy with a car problem, nobody is stopping to help him move the darn thing off the road.  Did I mention it was raining?  Emily went over to help him out.  Not one, not two, but three guys immediately stopped to see if she needed any help with the car.

Fast forward...I called AAA, got the car towed back to the shop and rented a minivan.  A small fortune, but this is Tuscaloosa, which has no commercial airport, which means no big rental car agencies.  Just Enterprise.  Which happened to have just one car left.  I took it.

By Saturday morning I am almost over the car fiasco.  Sam's Club didn't have everything I needed, but I called ahead to the bakery and Emily agreed to run to the local store to pick up the rest of the stuff we needed before I got in.  I was expecting an uneventful day, with everything done well before the 6pm kick-off.

I am greeted with the news that a four tier birthday cake, which was just picked-up, was missing an important architectural support piece.  The hows and whys are a very long story, but the cake was now a disaster waiting to happen.  The bigger problem was that nobody was answering the phone number we had for the customer.  Luckily her husband is a doctor, and the answering service was able to contact him.  We iced a completely NEW four tier cake, decorated just like the original, but with all the proper supports, and delivered it to the customer's house about 15 minutes before the party started.

I figured that was it for the day, but I was wrong.  One of our wedding deliveries was in Reform, about 30 miles west of Northport.  A car stopped abruptly in front of me on the highway. I stepped on the brakes and the cake stand slid in the back of my rental minivan. I heard that soft "plop" that no baker making a delivery EVER wants to hear.  Emily, who was riding shotgun, glanced over shoulder and uttered "oh shit."  I pulled over and opened the back to see cake pieces and icing all over the floor of the van.

Thank God for cell phones.  And the fact that there were enough people working in the bakery today so that one could make the other wedding delivery.  One could speed over to Reform with more icing, spatulas, and other supplies.  Yes, we do bring an "emergency" bucket with tools and icing, but this cake was way past that and needed a major operation.

With three of us now working, we got the cake scraped and re-iced, stacked and decorated before the bridal party arrived.  It looks pretty good, doesn't it?  And that is caramel icing, not chocolate (except for the small dark ganache border).

Now I really need a drink.

And yes, that photo at the top of this post is the back of my rental van, after we removed the damaged cake.

How to Save the Top Tier of Your Wedding Cake

Almost every bride we meet expects to save the top tier of her wedding cake.  And each is also afraid it will taste terrible after a year in the freezer. But it's tradition.

Although I ALWAYS recommend just enjoying it when it is fresh, it doesn't have to create a bad food memory if you follow these directions.

1. Assign this job, well in advance, to someone who will have the time and freezer space immediately after the wedding to do the job properly.
2. Tell your baker that you intend to freeze the top tier, and ask them to provide an extra cake board and box for this purpose.
3. Remove any non-edible decorations that may still be on the cake such as flowers, gumpaste bows, etc.
4. Place the cake in the freezer for about 20 minutes. This will firm up the icing and keep it from sticking to the plastic wrap.
5. Now you are ready to wrap the cake.  Take the cake out of the freezer and lift it off the circular cardboard cake board it is sitting on.  Place a piece of plastic wrap over the cake circle and replace the cake.  This will help miminize any "cardboard taste" that may seep into the cake during the months it is in your freezer.
6. Roll out a generous length of plastic wrap, place the cake (on its "circle" from step 5) on top, and wrap it securely.  If your plastic wrap is not extra wide, rotate the cake 90 degrees and repeat this process to be sure the cake is covered on all sides.
7. Place the covered cake in the box and wrap the box well with more plastic wrap in both directions.  Now is not the time to think about the environmental impact of all that plastic.
8. Label the wrapped box "WEDDING CAKE" so you don't accidently throw it out.
9. The day before you plan to eat it, take the box out of the freezer and defrost it (fully wrapped) for about 2 hours in the fridge.
10. Remove the cake from the fridge, unwrap the box, take the cake out, and unwrap the cake.  Don't forget to remove the plastic wrap from under the cake.  You need to do this while the icing is still hard so you don't damage it too much.
11. Put the cake on the new board you remembered to get from the baker, replace it in the box and let it continue defrosting in the fridge.
12. Just before serving, let the cake rest at room temperature for about an hour.
13. Garnish the top with your orininal topper or fresh flowers or your saved gumpaste decorations.
14. Get out your cake server and knife, and make a toast to married life.
15. If this seems like too much work, order a new small cake from the bakery that made your wedding cake, ask them to decorate it the same way, and you'll have a perfect opportunity to enjoy some delicious fresh wedding cake.

Mustang Cobra GT500

Here's the inspiration: the grille emblem on the high performance version of the Ford Mustang.

And here's the cake.

We had to shrink the body a little to fit it on the glass.  It's a groom's cake and I am pretty sure I saw the actual car at the church -- red with white hood stripes (the bride was posing on the hood for pictures).  Had to be them as they were  just down the highway from the home where the reception was to be held.  It was a sight to behold.  The bride had a bright red band around the waist of her gown that matched the color of the car.

The mother of the groom ordered the cake about a month ago.  It seems that relatives were making the bride's cake, but the groom had his heart set on a cobra, that PARTICULAR cobra.  Which  was just a bit beyond their skill set.  So she came to us.

It is three layers of chocolate cake, cut and carved from a full sheet, with vanilla buttercream icing between the layers.  The outside, of course, is gray and black.

Normally, gray and black are not colors people like to eat, but somehow I don't think this crowd was going to mind.

Summer Weddings

Every year I'm amazed at the number of couples getting married in the middle of summer in Alabama.  When the temperature is guaranteed to be AT LEAST in the high 90's.  Whatever did they do before air conditioning?

You might think June is the most popular month for weddings, but we're consistently busy from April though August.  In the fall, most Tuscaloosa bride's don't try to compete with home football games, but we're still heavily booked on away- and bye- weekends.  The first weekend AFTER the the last football game is also a big wedding weekend, as is the weekend between Christmas and New Years.

We had four wedding deliveries this past weekend.  All were in beautifully air-conditioned buildings.  And all were close enough to the shop that the cakes didn't suffer from the ride since the A/C in the car definitely didn't have time to kick in (this is when I wish we had an air conditioned loading bay).

Besides the two above (under the pale green fondant, the bride's cake was chocolate with orange syrup and buttercream), we also had a five tier square cake, a two-tier round, and a Bryant-Denny Stadium cake.

Back at the bakery, the staff was decorating 200 cookies for a private showing of Rocky at the Bama Theatre.  The boxers still need white laces on the gloves and a gold emblem on the shorts.

Kinda looks like Elvis in boxing shorts, doesn't it?

Cake on board!

This was a belated birthday present from my staff!  Isn't it cool?  Now when we're driving REALLY REALLY slow taking a cake to a wedding, people won't honk their horns at us for hogging the road.  I'm kinda hoping that it will allow me to park in no-parking zones too...  Thanks y'all!

Emily got to use it first, as she drove a "Little Debbie" grooms cake out to Lake Tuscaloosa.  Then we went to the West Side with two more cakes, to Holt with two, and finally just down the street to the Maxwell Peters Home with this one and a chocolate ganache grooms cake garnished with tuxedo strawberries.

This particular bride had all her patience tried today.  When we got there, about two hours before "I do," the chairs had still not arrived for the outdoor wedding, the security alarm was blaring, and the temperature indoors was a stifling 83^o degrees.

I'm sure it will all come together by 6:00, but I wasn't even going attempt to tell her that.

Greatest movie quote ever?  "Just smile and wave boys, smile and wave."

In the Weeds

I'm ready for a drink.

We've been in the weeds all day.  Yesterday too.  Honestly?  Most of the week.

If you work in the restaurant industry you know this expression.  If you don't, you probably get the picture.

In the weeds.  According to Restaurantschools.com, it is an expression used when persons are near or beyond their capacity to handle a situation.  Yep, that pretty much covers it.

We had four weddings.  Each had a bride's cake AND a groom's cake.  And a bunch of cupcakes (with little fondant t-shirts and paper game-day tents on them).  Adding them all up, we made, delivered, and set up enough wedding cake to serve about 1500 guests.  And that's on top of eleven other cakes, just for today.

It started with the damn freezer door and cooking camp on Tuesday, which took a lot more out of our day than I had planned.  I knew we were going to be down one worker.  (What was I thinking when I told her she could take the week off to go to the beach on a long-planned holiday?  And just because I can't take a week off to go to the beach doesn't mean nobody else can -- or should.)

The fact that someone had left the freezer door open on Saturday, and it went unnoticed until we opened on Tuesday, didn't help.  Mostly cookie doughs and melted gelato.  And my insurance policy doesn't cover dumb acts by humans who work here.

Then we lose one worker on Thursday afternoons to the Farmer's Market.  That was another "not-so-well-thought-out" moment.  My rationale at the time was that we don't have that many cakes going out on Friday.  But I had no contingency plan if we were down anyone else or any of the remaining employees lose efficiency.  You know, have an bad day.

Then on Friday we just could not get our act together until about 4 pm.  So we ordered pizza and decorated cakes until we could no longer see clearly, which was almost 10.

By Saturday morning, the grooms cakes were done, but the bride's cakes ranged from "not even crumb coated" to "iced but not decorated."  We were at 100 mph all day.  Oh, and did I mention the heat index outside is over 110^o?

The last cake has finally been delivered.  The kitchen cleaned, and the cases emptied.  And I have two full days off before we have to do it again next week.

I have a new camera, and am just getting used to it, so I only have pics of some of the wedding cakes.

Our other favorite expression?  That would be "on the fly."  Which is (officially) a directive given when food is needed in a hurry.  As in the customer is waiting.  RIGHT NOW.  That happened to us today too.