Posts Tagged ‘custom cakes long beach ca’

Coca Cola Bottle & Horse Head Crazy Cakes

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

Recently at Sweet & Saucy Shop we have been getting a lot of custom cake orders that don’t have anything to do with weddings!  It has been a lot of fun to see how we can turn cake into such fun shapes and of course the reactions we get from our clients make it worth all the effort!

This first cake I did a few months back for a 50th Birthday Bash that was all centered around The GodFather.  Paige from Bash Co Events & Kelly from Yes Please Design put the party on and needed a Horse Head Cake so I guess I was the lady to call.  Kelly not only does design & florals, but she also does amazing mini cupcakes too & provided the desserts for the table.  I had a great time working with these two talented ladies & of course have to share some of the photos from this fabulous party! Thanks to Charley Star for these great images!

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Kelly did an amazing sketch of what she wanted to have the dessert table look like & I really think it all came together!

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They wanted a horse head on a platter, but didn’t want it too gruesome looking.  I took the approach of more of a sculpture style look to it and choose not to give it realistic eyes, but rather keep the whole cake one color.

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Here it was being brought out to the birthday boy! Of course it had to be Red Velvet Cake inside!

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I just LOVED the cannolis they did…too much fun!

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Here are a couple close up shots I took at the bakery!  Kelly wanted me to base the cake off of this Anthropologie candle.

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Overall this party was a lot of fun & I’m so glad I could add to the excitement of the night!

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Last week  we also had the chance to make a really fun and REALLY LARGE cake in the shape of a Coca Cola Bottle!  The cake was a birthday surprise for a lady who loved her some Coca Cola!  The cake was about 3 1/2 feet long and we even split the cake into 3 flavor sections!  They had Red Velvet, Coconut, & Chocolate Espresso Cake!

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Kyong and I basically tag teamed this large cake and overall I was really happy with how it turned out!

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Here are some start to finish photos…

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Once we airbrushed it and added the lettering it was a real looking bottle!  This particular bottle is a special edition version of Coca Cola and was quite a lot of fun to mimic.

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We had coke spilling out of the bottle and painted the birthday girl’s name on it.

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Of course our sweet Hayley had to get in on the fun too!  We are so glad to have her on the team full time along with Kyong!  The team is growing and we are loving it!

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Creating Custom Cakes…

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

As a cake designer I definitely tend to enjoy making high-end, fashion forward wedding cakes more than party cakes, but recently I have started being more selective with the party cake orders I have been taking and only choosing ones that I really feel I can put my own spin on them.  I don’t want to copy any party cakes or pump out a million kids cakes a weekend (like a lot of bakeries do)…I went into this business to be a custom cake shop where my clients would have one-of-a-kind cakes that reflected their styles and types of events.  This past year I have tried to start using a lot more new techniques at the shop and really utilize everyone’s talents on my team.  I tend to want to do everything myself since I ran my business like that for almost 2 years, but these past few months I have been inspired and honored to work with people on my team.  I try to push them harder and help them refine their talents and skills and I find they are doing the same for me.  So before I show these fabulous photos I have to give  a shout out to Susie, Louisa, Heather, Sara, Tim, Rosie, and Geoff!!!  I have been so blessed with such a wonderful team and of course I could never do it without my sweet Mommy & Daddy…you’re the best parents a girl could ask for!

This first cake was actually for a a old school friend of mine.  She contacted me a couple weeks ago as she was planning her mother’s 50th surprise birthday party and wanted a fashion forward cake.  This cake was definitely a little challenging, but in the end I was quite happy with it.

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The high heel was mainly made out of white chocolate and then covered in fondant.  I printed the Prada label on edible frosting sheets and used fondant to make the edible pearls and brooch.  The shoe box was covered in black fondant and then we put a white damask pattern on it to spice it up a little.

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This next cake was for a little girl’s birthday party.  Of course all little girls dream of princesses and castles so we made a three tier castle cake and added the Disney princesses to the cake.  

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Anther kid’s cake that we recently made was for a little girl’s first birthday party and her Grandma wanted a Betty Boop theme…this is what I came up with!

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This American flag cake was for a party honoring a past army admiral and I thought Heather did a great job on the painting!

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And last, but not least is a three tier topsy turvy cake we recently made.  This cake was fun because each tier of the cake celebrated one daughter in the family.  The top tier was for the little baby, the middle tier was for the little girl who loved Strawberry Shortcake, and the bottom tier was for the pre-teen who loved fashion.  I had a lot of fun making this cake and thought Susie & Sara did a great job helping me with it!

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Well, I hope you enjoyed stopping by and definitely let us know what cake you liked the best!

Halloween Photos: Part II

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

I hope all of you had a Happy Halloween!  I had way too many cute photos of my family that I thought I had to share them with you!  Plus I got the chance to make a fun 3D Pumpkin cake for a client of mine.  Her daughter was turning 4 years old and she wanted a fun cake that pulled in both occasions!  

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The cake was quite yummy inside!  The bottom tier was chocolate cake with whipped cream, strawberries & chocolate ganache. The middle tier was pumpkin cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting & salted caramel. And lastly the top tier was banana cake with chocolate ganache and peanut butter cream cheese frosting.  

I hand sculpted each pumpkin and then airbrushed them to make them look more realistic.  Next I stacked them and created lots of vines and stems to fill in the gaps.  Here are some more close-ups of the cake…unfortunately I didn’t realize they weren’t in perfect focus under I was done with the cake, but at least they show you more details.

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These next photos are of my adorable family!  

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Aren’t they too cute for words!  Well, those aren’t the only Halloween photos I have for you…I just had to include these next few photos.  All I have to say is “How awesome is my staff!!!”  Now sadly, I had a wedding delivery that day and couldn’t dress up or else I would’ve strapped the pirate belt on and jumped in the photo!

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I think we can all agree that Octo-mom gets the best costume award!  Can you believe how great Louisa looks!

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And even my intern dressed up…as a chef of course!

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Communion Cake

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Well, I am sticking to my word and posting for the third time this week…I know…it really can’t be true, but by golly I did it!  (I might even try for four posts…I don’t want to get ahead of myself though).  This cake was requested by a client of mine for their little boy’s first communion.  I sent them a bunch of inspirational photos of cakes that I liked and they fell in love with a design from the Pink Cake Box. Normally I always try to do original designs for the most part, but I also loved their cake design and so I went with the basic look, but added my own little Sweet & Saucy touch to it.  Overall I was really happy with how it turned out and I wanted to share a couple details of it with you!

The color scheme was shades of brown, light gold/tan, and white so we decided to color the fondant a light brown shade.  The cake was buttermilk cake with lemon cream and fresh raspberries and chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and espresso kahlua cream cheese frosting.

Then I printed the message on edible frosting sheets and applied it to a thin piece of fondant.  Then I applied it to the cake.  To add a little extra detail I piped on white royal icing dots for the border.

The main detail of the cake was the Bible and rosary necklace.  I made the Bible out of carrot cake and iced it with a thin layer of buttercream and then added a strip of fondant for the “pages”.  I used a scoring tool to make the page marks.  

I then added the “cover” of fondant to the Bible.  I again used the edible frosting sheets for the print out of “Holy Bible”.  I placed it on a piece of light brown fondant and used a scoring tool to make the etching pattern and royal icing for the mini dots.  

I then made the edible sugar necklace and attached a tiny cross to the bottom of it.  I laid it on top of the Bible and let it fall down the cake slightly.  To add a little more detail to the cake I used small round circle cutters to add some dots around the tiers and then piped royal icing dots.  Lastly I sprayed the whole cake with luster dust and viola…it was done!

Now I couldn’t leave without sharing some recent photos of the dessert studio.  The hubby and I stopped by today to check out the paint job and I was in the “posing” mood so I grabbed the camera and gave it to him so he could take photos of me modeling my recent kitchen improvements!  

The walls all were painted…everything white, except for in my office I wanted 3 out of the four walls painted grey.  The color scheme in there is grey, yellow, and white.  

Here are some more shots inside the bakery part of it.

The flooring gets done tomorrow!  I am going with the polished concrete look…think modern, vintage-like!

And last, but not least is a photo of my amazing assistant!  I wanted to introduce her to you and publicly thank her for making my life SO much easier!  You’re the best Louisa!

Thanks for stopping by the blog!  Hope you have a fabulous week!

 

Lots of Events!

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Well, sadly my blogging hasn’t been as often as I would like lately.  Between baking, decorating, client calls, tasting, working on the store, and employee training I am barely finding time to sleep (which is my #1 priority if you know me!).  Within the last 6 days I think I pulled three 15-20 hour days and the rest were at least 12 hours…talk about exhaustion!  I do have to say that I am so thankful for my new assistant Louisa! She helped me out so much this past week and I am so excited to have her on my team!  I also treated myself to some much needed pampering today and indulged in a one hour massage…can you say HEAVEN!!!  I have to say that massages are one of my favorite things in the world and I think I will be scheduling many more in the upcoming future!

Well enough about me and my aches and pains, lets get to the good stuff…DESSERTS!  This post is going to be a schmorgasboard of wonderful delights! This first photo is from my girlfriend’s recent 25th birthday party.  When she called me to see if I could make the cake of course I said yes!  I wanted to do more of a homespun look for the cake and used a simple fresh flower to decorate it. 

The cake was chocolate cake with layers of espresso kahlua cream cheese frosting and chocolate ganache. I also thought I’d throw in a photo of my gorgeous girlfriends…I am so blessed!

And of course my lovely girlfriend Kate!

These second group of photos are from some recent events that I did with Courtney Toney from Joyful Weddings & Events. She is a fantastic wedding & event planner and I have been so privileged to work with her.  She set up this whole candy bar and commissioned me to make the matching flower cookies.

This other event was a fun hawaiian-themed engagement party that Courtney threw. She asked me to do the desserts and this is what we came up with.  Thanks to her hubby for the great photos.

Lastly I wanted to leave you with some photos from the update of the dessert studio!  The wall is up, the plumbing done in the bakery part, and the construction sign is up too!

Thanks so much to my Uncle Dan at Instant Signs who made this for me!

 

 

 

 

Photo Shoot!!!

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Well, I have to say that I never thought when I headed into the pastry field that I would be posing for photo shoots, but these kind of unexpected surprises are what makes going out on my own totally worth it!  I was a little hesitant at first to pose by myself…I thought the shoot was just for the desserts, but when Ryel said she wanted to shoot some of just me I said okay thinking it would only be head shots. To my surprise I was posing and all..blush blush!  Once I relaxed a little and stopped thinking about how funny I probably looked I had a great time and really loved how the photos turned out.  Ryel, from RyelJ Photography, is one talented lady and so much fun to work with.  If you are getting married anytime soon I would definitely recommend contacting her!  Well, enough talk…lets get on to the pictures!  

The shoot first started off in my Aunt’s kitchen…I know, so sad…you all thought it was my gorgeous kitchen but alas all my money has gone to buying cake plates so I decided to ask my Aunt if I could use her house since it is perfectly done in everyway.  

Then we headed outdoors to shoot in front of the gazebo that my uncle custom built…how cute is it?!?

Lastly we went to a part of the garden that was a little unkept (which normally never happens since my aunt is a fabulous gardener), but lucky for us it was and it was perfect for this last cake.

The last photo I leave you with gives you a little insight into my new branding from Karrie Pyke Designs!  I absolutely love my new logo and a new website and blog design are on their way too!  

I would love to hear what photo you like the best!  Happy weekend!

 


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