Cake Life @ The Velvet Buttercream

Fondant -  fon -d uh nt –noun A sweet creamy sugar paste used in candies and icings. A candy containing this paste. I'm sure that most of you know all about the magic of fondant.  It's found in many of the wedding cakes sold and has quickly become the design icing of preference.  Things you could never imagine of creating from buttercream can now be done with fondant. The creativity is endless when you are working with fondant.  The only limitation is your imagination... These cakes look so amazing, but do we really know what it takes to make one of these?  Hours of labor, not to mention the intense use of your hand muscles.  Watch this video.. the lady makes it look so easy to roll it out and cover the cake.  If you ever have some free time, buy a tub of fondant and just start playing with it.  You would be surprised at how fast you learn. Have a great week everyone, I'll see you all on thursday!

June 4th weekend is going to be a busy one for this cake decorator..  I have two scheduled interviews in Baltimore and Annapolis Maryland, both with two entirely different bakeries.  The first interview is going to be with a Graul's Market bakery.. from what i'm told is that it's not just a grocery store, it's a high end grocery store.  I imagine that it's like the Arizona based "AJ's Fine Foods" The other interview is with Nostalgia Cupcakes in Annapolis.  I haven't heard much, or seen much about this company, but from the looks of things they are a mom and pop store.  Now don't get me wrong, I imagine that it would be a great place to work for.. but I need the benefits and the hours to be guaranteed.  Part of my interview with both bakeries is that I have to display what I can create from icing, and also to show off my artistic side.  I have a few ideas on stuff to create, but I need a little bit of input from all of you.  I feel that bu

After a total hell week in the bakery, where cuts, scrapes, slips, destruction, burned cookies, and fingers in cakes... I finally got my groove back. I made this triple filled chocolate and raspberry cake on Tuesday, the day after I burned two racks of cookies. This little beauty I made on wednesday morning for Jessica, my roommate's daughter.  Initially this cake was supposed to be a 4 layer black, purple, and white cake with extreme angles.  When I finished I walked away and decided to take a shower, after I came out the top layer of cake fell on the other two destroying my creation.  Sure enough I ran off to albertson's and picked up some more supplies and remade the top two tiers which appear in this picture.  From start to finish, to destruction, to recreation, to total completion, I finished the cake in just over 6 hours.  Whew was I having a rough day. All it took was one busy saturday and one amazing guy to help me get my groove back. Thank you 

So unless you've been living under a rock for the past 6 years.. you would know that "Lost" is still a huge hit.  Fox has dragged this show on for so long when it could have ended a few years ago.  If you want to catch up on the show, all 6 seasons are available for viewing on Hulu!  Anyways, I want to talk about Lost, and it's impact on cake. We've seen some awesome cakes come from this cocaine addiction tv show.  Speaking of TV shows..  Ace of Cakes made a really kewl "Lost" cake a couple seasons back that was a mock up of the pilot episode when the plane crashed. Tuesday is going to be the series finale of Lost and I am determined to make tons of "Lost" themed cakes for my store.  I think making some of these themed will be so awesome... whether or not they sell is another thing. These are just a couple of cake ideas that I want to make for cake's this week.  If you think about it they really aren't that hard.    Obviously

From time to time we all have our "off days", the days where things just can't seem to go right regardless of how hard you try.  Either your dropping things, destroying icing details, poking your finger in cake, burning cake.. etc.    Need I continue? This week was totally one of those weeks for me.  Starting with saturday which was so incredibly busy, I had 16 cake orders and only an 8 hour shift to complete them.  I made three minor mistakes on cake orders, enough to make you put down the icing bag and walk away for a break. The real mess came on sunday when I was baking cookies.  I walked away from the bakery to check my tables and I had become distracted by a customer, and all it took was 4 minutes to burn the hell out of those cookies. So I threw most of that batch away and set up another rack to replace the ones I burned.  Sure enough I baked them off and forgot about the timer.  So not once, but twice did I burn the cookies!!!  About $80 worth of cookies I

Who says your birthday cake has to be warm?  Last time I checked it's just starting to heat up, and that generally means everything must be cold...  Iced tea, iced soda, cold showers, and cold cake?  Psssh, why not just go with the new American fad, the ice cream cake. Sure you could always go with a basic crappy Carvel ice cream cake, but why not take it up a notch and get an awesome cake from Cold Stone Creamery.  I try not to be the advertising guru for them, but they really deserve the attention.  Cold stone has a variety of ice cream, everything from the basic Vanilla to the Cake batter ice cream. If you haven't tried the cake batter ice cream, then I suggest you find the nearest cold stone and sample it.  mmmm yum I know that Ice Cream isn't really a cake product, but it's definitely earned its right to be called that at cold stone creamery.  For the hefty price tag of almost double a grocery store's prices you too can have a tasty birthday treat.

Sugar meet Dr. Seuss...   Welcome to the 21st century of cake decorating! Cakes of all shapes, sizes, and sculptures have become all but the biggest thing in the cake industry today.  We as cake decorators love to test our abilities and see what we can get away with.  Food Network had an awesome "Cake-Off" that was only about Dr. Seuss.  I'm sure some of you are nodding your head, thinking "Oh yea!  that show was awesome!"  In fact it was one of the best episodes i've ever seen. Most of the younger generation won't grow up on Dr.Seuss, and so our only option to keep his books alive are to reprint them, make movies, or make them into cakes.  For my sake we are going to turn his books into cake.  Use your imagination and bring this book to life with a little bit of sugar. Better... (Seattle Specialty Cakes) Totally awesome!  I praise the cake decorator that made this amazing feat! If you can dream a cake... we can make it happen! See you all

Ta. da!  So today was all about having just random fun at work.  I honestly didn't have the get up and go mentality to decorate today.  After all it is the day after "Cinco De Mayo"!  For those of you who aren't a white people minority in your state, Cinco De Mayo is the day that Mexico celebrated it's independance.  It's also a day that allows all of us to drink alcohol to our heart's content.  Here in Arizona we all take part, even if were not mexican.  Anyways, lets continue with the cake. Not really cake, but omg is that not the biggest brownie you've ever seen?  I had to ice 5 of these suckers today, my hands were hurting by the time I was done.  The brownies were soo awesome though!  If you live here in Arizona I would highly suggest you go buy a brownie single serve!!   And for the icing on the cake, so to speak...  We had a customer come in right around noon asking for a wedding cake to be made.  We let her see the book and talk prices a

I totally spaced my monday blog...  I'll make it quick and fun :) Cupcake porn? The almighty cupcake makes it's return to the blog scene.. I've been playing around with some new flavors of cupcakes, flavor combinations like Chocolate strawberry decadence (chocolate cupcake filled with strawberry filling topped off with a poured dark chocolate).  I also have the White cupcake filled with strawberry filling, a layer of thin sliced banana's all topped off with whip cream and coconut shavings.  I've had a really hard time finding a name for that last one, so if you can come up with something... by all means let me know  :D   Pictures soon to come!!!  It's strawberry season so lets experiment