These little guys were for a little guys birthday party! A returning client of mine wanted a cake to go along with the figurines, but with a crazy work schedule that week we had to work out a compromise and went with a collection of toppers that she could add to any cake she wished!
THIS is my favorite part of what I do... the small, over detailed, meticulous aspect of cake decorating. I tried not to go too detailed since they're so cartoon-y (and F.A.T), but for the life of me I could never call these guys finished without indenting and filling in their insignificant little ears. I could do this all day long. This little project reminded me of a cake I did a while back for a returning client of mine, where everything on it was little intricately decorated pieces on top of a simple background. It was an 8" cake covered in blue fondant and a white ribbon. Nothing crazy. Then I got to the top, where I happily spent two long nights making a little record player, hand painted books, a television with the "24" logo painted on it etc, etc... Man oh man, is that the bees knees.
Traditional wedding cakes are fun and all, but at the end of the day I'd love nothing more than to make a little super mario guy to put on top.
A few cakes have gone down in the last couple months...
Lets see, first off was a cake for a 50th birthday party. It was Harley Davidson themed and I took the order from a friend at my catering company. I unfortunately don't have any good pictures of the cake as I was a complete moron and rushed out the door before I got the chance- all in all though it went over really well with the client. The cake was GIGANTIC. It wasn't that way because of the guest count, more for the look. Nicole (client) wanted it to make a dramatic appearance to her dad when he arrived at the party. It was about 2 ft wide and 1 foot tall. The cake was hand carved around a cactus plant, covered in bright orange fondant, and had a black 'paved' road along the top. Nicole had given me a collectible (aaaand pricey!) Harley model that she wanted to put on the road. I slapped some classic orange and black flames around the side and the cake was ready for a party!
Next cake was for a wedding at a beautiful outdoor reception. The brides' parents house was on at least an acre of land in the more remote area of Elgin. I have a friend who lives in that area as well.....and it's unbelievable; you start off driving through down town Elgin with all the shopping malls, houses back to back and people walking everywhere, and you instantly find yourself surrounded by wooded areas, gigantic old houses and acre upon acre of empty fields. I always double take, thinking I've driven past the Wisconsin border.
ANYHOO..the cake! Right..
After getting cold feet on a few of the other designs she picked out, the bride decided on an elegant and simple design for her wedding cake---a glossy white fondant covering, hand piped scrolling along the top of each tier, and scarlet ribbon borders. We went very simple with the cake and filling choices as well, where the cake was a vanilla brown sugar cake with a vanilla butter cream filling. Congratulations!
This cute little cake was for a 14th birthday party! My client specified that she loved hot pink and zebra stripes, sparkles and chocolate. We went with the ever so popular vanilla brown sugar cake, and a milk chocolate mousse filling.
Happy Birthday!
As you can plainly see, the new logo is (and has been for a while... -cough) up and running! I fall more in love with its simplicity every time I look at it. Its bubbly, which is right up my alley, and it's not over the top (also right up my alley, thank god I didn't design it myself?).
The winter season is coming up, and hours at the day job will be diminishing. This means a second job, and hopefully getting some new marketing plans up and running for BellaTiers for the new year!
SO it has been almost 5 years since I started BellaTiers... and I'm FINALLY getting a logo designed. I met this really nice lady-Kiley Peters-through my brother who is helping me create a whole brand for my business at an extremely discounted rate, as I rarely have extra money laying around. In exchange for her kindness I am just to make her cakes for the rest of her life! Sounds reasonable, no?
I'm very, very excited. I meet with her later this month to go over some potentials and hopefully BellaTiers will have a cute little logo that I can stamp on everything I possibly can!
This cake was a group project for me! My friend and co-worker Keith Davis is good friends with Amy Armstrong--a well known Chicago cabaret singer who I've seen twice now--she's absolutely incredible and hilarious, and was having a 40th birthday concert at the Mayne Stage. I was overjoyed to work on this cake for her in exchange for tickets to her show. There was an after party with around 75 people, so we also made three different flavors of mini cupcakes for the event, along with this cake. Amy had mentioned to us her favorite flavors and colors-which we incorporated wonderfully thanks to Keith's cake recipes. The cake was a very rich, chocolaty cake with 5 layers of caramel butter cream filling. Covered in my marshmallow fondant and ALL edible decorations. We went half-sies with the topper. I worked on the piano and Keith made Amy. :o]
All in all the show was amazing, Amy loved her cake, the guests loved (and devoured) the cupcakes, and it was a fun little cake to work on in good company.
This cake was for a friend of mines sister's wedding! Lisa and Mitch Springer were wed at a small, BEAUTIFUL banquet hall on the water in Batavia, IL.
This event was a very different one for me, because I was there the entire time. Lisa and Mitch invited me to the wedding and I got to bare witness everyone enjoying the cake-what a great feeling. WEIRD, but great.
Did I mention this wedding was beautiful?
The cake was to be very simple, and 'nature' themed, as the entire ceremony and reception was. The focus color was sage green, so we went with a very simple vine and sage green leaf design wrapping around the three tiers of the cake.
Ran in to a small issue with the board! Lisa and Mitch liked the idea of having an actual piece of wood underneath the cake. I have seen this quite a few times but underestimated the complexity of actually getting a piece of wood of the right size. After ordering what I thought would be a perfect round piece of a tree trunk online, I felt completely at ease and waited for it to come in the mail. a week before the wedding, and I get this tiny, OVAL piece of wood that looked nothing like what I ordered.
After hyperventilating and frantically calling every lumber yard in the Chicago area with no success, I emailed Lisa with some new ideas. Thankfully she was not upset with the mishap at all and we moved to the decision of marbling fondant to look like wood grain, and covering a simple cake drum with it. Phew!
We had discussed different types of butter creams, as the groom did not like the very American style cream that is very heavy and overly sweet. This being that traditional American butter cream is the simple butter whipped with powdered sugar and milk.
I assured them I would make a lighter butter cream-Italian-that is used widely in the industry because of it's stability and airy texture. It is made by whipping a meringue with sugar cooked to a very high temperature. After it's cooled quite a bit, it is then whipped with butter and flavorings.
The cake was three tiers of buttermilk marble cake, and a vanilla bean Italian butter cream filling. Everything was iced with the same butter cream and adorned with the light brown vines and sage green leaves.
I absolutely loved the porcelain topper. Lisa had seen it featured on another cake online and ordered it immediately.
Another fun cake, and a great wedding.
Congrats Lisa and Mitch!
Hello, all! I've been seriously neglecting this blog lately, no bueno!
To make up for it I'm posting a series of far too many posts all at once-yay!
So a while back, I worked on a cake/cupcake combination for an old friend of mines' wedding. Michelle and Brandon we're married at this beautiful little boat house, with everything covered in green and purple (their favorite colors). I had done a tasting a few months ago with many different flavored cupcakes and Michelle wanted them all!
We had researched some cupcake towers online and I had found a small company that sells through Ebay, where they supply many different styles and sizes for a very reasonable price. Michelle went and ordered two of them to hold the 130 cupcakes, and only spent around $30.00--which was pa-retty awesome if you ask me.
Cupcakes:
Red velvet cake with cream cheese icing, cake crumble garnish
Carrot cake filled with apricot preserves and topped with cream cheese icing, fried carrot garnish
Chocolate buttermilk cake with chocolate butter cream, chocolate curl garnish
Lemon poppy seed cake with blueberry butter cream, candied lemon zest garnish
Banana walnut cake with milk chocolate ganache, fried banana chip garnish
The cake was a two tier square buttermilk marble cake. The bottom tier had a milk chocolate ganache filling (Michelle's choice), and the top tier had a strawberry compote filling (Brandon's choice). The whole cake was iced in a vanilla bean butter cream and decorated with marshmallow fondant vines, green ribbon and small purple flowers.
Michelle also threw in a small grooms cake in to the equation. The story behind it is a simple one: after a long day at work, Brandon enjoys several hours of XBOX time. When the system is turned off for the night, Brandon always leaves his remote in the exact same place: the corner of their bed. Michelle thought it would be funny to recreate their bedspread, and place an XBOX remote on top. Their bedspread was a simple white background with tiny lines of different colors, and I made a completely edible remote out of rice krispie and marshmallow fondant to place on top. The cake was Brandon's favorite-red velvet with vanilla butter cream.
Allo! This week I made a small cake for my sisters' 30th birthday. We only had a small family get together.. but she wanted a Wicked cake.. as this musical has become a sort of tradition with her and I; I think we've seen it three times together.. :o] With the time allotted, I tried to get as many cute little things incorporated as possible. She LOVES pink, so the cake is hot pink velvet cake with 2 layers of raspberry jam, and a layer of Oreo butter cream. Sticking with the classic wicked colors, all decorations were hand cut out of fondant in green, purple, gold and silver. The wicked plaque topper was hand painted and I was really happy with how it turned out, I've never been much of a painter..! I had a lot of fun with this little cake, and I'd actually love to make a larger version someday, as this is my favorite musical!
This week I did a cake for a returning client of mine-Belinda Silber. She was having a big party for her 60th birthday, and wanted a 'tree of life' themed cake for the event. She wanted A LOT of information on this cake, and for good reason! It was really important to her to have something that was very personal. After skimming through the emails with details of each decade of her life, I picked out some highlights and decided to go with 5 plaques surrounding the bottom tier, each designed after a different decade. The one in the front represented the 70's for example... where she enjoyed the disco generation for a while, I put a disco floor background. She moved to chicago, and had her son Byron, so I put his name in baby blocks. The 60's were very important to her. She was heavily involved in the civil rights movement, loved Motown, and the British invasion, among many other things. She listed over a dozen AMAZING places that she's gotten the chance to visit. Instead of going crazy with all of them, I decided to just depict an African sunset theme on the top tier--as this was a highlight for her. The topper is the tree with the running vines down the cake, and her two cats--who are returning characters from a previous cake I made for her husband last year. A little arrow sign with 'happy birthday' slapped on and the cake is finito. :o]
It was hard not to make the cake really busy, so i tried to make every detail as simple as possible. I was nervous that this would be a flaw for my client, but I couldn't have asked for a better reaction. She balled for a good five minutes running around the cake and pointing out every little detail. She was so happy, and so naturally-I was ecstatic.
All in all, a really good week. Another fun cake, can't wait for the next one. Happy Birthday, Belinda!
This tasting had a LOT of components. The usual-we needed less than 10 pieces of each pastry, but with so many different options--there's a whole lot of work to get er done!
There we're some plated desserts too.. whoops! No pictures. :o[
On another note- I started doing bread order at work! Control your excitement, please! What a complete mind-trip. As simple as the daily process of ordering bread may seem, this is so... so very wrong. I am currently dealing with the frightening combination of dozens upon dozens of different types of bread, two different bread companies, needing to know item numbers and quantities they come in, what the bread looks like-and worst of all--knowing WHEN to bring the bread in. But I wont bore you further with the details.. THANKFULLY I have a wonderful teacher, my coworker Keith, who will most likely murder me in the back room sometime soon as I am asking so many questions--but, in the meant time-- thank youuu! Its simply something you need to just do over and over again till you get the hang out it, but until then--yikes!
My favorite thing about my job just happens to be the most nit-picky part: Individualizing desserts. Creating tons of bite-size portioned sweets, instead of family meal style is so much more fun and detailed. We have an ever-growing assortment of petite sweets; As with everything else, the menu for this little guys are seasonal for the most part, and we have a dozen ways to make each one.
These are just pictures of some recent tastings and parties with petites I see all the time...
For the curious:
*Macaroons (naturally... and Barbie PINK!), *Phyllo cups (Layers of phyllo dough molded into little cups, they are then filled with both a custard and a compote, then topped with baked kataiffi-or shredded phyllo dough), *Truffle pops (these happened to be filled with a chambord raspberry ganache), *Limoncello and raspberry shortcake with a white chocolate mascarpone mousse, *Pate a fruit pops (Fruit puree cooked a very long time to a very high temperature with a LOT of sugar until it becomes gummy and solidifies at room temperature. The best way to describe it.. would be sort of like a gummy candy or fruit roll-up... except so much better.), *Nutella roulade (Basically a very thin, flexible sponge cake that is rolled with a nutella butter cream filling, covered in candied hazelnuts, then portioned out into individual rolls and two plaquettes of chocolate are placed on each side), *Strawberry semifreddo pops (A strawberry flavored meringue based-mousse with added gelatin is piped in to tube molds, stuck with lolli sticks, frozen, and then dipped in white chocolate), *Baileys creme delice (Milk chocolate baileys mouse pave with a flourless cake base, is portioned in to small cylinder petites and garnished with a dark chocolate plaquette, creme brulee savarin, and a piece of candied orange peel), *Salted caramel turtles
My friend asked me to make a cake for her chefs birthday this week. She works at Franks N' Dawgs in Lincoln Park--side note: if you've never been there, go. They make the most delicious and unique dogs and sausages fresh in the smallest kitchen possible. Its unreal. GO.
Side tracked a bit.. I love love love German chocolate cake. Making it however is another story. The icing starts with boiling all your spices and sugars, butter and cream together, then tempering in your yolks to make a really simple stirred custard. A ridiculous amount of coconut and pecans (I add almonds too. :o]) is folded in, and-traditionally-it is then poured on to the cake while it's still warm. You might see a lot of German chocolate cakes with the cake layers visible, which i actually love... I, however, decided to make my life harder by icing the sides. Everything turned out alright! Only after icing, chilling, icing, chilling, repeat repeat repeat! I, to this day (obviously), do not know how you would make this process easier, as this icing is thick, but still slowly slides down the cake because it is SO heavy. I've heard some people add cornstarch to the icing, which would definitely make sense.. it would be more of a true pastry cream base.
Any hoo- After a few deep breaths and 8 cups of coffee to calm my nerves (doesn't quite make sense?), the cake went out the next morning in its lovely box with a bow and I heard nothing but good things. Happy days, and Happy Birthday to Joe from Franks N' Dawgs!
In May of this year, I will doing a cupcake/cake combination wedding for one of my old friends, Michelle.
After our tasting went really well last weekend, all the flavors are finalized, and now only the last minute details need to be covered--like the cupcake stands getting ordered. Michelle wanted 2 different cupcakes at the very beginning when we met up a couple months ago, but quickly changed her mind last weekend when i brought four. :D The more the merrier!
Final Flavors:
Cupcakes--- Banana cake with milk chocolate ganache icing and a fried banana chip Carrot cake filled with apricot jam with a cream cheese icing and fried carrot Buttermilk chocolate cake with chocolate italian buttercream and chocolate curls Lemon poppyseed cake with blueberry italian buttercream and lemon zest Red velvet cake with cream cheese icing (added after the tasting)
Cake--- It will be a two tier marble buttermilk cake. The bottom tier represents the bride with a milk chocolate ganache filling, and the top tier the groom, with a strawberry compote filling. The cake is to be rustically iced with italian buttercream and decorated with small purple and green flowers (the colors of the wedding, yay!).
This month is just starting to get busier at work, thank you thank you! We've had a lot of tastings, one that stood out for me earlier in the month was for Brook Field Zoo. They're having a dolphin themed gala in June, I believe, so some dolphin love was incorporated in to each plate. I'm still slacking on taking pictures of EVERYTHING, but I did get a couple shots of these little "James Bond" themed mini triple chocolate mouse paves I worked on a couple weeks ago. Each little guy has a little hand cut white chocolate plaquette, with a tuxedo designed piped by yours truly. My favorite part of this, or anything I make for that matter, is being able to create ever aspect of the dessert; it truly becomes your baby, so to speak. Same with the Dolphin tasting-me and Keith, along with our bosses draw-ups of the plate design and menus, got full reign to work the dishes ourselves.
The last picture is of a few of my bagged Macaroons (a meringue-based cookie). This particular tasting wanted 'peacock' colors, so, naturally-for those who know me well-I was ecstatic to be able to dye these guys obnoxiously bright colors! When one of my old co-workers, and macaroon master, Mary, left Food For Thought last September, the Macaroon talisman was handed down to me by the gods. A little dramatic? Very. In short, I just somehow began making most of the macaroons. I make them a few times a week as tasting giveaways, and sometimes for parties in mini version. My macaroon horror story--although very proud of it, was last year when we had a party for 14,000 of these suckers. It was a week of piping hell, spending 8 hours everyday mixing, piping, baking, and storing the same cookies over and over again. I had one day off where thankfully, my lovely and darling coworkers did a few batches for me, allowing my throbbing hands to rest for a night. It was rough, but I love being able to say I got through it, and with the help of the ENTIRE kitchen.. we got all the bags packed and sent with a few bumps along the way, but all that's history.
Hello, hello! Woo its been a long time! It's almost been a year since I started at Food For Thought Catering, which is unbelievable. Some days it feels like its only been a month, others...more like 30 years! I'm proud to say I still love, love my job. I work with brilliantly funny and interesting people, and I'm really starting to come in to my own in the industry. Cake land has definitely been pushed aside for quite a while, which is a complete bummer sometimes. I've turned down a lot of orders, but on the positive side I've really been able to work on refining other skills I can use later, and in time I'll be able to figure out an organized way of working both jobs.. I've just recently gotten a phone that takes BEAUTIFUL pictures, which is fantastic because until this I haven't really taken any good pictures at my job! I mostly work at the shop, prepping for events and preparing tastings for upcoming or possible events. These pictures were all from two recent tastings, one was for a huge all day gala for Steppenwolf. Every once in a while some of the people in the shop will get called to work out in the field at the actual events doing plate-up and working the line. My all time favorite so far was working a beignet station at the Field Museum. The gala was for the opening on the Gold Exhibit at the museum. Hundreds of people and dozens of beautifully decorated tables filled the main room of the museum. It was absolutely surreal to be there at night in the middle of it all, just casually serving the guests. I was right underneath Sue the entire time, and it was amazing. Most of the time, however, working the field is behind the scenes. Most of the orders that I've been taking outside of the day job have been relatively small; the only really detailed cake I've done was for a retirement/ birthday cake a few months ago for Belinda Silber at Le Cordon Bleu-Chicago, where I went to college. She got my information from one of my old chefs at school, and I made a small cake for her husbands 65th birthday/retirement brunch. She wanted to incorporate a bunch of his favorite things, like his two cats, a few of his published books, Grateful dead, and lest we forget-Doritos. I suppose I went pretty traditional with the vegging out on the couch retirement theme, and it was a hit! I had a lot of fun with this cake, spending wayyy too much time with the details, but no regrets! I was really happy with how it turned out and as always, I couldn't get enough of the peoples faces.
I'll keep posting more pictures from work, and hopefully some new cake orders in the near future!
