Masquerade Quinceanera Cake!

Hey all!
So this weekend I worked on a cake for a new client I went to high school with a couple years ago--she needed a cake for her sisters Quinceanera--which incidentally became a HUGE party. It was in a beautiful banquet hall with white tablecloths, ribbons and Masquerade decorations everywhere. I left before everything started but they were about to bring on a group of professional dancers to perform with the birthday girl.

SO! In other words this was a biggie!
The family wanted a fun cake to fit the theme and gave me a picture of a cake by PinkCakeBox.
With a few changes of course...

The bottom tier was Chocolate fudge cake with a fresh glazed strawberry filling, the middle tier was white cake with mint butter cream, and the top was red velvet with chocolate fudge.

The best part about this cake was that most of the work was in advance--a lot of things needed to be made and let to set up and dry days before I even started the cake--so the actual decorating part didnt take all too long.
The hassle--TOPSY TURVY. My god I love these cakes but man they are hard to get right!
I made the mistake of trying to shape them with too short a knife. Thank god they came out as I wanted them too and the cake was a hit.

This cake (with the right size slices) feeds up to 120 people. It was a fun cake to make and fun people to work with, another great weekend!

Until next time!
Kim

The Internship!

I've been interning at Alliance Bakery in Wicker Park for the past two months and its been great. I absolutely love going to work everyday. The people I get to hang around with are incredible and hard working and I have a great time standing for 12 hours. :D
I started out in the cake room for the first couple weeks and got to make a three tier cake for a client of theirs. I decorated an unfathomable amount of sugar cookies and worked with a few store cakes.

Since then I've been working in the kitchen and, to my surprise, I love it. I was afraid when I started that I would get bored or buckle underneath the pressure of all the production they do in the kitchen, but its exactly the opposite. There's never a dull moment, I'm always laughing about something and I've found an interest for things i didn't expect to. I get to work on everything from cake and cookie batters to doughs, icings, Ganache's, mousses and fillings.

I'm so glad that I've had the privilege to work in such a place, and its going to be really hard to walk out of there for the last time next month. I've met a lot of really funny and interesting people and seen a lot of beautiful work made and walked out the door.
I hope my next job is just as fulfilling.

Kim

Sugar Piece Final!

Hey everyone--
Sorry its been a while since i blogged... my internship has kept me really busy and I rarely find time to work on BellaTiers business unfortunately. :[

My last class (chocolate and sugar work) had a final of a sugar show piece. We had a basic design that everyone had to follow with the exception of the number of flowers, small design details and color choices. I made a ton of yellow sugar roses, which i absolutely love to do, and decided to make the base of the piece a deep green. I love how it turned out.

On a side note: the Packers need to hire me.



You literally had to choose a side with chocolate and sugar. I love working with both but I loved sugar so much more. I feel like you have to have a true passion for chocolate work to be great at it, no strings attached.

You literally burn off all the feeling in your hands when you work with sugar.. but the outcome makes it all worth while.

Chocolate and Sugar Course

Hey everyone!

Well! I officially stop taking kitchen classes in a little over a week. I cannot believe this is here already. I'm truly excited though--I start my externship on the 17th at Alliance Bakery which is a quick bus ride away from me in the city. Its a really great little place that works with a lot of French pastries and has a very large production for its size.

My last class that I'm in right now is Advanced Chocolate and Sugar. Its incredibly stressful-probably the most yet, which I definitely was not expecting. But its so much fun! I love what we get to work with. The pictures I posted are some of the things we've worked with so far. We made a small hollow chocolate egg show piece for our first practical.. and then decorative box made entirely out of chocolate. We worked with some new methods that are for the most part not even being taught yet- like the marbled chocolate base for the egg showpiece.

Chocolate is so hard to work with, especially in our hot hot kitchens, but we got them together in the end.

Most of this week we are working with truffles, bon bons and caramel candies, and then we start sugar through all next week, where our last practical will be a huge sugar show piece. Whoo!

I unfortunately will be cutting off all orders for BellaTiers through November 7th. The externship is going to take up too much of my time and my schedule is pretty much set by the week... :/

Thanks all... Much love,
Kim

Ladybug Baby Cake!

Hey everyone!

Last weekend I had a really cute order from a former photography teacher of mine from high school. Her little girl was turning one and the theme for the party was ladybugs. She wanted a big pink flower adorned with little ladybug and a little cake for the baby to tear up.

I love making individual cakes. I think they might be my favorite order to get.. and i was so excited to make a little ladybug.

The tricky thing to these cakes was the shaping. Its truly a scary thing to shape the actual cake because if you mess up its a crazy mess to put it back together, or do it all over again. The ladybug started out as a simple two-layer 4" circle mini cake that I rounded. The flower cake for the guests was a flat flower to begin with and i wanted to give it some shape. With a shaky hand I cut out each of the petals. I think that's the best lesson I've learned from my business-Go with your intuition and take chances, you can fix anything if you need to and it will most likely come out fantastic, and most importantly you never know what you can do until you try.

So after they were shaped I filled them with a vanilla pastry cream, masked the cakes with a vanilla butter cream and covered them in fondant. I started making all the little ladybugs and finishing the detail work with the flower an baby cake. Twas a long night!

Everything came out great and the customer was happy, job well done!

Much love,
Kim

More on the menu for BellaTiers!

Hey all!

So this summer I'm going to start offering a few new products along with custom cakes!
First off there will be cupcakes on the menu soon with a bunch of cool delicious flavor combinations!
I am also working on a new sweet table menu; Where I will be offering a wide range of small desserts like tartlets and petit fours!

I am so excited to get all of this moving and hopefully a new site design will be up within the next few months!

Much love,
Kim

This weekend was absolutely hectic! Even with all the pre-planning I did there was still so much to get done.
The humidity was driving me off the wall, and I blasted the air conditioning all friday and saturday!
BUT all turned out well, I'm very happy with the cakes and my clients seemed pretty excited. :]


I've got quite a few cakes booked in June---back to the drawing board!

Much love to you all--
Kim

Double Booking

This weekend I have 2 orders for the same due date. Theres so much more planning involved then single booking and theres so much stress to get everything done.
Its funny though because I absolutely love doing it. When I'm working on a cake thats all I'm doing until its done, its almost physically impossible for me to leave the kitchen. So I figure having more work is just better! One of the cakes is a two tier Minnie Mouse cake for a 2 year olds birthday party, and the other is a really classicly-designed 'open book' christening cake.

I have to do a lot of prep before hand; things I would normally have time to do while I'm actually working on the cake.
I have to bake all of the cakes a week before hand and freeze them, leaving me hours and hours of time that can now be geared towards the detail work.

For the minnie cake I just have to make the topper a few days before hand so it can dry (absolutely adorable Minnie mouse ears with a huge pink and white polka dot bow).

The christening cake is a little bit more work. I have to make about a dozen small blocks to embellish the cake, as well as a little blue bear. Then I have to make this beautiful church window plague that will accent part of the cake and let that dry.

Then this weekend all i have to do is put everything together and add detail work and the cakes will be finito!

I cant wait for this weekend and I hope the cakes come out perfect. :]

Much love,
Kim

Final Wedding Cake at CHIC

So last week I finished my advanced cake class at CHIC... it was unbelievable how short that class felt. We learned a lot in a short amount of time, especially gum paste flowers. I hate to say it but that's what I came to school for. FLOWERS. I had worked so hard to educate myself on things I had seen on TV and websites, or just pictures people wanted for their cakes. But flowers? Oh my god, they are a stressful thing! They only had to teach us the basics and you essentially have to just go out and stare at flowers and teach yourself how to make them.
It's incredible how little you can be taught and it immediately changes your views on things.

Anyway, I made some lilies.. and accidentally made them with five petals instead of six (whoops!) but lost no points, thank god. I made an obnoxious amount of Cali lilies, even though I don't like them very much... and didn't end up using them, and a lot of fuchsias.

We had to have at least 20% of the cake covered in Cornelli Lace (the squiggly-line looking portion of the cake), that incidentally became a lot harder than it looks, but is such a classic design for cakes and I am so excited to know simple it really is once you get the hang of it.

We then had to make 120 lace points-which are really-and i mean really- small designs piped out with royal icing and left to dry. I ended up doing small butterfly wings and placed them around the top of the bottom tier.

We made the cake topper in advance, and it had to be "flaming hearts" themed. We definitely had a lot of wiggle room with this one, and basically just told us to use a few elements and not just flat hearts cut out with a stencil.

All of our cakes are displayed in the massive, beautiful display case in our building for all to see and it is such a great feeling to be at this point in school. I remember the first day of class; I was scared out of my freaking mind, and i was staring at that case in awe at the cakes that were displayed, and it's so wierd to be in that place, seeing the new kids staring up at that same case just as I had.

I only have one kitchen class left... and I cant help but get a little teary-eyed when I think about it. I've met a lot of cool people here and I dont want to see any of them go.

In the end, the cake was success and next up: Sugar and Chocolate sculpting!

Welcome to the BellaTiers cake blog!!!

Hey everyone!
Getting the website up to speed has been crazy but everything should be up and updated soon! I've got a lot of new cakes coming up so new pictures are coming, we just finished the new cake order form and have a bunch of new flavors.
The whole website is going to be going through a lot of changes within the next few months and I'm really excited.

As always- thank you for your business and comments,
Much love to you all!
-Kim