NYC and Gardens

It was a nice, busy cake week this week!!!!

First delivery this week was for a going away party for someone moving to New York City! The customer fully designed this cake and I simply followed her instructions. I did add the stars as an extra. This picture was taken at home the morning of the party:

....and this picture was taken on site after being set up:

Next up is a cake for one of my most faithful repeat customers! Her daughter is having her second birthday at a butterfly garden, so they wanted a cake to correspond with that theme. The mother gave me pretty much free rein on the design (once I know a theme, I LOVE doing that!!!) and this is what we came up with:

The design was created using a combination of handpainted background foliage....royal icing textured flowers, and then fondant flowers to give a depth to the garden. The butterflies, dragonflies, and bees are all edible except the wires. I found the dragonfly bodies to be extremely fragile! But it was so much fun making such a pretty, girly cake!

Last but not least....a themed cake that at first I was unsure as to how to execute. The customer requested two tiers, the bottom of which was to be a full garden behind a white picket fence...and the top was to be the theme of a wolf with green eyes (not howling, so the eyes could be open), a dead tree, and a full moon.

At first I was really stumped as to how to pull the colors and themes together of the bright garden theme and the darker, more mysterious wolf/moon/tree theme. Then I decided to make the entire cake a periwinkle blue, and then just fade up from the garden to a nighttime scene. I ended up very pleased with how it came out:

The tree is wire I twisted to form, and then "painted" in royal icing....the moon is gumpaste which I shaded and airbrushed silver, shaded some more, and sprinkled in edible sparkles. The wolf was made in several steps, by hand (not using a mold) out of gumpaste, fully edible except toothpicks in the legs for support...and then airbrushed/handpainted details.

Next week is a "catching up" week for me (no cakes) but then I'll be back at a full caking schedule the following week...so check back soon!

****As a special add-on...the recipient of the wolf cake has emailed me to let me know the story behind her cake! She is writing a book trilogy that has to do with a fantasy central character who has a magic garden and a picket fence, and another main fantasy character that is sometimes embodied as a wolf with green eyes. So it was really exciting to see the meanings behind the cake...and it was also exciting to see how well the cake fit the theme of the book without my knowing what they all were supposed to mean. Yay!!!! I'm so glad the author loved her cake.***