I'm Puzzled...

If you were wondering what I've been up to this week, well I was really busy with... wedding cakes and a few birthday cakes. (no surprise there)

I wanted to let you have a sneak peak at a rather special cake I'm working on for Friday

The bride and groom love solving puzzles, so their brother (everyone needs such a brother!) ordered an unusuall wedding cake for them, as a wedding gift.

The top tier will look like a starry night- puzzle box opened and the pieces spilling out.

so far I made the puzzle pieces and hand painted them.

The brides brother said that they actually have a starry night puzzle they are currently working on. (it's one of Van Gouch's paintings)

Starry night

The cakes are in the oven, and the edibale page with the starry night drawing is printed to the exact size to fit the cake.

To achieve the effect of the pieces falling out, the top layer will be set on pillars, and some pieces will be attached to one of the pillars, to the cake sides and the cake base.

I really wanted the puzzle pieces to look real, so I took a couple of real puzzle pieces and traced them on paper, I copied them 3D to create my own set of puzzle cutters and the result is great. They really look like puzzle pieces.

Puzzle cutters I custom made for this cake from a tin box of coco powder

Another thing I was worried about (but really happy about now), is the pieces color. 

I don't mean the front; i'm talking about the sides and back. I know the back will only be seen if someone looks at the cake from the back and that won't be possible since the cake will be set in front of a wall... But I had to take care of the sides, if I wanted it to look real.

I debated (with myself, I do that sometimes) whether I should color the gumpaste on the sides only, or the whole piece before I roll it out and cut it.

Eventually I realized coloring it before the roll and cut will be less time consuming and will give the best results.

So I did. But the color itself was a big question mark.

You know how puzzles have that cardboard special color to their back side? well I tried several food color mixes and ended up with a combination of Extra black, enough to have a midum gray bulk of gumpaste and then I added a dab of party green (I think leaf green should work as well)

and Voilla! I got that cardboard color.



Puzzle pieces made of colored gumpaste



Just to make sure, I placed a gumpaste puzzle piece next to the real puzzle piece. My eldest daughter asked if she could have a bite and pick up the real puzzle piece... 

The hand painted puzzle pieces. 

Luckily I saw what she was doing and stoped her in time!
Stay tuned for the next post. where you will see the finallized cake at the wedding hall!


Cake away!
Sharon

White and lilach dreams

In many weddings, I take photos of the garden, the tables, even the brides maids flower bouqet.
I've never posted them before, because I'm no expert photographer. (I've been planning on going to a photography course, forever! )

But at this wedding (sunday), the light was just right, the setting was beautiful, and even I with my poor photography skills got it right...

Some tables had these magnificent flower bouqets

The bridesmaids bouqets and wreaths await

Closeup on one bridesmaid bouqet

Of course it all started with a wedding cake, that is why you're hearing about it in the first place...

The bride, iris, is training to be a doctor. She was so busy, she sent her mom to choose the cake.
We really had to work out some way to compromise between what the bride wanted and what her mom wanted. It wasn't easy and took some negotiating skills... But we did find a cake design that worked for everyone.

The chosen wedding cake was white, elegent, classy, topped with a bouqet of white and lilach gumpaste Lisianthus flowers.

Lisianthus sugar flowers topping the wedding cake

The Lisianthus flowers have a special place in my heart, because they were used in the flower arrangments at my wedding!

They are great flowers, they are not too difficult to recreat, and they work well in a bouqet consisting only Lisianthus or several very different flowers.

I'm actually working on a tutorial on how to create them.

One other thing, if you haven't joined my mailing list yet, I urge you to so. I almost finished writing a series of CakeTips with a lot of real important information and knowledge for cake decorators.

I'm also working on a few surprises, one of them at least is a real revolution in cake decorating.
So stay tuned...

Cake away, until next time!
Sharon

Floral dreams

We created a new Wedding cake- I called it white floral dreams

This wedding cake was truly a challenge!

A really cute couple met with me a couple of months ago for a consulting, they wanted to choose the perfect wedding cake. The problem was they had no clue as to what they want…

Sometimes when a couple doesn’t know exactly what cake design they want I discuss with them things they already decided about such as the wedding theme or theme colors, the brides wedding gown or fabric, the invitation design, the location etc’  

Usually that helps finding a direction or at least a better idea of their preferences, thus enabling me to get closer to designing the perfect cake for them.

I have to say that once I saw their wedding invitation I had an exact image of their cake (luckily that happens some times).

It was a real lifesaver. Once I explained the idea they loved it. (Thank god!)

Looking at the flowers on their invitation, at first glance I thought they are Lotuses, after taking a longer look I realized they are actually Peonies that are one of my favorite flowers. I was really thrilled about this chance to create the flowers because up to this point I only practiced creating them but haven’t actually used them on any cake.

Another challenge was creating the 2d flowers on the cake sides. I had to create special one-time cutters to achieve perfect and identical cuts each and every time. So I created 3 detailed cutters: a flower, a leaf and a spiral shape. The flower was the one that had the most details and was the hardest to create.

At times you need to do something that seems time consuming at that moment but saves you a lot of time in the future. This was the reason for the cutters. If I would have attempted to create each piece by hand (cutting it with a knife individually) it would take me forever and I would never achieve the clean accurate look I was aiming for.

So with no further ado, this is their wedding cake!

 

Congratulations Mira and Noam!

Cake away!

Sharon

Do you want access to free cake decorating tutorials?

If you haven't had a chance to gain access to my free cake decorating tutorials, yet, go to Cakeopedia.com and let the fun begin! 

www.CakeOpedia.com

I have a great Caketip for you today:

when kneading your sugar paste/ rolled fondant, some will say use cornflour, some will say use confectioners sugar. I recommend combining that advice. 

mix your confectioners sugar with about 1/3 cornflour. 

The powdered sugar softens the paste and the cornflour dries and hardens it. mixing them will give you a better resault, than using just one. I know confectioners sugar contains 1/10 cornflour, but that still won't be enough.

so mix 2 cups of confectioners sugar with one cup of cornflour. keep in a closed box until you need it.

Enjoy my free tutorials,

Til' next time

Cake away

Sharon

Here we go!! Eilat

This weekend we took some time off and went on a beach vavction in the southest city in Israel, Eilat.

It's an amazing place, a touristic city of course, with great beaches, resturants, water sports and more. But the best thing by far is the red sea. (the name comes from the mountains surronding the sea, called the red mountains).
We share the sea with Jordan and Eygpt.

The sea is a real nature resereve, with so many amazing types of fish and corals, it is truly astonishing.

how cool is this garbage can!

look what I found in the equarium!

There is a place called the underwater observatory marine park, where you can see most if not all of the fish in pools and aquariums.

The biggist attraction is however the actuall underwater observatory- a building built in the sea, covered with coralsin the water. you can climb the stairs to the top and enjoy the view of the sea and mountains that surround you, or descent to the bottom, (using stairs as well), where you can walk in the round cell looking through glass windows and watching the fish and corals in their natural habitat.
Actually whenever we go there I kinda feel as if i'm in an aquerium and the fish are looking at me...

We also went to the Dolphin reef to see Dolphins as close as possible and take some time to build sand castels.

a thirsty dolphin

In the evening we went to a great show called WOW on ice, If you get  a chance to visit Eilat I highly recommend going to see it.

I loved how the costume designer combined fish into the costums of the skaters.
That was really inspiring and now I would really love to create a cake with some beautiful fish and corals.

So how's this- my husband has a birthday in about a week, I have three wedding cakes to prepare this week so I won't have much time, but will try to plan and design a special sea cake for him. He was actually born in Eilat and loves the sea and everything concerning the sea.
If I do find the time- you guys will be the first to know...(he does read my blog, but this week he will be sooo busy I hope he'll miss it...)

It was a wonderful vacation, a bit short, but that always leaves a taste for more.

Til' next time

Cake away
Sharon

Bursting bloom

I love sugar flowers, not any sugar flowers, but the ones that either simulate real flowers and are done perfectly to reflect real flowers. Or the ones that are sooo very different that they are obviously not real but merely a fantasy in their creators mind...

Loving these flowers obviously affects my cake designs, many of my clients come to me because of my ability to recreate real flowers into sugar flowers.

One of my favorites is obviously creating a wedding cake with a "bursting bloom", I call them bursting because they decorate the top tier of the wedding cake and usually look like the flowers are poping out of the cake.  They seem as if they are bursting..

With all my love to these cakes, they are not the majority we create, due to the amount of flowers. These cakes consist of hundreds and hundreds of flowers (which present hours and hours of work) Not many couples can afford these cakes, therefore when one of these cakes comes around I'm really happy to create it.

This cake was created for a cute couple Lauren and Fred, and there is actually a funny story about our meeting.

Lauren met me at her hotel, and Fred joined us a few minutes later saying he was sorry for the delay, he had to say hi to a friend from Italy who is also getting married just a week after their wedding.
He said that his friend told him she choose an amazing cake decorator and she suggested that they'd meet with her, as well.

Two minutes after he said that, his friend camew over to say hello to Lauren. To my surprise, it was Carol, a bride that chose and ordered her wedding cake just 3 weeks before my meeting with Lauren and Fred.... Such a small world!

You can imagine I had the easiest time presenting to the couple.
And to make things even better! they chose a bursting bloom cake. They had a photo of a cake they saw in a magazine and asked me to create something similar, which I did.
Later I learned that the cake in the photo was created by Ron Ben Israel!

Tada!

Another view of the wedding cake

Front view of the cake

Cake away guys

Sharon