Dysfunctional Garnish

Cherry blossom class with the NYC Cake Decorators Group

I had the pleasure of spending Sunday afternoon making cherry blossom branches with several members of the NYC Cake Decorators Meetup Group. I don't know who had more fun, me or the students!

 

Here's Dina, Aldana, and Lynn working on their cherry blossoms:

 

Here's one of Alaa and her mother, who was visiting from Cairo, Egypt!

 

They were kind enough to write a note for me in arabic to send to my brother living in Lebanon! It says My dearest brother, I miss you very much! Love, Ruth...It looks so beautiful, and it was very cool to see my name written in arabic.

 

Nana and Nathalie working on their cherry blossoms:

 

Everyone did a wonderful job and I was very proud of all my students!

A triceratops for Che

I'll be the first to tell you that carved cakes are not my thing. There are some people who are truly gifted at making them, but I'm not one of them. I don't fool myself about that.

Even so, when my friend Jeannette called me last week and asked if I could make a triceratops cake for her son's 5th birthday, a carved cake seemed in order. Last year he wanted a transformer cake, which was tough for me, since I didn't really know what they looked like, so this was an improvement.

The dilemma then became about how elaborate and detailed to make it. If I were making a grooms' cake, I would want it to look as realistic as possible, but since this was for a five-year old, I thought making it seem a little more cartoon-like might be better.

I decided to make the horns out of french meringue because they needed to be light, since they would be hanging over the side of the cake. So here's what I came up with...it kind of looks like a koala with horns and a big butt to me, but Jeannette loved it, and I'm sure Che did too!

Picking black raspberries at Alstede Farms!

 

I got an e-mail alert on Friday morning that the black raspberries were ripe for picking at Alstede Farms, so I hoped right in the car and headed over there!

I had never gone berry picking at this particular farm before. I used to go to Bear Creek Farms up in Sussex County, NJ because they had the most wonderful variety of organically grown red, purple, black, and golden raspberries available for pick-your-own, but sadly, they have had to close their operation to the public until 2010 while they renovate their fields, or whatever you call it with farming.

I had to find another place where I might find those black and golden raspberries, so I went online to Pickyourown.org, a site with listings for farmers markets and pick-your-own farms all over the United States. In addition to the listings, there is also information on canning and preserving, recipes for those goodies you bring home, and all kinds of other related information. It's a great resource, and I highly recommend it!

Back to the raspberry picking...So I found Alstede Farms on the pick-your-own site. I checked it out in the Spring when the strawberries were in season, but I must say that I'm not as crazy about strawberries as I am for raspberries, (at least not enough to spend two or three hours hunched over picking them!) so I just bought a quart of them at the store.  

The farm is located in a beautiful, semi-rural area of New Jersey, with most of the homes set back pretty far from the road, so you know it's an upscale area. I passed in and out of Somerset county to get there, which is where I was born and raised, and while my home town was not exactly poor, it was a far cry from the horse farms I passed to get to the farmers market!

When you arrive at Alstede Farms, you see that they are definitely working all the angles. In addition to the farmers market and the pick-your-own facilities, they have a petting zoo, an ice cream stand, a food truck that's open on the weekends, a daycamp of some sort, and some other attractions for kids. It felt like I was headed into an amusement park! If I had kids, it would probably be a great place to bring them.

I started out in the store, where I got a map and bought some quart containers, and then headed out to the black rasperries. They had other things ready to pick as well - red rasperries, currants, gooseberries, and blueberries, but all I cared about were the black raspberries.

 

Black rasperries have a slightly different flavor than the red ones, which I can't really describe, but I personally like them much better than the red ones. We also had them in my yard when I was a child, so it's also a nostalgic thing for me.

You never ever see black rasperries in the stores anywhere, (which leads me to believe that they are probably too delicate to transport and don't hold up well) so I spent two hours out there in the full sun and picked two full quarts.

 

I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do with them. I froze about half of them, ate some, and now I'm trying to decide if I want to make something with the rest, or just eat them too. I probably won't be able to resist polishing them off!

My sugar flower clients are so talented!

I haven't had a chance to create a website to sell my sugar flowers online yet (there are only so many hours in the day!), but I get inquiries every so often from people who have seen me on television or have seen my work in magazines asking me if I sell my flowers. I had two such orders for last month.

Betsey was a referral from a previous flower client. She was making her daughter's wedding cake - a design her daughter had found in a magazine, and was wondering if I could make the flowers for her. She had looked elsewhere for the sugar flowers, but the ones that are commercially available were so poorly made, she didn't want to use them. I couldn't blame her!

She just sent me a photo of the finished wedding cake, and believe me when I tell you, it looks just like the original cake. Beautiful work Betsey!

The other order I did was for Veda. I posted the finished flowers here a couple of weeks ago. She had ordered peonies for one cake and tulips for a family member's wedding cake. I just received a photo of the cake top... It looks so beautiful, it could be a photo out of the pages of a bridal magazine!

 

It just goes to show that home bakers can do just as good a job as many professionals! Congratulations and keep up the good work ladies!

July 4th Cake at The Boathouse

I disappeared again, and for that I apologize! I went off on vacation a couple of weeks ago, and then there was a lot of stuff to catch up on, so I had to forget about my blog for a little while. I honestly hate getting on the computer because it gives me flashbacks to my old jobs, so I avoid it whenever I can.

In any case, I have a bunch of cool jobs coming up that I'll be sharing with everyone so look for pics here in the next few weeks. I'm also developing a newsletter, my Fall sugar-flower class schedule, and for all those bakers out there who dream about owning their own custom cake business but don't know where to start, I'm also working on a seminar and DVD with everything you need to know. Learn from my mistakes and save yourself a world of grief and lots of money!

My latest cake was for a lovely couple who got married in The Central Park Boathouse this past Saturday. I first met with Diane and Paul early last Fall. They had seen and experienced my work before because they had attended the wedding of another of my clients and loved my cake, but I still had to win them over!  Word of mouth will get people in the door, but it's never a gimme.

The bride was planning on using white callas and bright blue hydrangeas, so we designed an elegant cake using those two flowers, and threw in some silver pearl dragees for a little extra sparkle. (I prefer to take white pearls and shake them up with moonstone luster dust to get a soft silver, rather than using silver dragees!)

Here's a photo of the finished flowers:

 

And the finished cake, sitting on its table in the Boathouse:

 

Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the Boathouse decorated for this wedding because I got there before the florist, but I'm sure it was stunning. It truly is one of the most beautiful venues in the city!

Making Sugar Flowers for Veda

One of the many, many things that has kept me busy these past few weeks is in order for sugar flowers. This order started out as four dozen sugar tulips and turned into one dozen tulips and one dozen peonies...fortunately I had not made the tulips yet when the directions were changed!

Here are the flowers before I dusted them...

 

And after...

 

Right now I just do orders like this on an occasional basis when asked or when referred by my old boss, like this order, but am in the planning stages of a website to sell them. If you're interested in sugar flowers before the site is up, don't hesitate to get in touch! I love making sugar flowers and am happy to help other people in their creative process!

Baking Bundt Cake at Macy's Herald Square

 

When Macy's asked me if I would be willing to do a demo for them in their kitchen in the Cellar area of their flagship store at Herald Square, I didn't hesitate to accept. The only thing that gave me pause was that they gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted. That was kind of scary. What would I do?

As a wedding cake baker and designer, I never have that kind of freedom. Brides have specific things they want, and magazine editors are even pickier, so it took me at least a month to figure it out.

My flower work is too complicated, labor-intensive, and tedious for normal people to do (or want to do!), and I didn't want to discourage anyone, so I decided that it had to be a baking demo. That's when I remembered all my Bundt pans.

I probably have 30 or 40 different Bundt pans because I've been baking all the cakes for Nordic Ware for the Fancy Food Show at the Jacob Javits Center for the last couple of years, so I make a pretty mean Bundt cake at this point. I only use the pans once or twice a year when Nordic Ware comes calling, so I thought it might be time to put one of them to good use.

Plus, I think most people have at least one Bundt pan. It's probably stuck in the basement or the back of a cabinet somewhere, but most people do have one they received as a Christmas or wedding gift.

I demonstrated how to make a lemon Bundt cake from scratch (any good pound cake recipe will do) and shared some tips about working with Bundt pans - the most important of which is to make sure you grease the hell out of your pan! If you don't put enough on, it will look terrible when it's unmolded. Use a cooking spray with flour in it that is specifically for baking.

 

My friend Frances was there to take some lovely, unflattering photos of me while I did my thing.

 

 

My favorite part of any demo is always the end - knowing it's almost over and getting to answer questions and chat with people. Two people even asked me for my autograph, which is always a trip for me every single time it happens! Probably because it doesn't happen too often.

Gotham Magazine Bridal Event at the Harvard Club of NY

I should start out by saying that I don't do many bridal events because they are expensive to do and because it's been my experience that they don't result in clients. I'm not really sure why that is, but I know other wedding cake bakers have had the same experience. I once asked my previous boss, Gail Watson, why she didn't do bridal events and that was the exact reason she gave. I didn't really believe her at the time, but I had to go and learn the hard way, wasting a lot of money and time.

It doesn't matter how good your cake is, or how beautiful the display. If a bridal show results in even one booking, consider yourself lucky. I do!

Having said all that, there are still reasons to participate in them, especially if you are just getting started. Doing a bridal event gets your name out there to brides and perhaps even more important, to other bridal vendors. Use every bridal event as an opportunity to network with the other vendors. I've gotten more referrals and bookings from vendors I've met at these events, than I have from the countless brides I've met.

You do have to choose wisely though. I'm contacted pretty frequently by people and companies doing bridal shows but most of them would be a waste of my time. You need to figure out if the show is going to put you in contact with your ideal client base.

When I was asked by Gotham magazine to participate in their small, exclusive bridal event at the Harvard Club of New York, I knew it would be one of those good opportunities and jumped at the chance.

The Harvard Club looks like a pretty modern space from the front, but once you're inside, it's just what you would expect. It's beautiful but kind of stuffy and reminded me of one of those men-only clubs you see in the movies. Lots of dark wood and paintings of old white men.

Right now, I'm working alone, so I knew I would need help with the event. I've done these things by myself before and learned the hard way how difficult it is to cut and serve cake and chat with prospective clients. I don't make that mistake anymore.

 

My able helpers in this event were Marisol Cuevas and Medina Gandy from the NY Cake Decorators Meetup Group. Dina is the organizer of the group. She and I know each other well, since I've taught classes and done other events for her and her members. I've enlisted their help before with other events, and when I asked this time, she said she wanted in! I was very happy to have her and Marisol with me.

 

Our table was rather small for this event, but it accommodated my display cakes and portfolio well. The only difficulty had to do with serving cake, but someone from the Harvard Club was able to bring me a tray stand. Dina served the cake and Marisol handed out the samples to everyone. You can see below that this is not exactly a fun job!

Although I don't think I got a single client from the event, I still count it as a success, since I met some great vendors and made some good connections. I just hope it wasn't too painful for Marisol and Dina!

I stink as a blogger...

I really do stink as a blogger. This past month has been full of very interesting projects and events that have kept me really busy, but I kept forgetting to blog about them!

Well, for the one or two people who read my blog, I'm going to see if I can remedy that by adding a few posts today. Enjoy!

The Beauty and Trauma of Tabletop Cakes for the 21 Club

I disappeared completely from the web last week to work on a very big project. I had a client getting married at the 21 Club this past Saturday who had ordered 9 two-tier tabletop cakes to be used as the table centerpieces. It was an exhausting job, but the cakes turned out really beautiful!

I started the flowers the week before - they were to be small bouquets of cymbidium orchids, calla lilies, and roses, all white, of course. Always with the white on white cakes! The callas and the roses were no problem at all, but the cymbidium orchids posed a bit of a challenge, since I lost the really amazing orchid presses for the center and throat of the flower in the divorce, and the company that made them is no longer in business. Nothing out there compares to those stupid molds. Believe me, because I looked everywhere!

The only thing left to do was to create my own, so I ordered some silicone plastique from Culinart, Inc. and picked up a big 'ol cymbidium orchid plant from Costco (only $20 bucks!) while I was there. I've made molds before for things like seashells, but never for anything like this that had two pieces that were fitted together. My first try yielded a center that was kind of crooked, so I tried again, and while not as perfect as the old one, it was good enough!

The rain was kind of a problem for my flowers, since they are affected by the moisture in the air, but since I started them early enough, I was hopeful that everything would be dry by wedding day!

Here's a shot of some of the finished flowers -

The baking and assembly was a pretty massive job for me to do by myself, and I'll admit that I was kind of intimidated by the whole thing. I was a little worried that I wouldn't get done in time, but I just kept telling myself that I could do it. I spent all of Thursday baking, all of Friday filling, crumbcoating, frosting, and rolling fondant, and all of Saturday until it was time to leave for the delivery making sugar lace, piping the final design and attaching sugar pearls, and finishing the flowers. The time flew by!

I was running a little behind and left about a half hour later than planned, but since my kitchen is about 10 minutes away from the Holland Tunnel, and since I had built in a cushion of about 2 hours, I didn't think it would be a problem. Boy was I wrong! Some massive traffic problems on the NJ Turnpike cause delays everywhere and the 30 minute delay outside the tunnel reported by all the traffic reports turned out to be an hour and a half! As I watched the clock get closer and closer to the time of the reception, all I could do was pray that there was no traffic in the city.

It was a miracle, but my luck held out! I made it to the restaurant at 5:50, 10 minutes before the start of the reception. Though people had started to arrive, most of the guests and the wedding party were not there yet. The catering manager and I got those cakes onto the table as quickly as we could, and I even managed to take a few photos before running off to my husband waiting in the car to drive me home to collapse.