Design Paul and Sarah wanted something simple, natural, flowing, relaxed and with the essence of Spring and the beginning of Summer.  They had given me several cake photos showing different elements that they liked.  After a short “interview” of going through the photos and getting to know them better, I was able to determine their sense of “design” that worked with their personalities as well as with the wedding theme.  Sarah was definitely the romantic type, so I worked with a flowing flower theme and their wedding colors of dusty pink, sage green and ivory to come up with this cake design.  To be honest, I never really had a clear picture of the finished cake in my mind like I usually do for my other cakes.  I didn’t even know what flowers I would use until the actual day of the wedding.  I just made a bunch of flowers, This cake simply just “came to be”.  It was definitely a lot more stressful because I didn’t have a final design, but it helped keep the cake more natural and free-form.

Cake I think I have a new favorite cake, and this is it.  It is a recipe slightly modified from the Dede Wilson lemon velvet buttermilk cake with a lemon simple syrup brushed onto each layer of cake.  This was a 4-layer cake with 3-layers of filling.  It is to die for alone or with the lemon curd!

Filling Creamy lemon curd and fresh strawberry Italian meringue buttercream fillings. They liked the idea of contrasting colors inside the cake, so I incorporated the wedding colors of green and pink inside the cake as well as outside the cake  The two outer layers were green tinted lemon buttercream and the middle layer was naturally pink strawberry buttercream which contrasted perfectly with the yellow-ivory colored cake layers.

Icing Lemon curd Italian meringue buttercream covered with vanilla fondant.

Decoration Gumpaste flowers tinted 3 shades of pink with sage green centers and sage green gumpaste leaves adorn the cake in a natural, flowing drape.

Thanks Many thanks to my friend, Poorti, who came over late one night to help make flowers. And, as always, many thanks to Blake for making the lemon curd, helping with the buttercream, assembling the flowers, delivery, etc, etc, etc.  He also took some amazing photos of this cake that would even make the official wedding photographer envious  Eventually he’ll get so good I’ll have to start paying him!

Design The design for this cake came straight from the advertising flier for this event which can be seen in the background behind the cake in some of the photos.  It shows a life preserver ring with the silhouette of a seal in the middle.  We simply made it three dimensional, not to mention edible, and put the cute little creature sitting in a life preserver ring floating on a little patch of ocean over a kelp forest as if he’d just been saved by the Marine Mammal Center.  He even has a little band-aid on his flipper….  To get enough “depth” for our ocean and kelp forest, we stacked three 10-inch round cake layers and then applied a thick layer of multi-colored blue-green “water”.

Cake We tried to come up with an “ocean” themed cake flavor, but the only thing that came to mind was the tropics.  So we decided on a delicious coconut cake.  I had fun trying out a few coconut cake recipes before I chose one made from coconut milk and shaved coconut.  The seal and life preserver are both made from pound cake which is denser and easier to carve without falling apart.

Filling To keep with the tropical theme, we incorporated a passion fruit Italian meringue buttercream made with passion fruit curd.  The tart passion fruit paired nicely with the coconut cake for a truly tropical flavor combination.

Frosting The frosting was coconut Italian meringue buttercream made with coconut milk and creme of coconut for a coconut “essence” that would not overwhelm the cake.

Decoration The seal was made using the teddy bear 3D pan and carved to about the right shape, lightly frosted and covered in black fondant.  The life preserver ring was similarly made using a bunt pan and carving off the ribs.  The team helped make the kit of parts including the chocolate shells and sea creatures as well as the gumpaste kelp and fondant band-aid.  The “sand” was simply made from graham cracker crumbs, straight out of the box.

Thanks The Steinberg Architects team came up with the overall design and helped make it all happen. The official team was comprised of my colleagues (from left to right), Priya, Lisa, Karie, myself and Shannon,.  There were several others from our office that popped in during our lunch time work sessions to help make all the chocolate shells and sea creatures. Lisa designed and created all the signage.  Karie  came over and stayed up late one night to help make the kelp.  Both Karie and Shannon came over early the day the cake was due to help finish it up as I was desperately behind schedule.  I gave Shannon (an interior designer) the fitting role of coloring buttercream.  And as you can see, everyone was there to help set the cake up at the event and apply all the decorations. Shannon massaged the seal with a bit of buttercream to give it a shiny, right out of the water look while I  stacked the cakes, applied the “water” frosting and piped the coral (coral color created by Shannon).  We all took up corners and applied the kelp.  Finally Lisa gave it some whiskers while the rest of us spread out the “sand” and artistically laid out the chocolate fish, shells and other sea creatures.  I have to say that it’s events like this that really bring your co-workers together on a more personable level.  We had a great time and I think we were all proud of the results (even though we didn’t win anything this year).  And for once, Blake had nothing to do with this cake since he was in LA.  Thanks to everyone who helped make this cake a success.  And now you are forever on my website too.

Design My father is an avid fisherman, so it was an easy choice to pick a fish as the theme for this cake.  The real question was which fish?  He most often fishes for trout and bass at Cachuma Lake.  But one of the fish he likes to fish for most is the beautiful California golden trout that is only found in high alpine lakes at altitudes greater than 10,000 feet.  Though they don’t put up much of a fight, the challenge with these fish is because they require so much effort to find.  They are also simply gorgeous in their coloring and I tried my best to recreate it on this cake.  I eyeballed the design using a photo of a golden trout that I printed off the internet. One difference is that my cake is a bit fat and squat because I used a football cake pan whereas a real golden trout is long and slender. But other than that, I think I did a pretty good job!

Cake The sheet cake below is actually a carrot cake from Costco.  Since the birthday party was in Santa Barbara and my sister and I had to organize everything for the party, I just didn’t have time to make the whole cake myself.  I figured the kids might want something other than carrot cake, so I made the fish from lemon cake.

Filling The Costco cake had apricot filling.  The fish had no filling.

Frosting The Costco cake had cream cheese frosting and the fish had vanilla decorator’s buttercream.

Design We asked Nisha what she wanted for her birthday and with a serious air, she said she wanted a catfish cake.  I looked at her in disbelief.  Do you mean a cartoon one with a fish body and cat head?  No, she wanted a real catfish for her cake.  Even after looking at a photo of a real catfish that we emailed to her, she still insisted on a real catfish cake.  In all honesty, I was having a hard time getting excited and motivated to make an ugly, mud-colored bottom feeder and found myself procrastinating over this cake.  Luckily, the procrastination bided me a little time.  Apparently one day, in the car, Nisha looked at her sippy cup and noticed a fish with a cat head and decided it looked cute after all.  Whew!  I just know she wouldn’t have been satisfied with a real, slimy catfish cake.  I think the only person who would appreciate that would be my fisherman father!

This cake was a joint effort between Blake and I.  Usually Blake’s title is cake support, but for this cake he decided to do the entire cake from start to finish so as to experience first hand the effort that goes into designing and making a cake.  However, Blake found himself overwhelmed with work and I had to step in to help, but he still did most of it.  So once we had final direction on the theme, we decided on a fun, cartoon-ish design.  The catfish has an Alice in Wonderland Cheshire Cat head with a Dr. Seuss like fish body.  The base has a psychedelic underwater seaweed look.

Cake The usual chocolate blackout cake for the round base cake and pound cake for the catfish because it is firmer and easier to carve.

Filling Blake dreamed up a wonderfully creamy strawberry Italian meringue buttercream.  Initially we were going to use raspberries to get a bright pink hue, but they were out of raspberries at the market so he pureed frozen strawberries instead and added it to the buttercream.  It had a wonderfully light strawberry flavor that blended surprisingly well with the buttercream.  We’ll definitely use this recipe again.

Icing This round base cake has vanilla fondant over vanilla buttercream and the catfish head has decorator’s buttercream icing as it is stiffer for making fur.

Decoration It’s pretty clear that two people worked on this cake.  Blake made the catfish cake at the same time that I made the base cake.  We laughed when we realized that the styles didn’t quite match when we went to put the two cakes together.  I suppose it only enhances the psychedelic effect, right?

For the base cake, I free formed the stylized seaweed using a quilting roller and then hand painted them using bright colored luster dusts mixed with lemon extract.  We used a bunt pan to make the initial s-shape of the catfish body which Blake then carved down to make the final shape.  The fins were cut free form from gumpaste, scored with a pastry scraper and then positioned to dry in a wiggly pattern. Nisha’s mom, Poorti, and Blake made the wire fish that were inserted into the cake at the last minute.

Thanks Well, I can’t really thank Blake since he was mostly responsible for this cake.  Maybe he should be thanking me this time???  However, we can thank Poorti for coming over to help make the wire fish and to keep us company late at night!