The Cake Blog

Here we have something actually complete. It is a five tiered cake made up of a sixteen inch devil's food, thirteen inch tiramisu, ten inch strawberry gran marnier, seven inch red velvet and topped off with a four inch princess cake. The design is buttercream with champagne bubbles and teal ribbon at the base and stargazer lillies.

This cake was made to feed 200 people at canvas garden.

--Ria

But not to the streets.

This was not the finished product, I believe there were flowers added later after we had set up. Starting from the largest to smallest we have a thirteen inch neapolitan, twelve inch red velvet, eleven inch orange almond, ten inch lemon poppyseed and a nine inch neapolitan. All are covered with buttercream and white ribbon.

For about 200 people at the San Jose Rotunda.

--Ria

And here we are again with your cakes and tasties. Hello, all!

Here we have an interesting little design. Not one I've seen much of, but I think it's neat and new. It is a three tiered cake consisting entirely of white cake with vanilla whipped cream and fresh raspberries. The design is buttercream with ivory fondant to create a pillowed effect on the tiers. On the bottom of each tier there's a ribbon overlay and fondant florets.

Made to serve 125 people at the Saratoga Country Club.

--RIa

Blossoms, cherry or otherwise, are apparently very popular this year. This cake is made up of a 6" hazlenut torte, a 9" tiramisu, 12" triple vanilla and 15" red velvet, combining to make four tiers of tasty. The design is a sage green ribbon with pink and blue sugar flowers crawling up the layers on fondant branches. In total, the cake was made to serve 300 people at the Opera House.

--Ria

I actually really like the design for this one, it feels very light and late spring/early summery. Very soft, I think.

Another three tiered cake, slightly bigger than the one previous, it is made up of a 6" tiramisu, 10" neapolitan and a 14" chocolate raspberry mousse torte. The design is fondant gren ribbon with a white fondant overlay painted in spring colors with a soft rose petal path. This cake was made to serve 100 people at Hayes Mansion.

--Ria

Hello again! It's Ria, here with your cakes ^_^

This one here I remember from earlier on in the summer. It is a three tier cake consisting of one 4" truffle a 7" lemon poppy seed and an 11" orange almond cake. The top and bottom designs are both lacework and the middle is decorated with swiss dots. All the designs are done in a silver gray. The flowers are lavender roses, purple lisianthus and ivory roses in the separation and the cascades.

Relatively small for a wedding cake, this served sixty people at the family residence.

--Ria

I'll finish off today's batch of posts with something a little more extravagant than the ones that have been showing up in the queue as of recent.

Normally, one would think all of these decorations would be a bit much, but this proves that they can work very well when paired correctly and given such nice colors. Let's go tier by tier, shall we?

The top tier is a 6" chocolate raspberry mousse tort covered in white chocolate curls.

The second is a 9" red velvet covered in white fondant with cafe sashes and a bow.

The third is a 12" carrot cake covered in mocha fondant with pearl swags and pearl ribbon.

The fourth is a 15" triple vanilla with ivory fondant and mocha design work.

And lastly is the 18" orange almond covered in mocha fondant with a quilt design accented with silver dragees.

Whew. All this tasty cake was made for 500 cake-loving folk at the Santa Clara Hyatt.

--Ria

I happen to be a big fan of the cherry blossom design, especially in this deep color of red. Bonus: I made the twigs for this cake! I tend to make a lot of twigs, apparently I am good at them. Who knew?

Anyway, this pretty little thing is a five tier made from squares of devil's food, red velvet, strawberry Gran Mariner, and more devil's food and red velvet. The entire thing is covered in buttercream and lined with gold ribbon. The cherry blossom branch decoration is partnered with cherry blossoms randomly placed around the cake and a double happiness cake topper.

Made for 250 people at the Sunol Valley country club.

--Ria (I just now realized that I didn't sign my last two posts, oops!)

The most original title, I know.

This is actually kind of a popular design, with any kind of flower, really. I've seen several of these go by in my time working here at the bakery. It is a four tier cake, consisting of a 6" carrot cake, 9" red velvet, 12" truffle and 15" orange almond. It was made to feed 170 people at Palmdale.

There is a flower within my heart
Daisy, Daisy
Planted one day by a glancing dart
Planted by Daisy Bell

Bet you didn't know that "Bicycle built for two" song had more lyrics than just that =p

Not a common design, but a very pretty one that I enjoy very much. It's very springy/summery and catches the eye just right. Plus, I like the fuchsia and green color combo.

This is a four tier cake, the top is a 5" devil's food, followed by an 8" orange almond, 11" triple vanilla and 14" devil's food. The design, as you can see, is a buttercream coating with green piped on stems and gumpaste gerbera daises painted fuchsia. On the third tier the stem design is used to create the monogram of the bride and groom.

Made to serve 120 people at the Guglielmo Winery.

Cakes. Not just for weddings and birthdays, y'know. (Of course you do!)

Here we have a 50th Anniversary cake. The two tiers are comprised of one 6" triple vanilla and one 10" carrot cake. The design is all buttercream save for the plaque that the number 50 has been piped on and painted gold. That there is made from fondant.

I'm assuming flowers went on this at some point in time, just not provided by us.

Here we have a very nice single swag design, because sometimes simplest is best, you don't always need something crazy going on to have a pretty cake. This three tiered cake has a 5" top made of red velvet, the middle is an 8" lemon cake and the bottom is an 11" devil's food cake. This was made to serve 60 people at Hayes Mansion.

--Ria

Hello again, good people of thecakeblog! Sorry for the short lapse in posting, but I'm back with your daily dose of pastries.

Here we have one of the rare cakes that has the same flavor for all three tiers. This one here is all triple vanilla with strawberries, covered in a vanilla buttercream and decorated in a single dot pattern with off-white ribbon and topped with ivory roses.

This cake served about 150 people at the Testarossa Vineyard in Los Gatos.

--Ria

You can check out a few more photos of that Companion Cube cake we made last week
Here

It includes a few more angles (3) and a shot of it "glowing" Although it really isnt that great, because well, it's dark. Photos just dont work proper in the dark.

~Joe

PS-thanks to amyhatesyou for the geekologie.com link

Hope everyone has a fantastic Halloween! Show me some costumes! =P

This one I remember! It was the first plaque I got to make when I started working here.

Top tier is a 6" Strawberry Gran Mariner, second is a 10" Tiramisu and lastly a 14" Truffle Torte. The cake is decorated in Classic Designs with pearl accents and an Edwardian "H" on the fondant plaque. For something a little extra special, the bottom tier is decorated with designs found on the bride's dress.

--Ria

Hey everyone. You know that Maria person Joe mentions every now and again on the blog here? Well, here I am. I'll be taking over for Joe for a while on the back log while he does what he does at the bakery here; we're still trying to get organized for the most part.

And what way to start off my taking over of the blog than with a cake that I didn't work on =p I wish I did, it's really nice.

The cake on top is a 6" triple vanilla, followed by a 10" truffle torte and a 14"x14" triple vanilla with strawberries. The cake was covered in a vanilla buttercream and green fondant ribbons with flowers at the junctures for a little zazz.

Delivered to Crown Plaza in San Jose for 100 people.

--Ria

I didnt come up with that, Maria did.

So what have I been up to lately? Well, I've been making cakes like crazy. Still in the upheaval of moving. We are operational, but not really streamlined yet. The office is still pretty hectic. That should change now that we actually have a "slow period" coming up soon. But it seems to me that every time we think the season is over, bam, cake in the eye. Or rather, bam, 15 wedding cakes for this weekend. And then we die.

Thank god for Maria though. Couldnt have gotten through this year without her. Hopefully she'll start posting stuff up on here soon enough as well, and we can get through the massive amounts of cake photos we have stored up.

Seriously, it's a veritable cornucopia of cake pictures.

But this is the latest cake we made. Maria and I spent about a days worth of time on this cake and we wanted to make sure it looked great. Not only because we have huge egos, and together we are incorrigible, but also because this was for our friend's Halloween Party. We did a little research on line as saw some other companion cube cakes and said we could do better. And so we set off on our task at hand.

First of all, the bottom tier is Chocolate Devil's Food cake and the top tier is Triple Vanilla.

The cube itself is about 8.5" in every dimension before all the bits and bobs were put on. And we made sure it was exactly the same measurement on each side. After buttercreaming it, we put 20 fondant squares (4 to each side) that were painted with moonstone lustre dust. The we put the orange tubing in (which really glowed! It made this cake that much more awesome, plus delivering it at night was fantastic, I kept giggling to myself every time I saw it in my car glowing)

After the tubing we put the pumpkin logos on and added the corner pieces which were made out of fondant as well, which were painted a combination of different colors. The angled bits took a little bit of thinking but we ended up just filling the space with buttercream and smoothing it out. It worked a lot better than I had anticipated, and really gave it a nice finished look to the cube.

Anyway, hope you all have a great and safe Halloween this Friday, I'll be making a cake and possibly teching for a show.

~Joe

PS-if you have no idea what this is, google the video game "Portal" or "companion cube"

Ah, the ever more popular small cake with cupcake display. It's easy, it's cute, it's delicious.

And honestly, who doesnt love cupcakes?

The cake on top is made up of a 5" and an 8" round. Both of which are Strawberry Grand Marnier and covered in pink gumpaste cherry blossoms.

Each cupcake also has a single pink gumpaste cherry blossom to tie the whole shebang together.

~Joe

Sorry for the delay in the cakes. This summer has been pure and utter madness. I had to attend a wedding last week. Gasp. And while fun, it took up a lot of my time. I'll post some photos from the event for those who havent been subjected lucky enough to see them already. Also, we will be moving buildings this week, which means, it's gonna be crazy, busy and disorganized. It also happens to be the weekend with the most wedding cakes of the year (so far) with a whopping 14. So if I dont die from the stress alone, I will hopefully have this whole "blog" thing back on track.

Ok, hope everyone is doing well, I'll update when I can, but again, this week = bad.

Man, I delivered this cake so long ago, I forgot anything fun or fantastic about the making/delivery of this cake. But that might be because there was nothing fantastic of amazing about it. I think it was during the month from hell where we were down several staff members and I was pulling 14-16 hour days. But things are better now, now Im pulling in the normal 10-12 hour days. So, you know, it's gravy.

All the tiers for this cake are hexagons and covered with light blue fondant with white gumpaste cherries sprinkled around the cake. A chocolate brown ribbon on the base of each tier finishes off the look.

Top tier = 6" Carrot
Middle tier = 10" Princess
Bottom tier = 14" Truffle

Delivered to the Ranch Golf and Country Club for 100 people.

~Joe

Top 6" = Red Velvet
Middle 9" = Red Velvet
Bottom 12" = Orange Almond

I dont really know what to say about this extra tall cake. I mean, it's extra tall. And delivered to the Palmdale Estates for about 50 people. Oh, and there are these purple phaelenopsis orchids all over it. And finally it has a fondant ribbon on the middle tier painted silver. Oh, right, and it's delicious. Duh, how could I forget that.

~Joe

Well, I've always thought that the logo for the Chicago Bears looked a bit like some sort of feline type animal. But maybe it's just the orange that makes me think Tiger before bear.

This is an 11" red velvet covered with blue buttercream. The logo itself is made out of fondant and hand drawn/colored by yours truly.

~Joe

This cake started out as a 10" Truffle torte, it ended up being one of the most recognizable computer related logos out there.

Covered in a light blue fondant and sprayed with a pearl glaze.

I however, am a PC man through and through, although I will admit I like the sexy and sleek designs of Apple's computers.

~Joe

So as you can see, this cake has a side cake of a penguin, which, depending on how you read this blog will either be the next post or the previous post.

But I'll mainly talk about the wedding cake in this post.

The double happiness on top of the cake is made out of chocolate ganache flavored fondant and is completely edible. It was kind of a pain to cut out, but I really like the effect.

The rest of the cake is made of of hexagons covered with buttercream and chocolate henna design.

Delivered to the Hayes Mansion for 113 or so guests.

Top tier = Red Velvet
Middle tier = Triple Vanilla
Bottom tier = Truffle Torte

~Joe

I'd make some comment on compiling kernels or something, but really, we have a web comic artist for those sort of shenanigans.

I was very tired while making this cake, I mean, I think it was about 3 in the morning when I started it. And being that tired, I screwed up the first time and had to re-carve it since it just did not look like a penguin the first go round. At that time in the morning and just aching to go home, something like that gets pretty discouraging. But hey, we all pulled through and made it work.

And hey, we made a penguin.

~Joe

Conversation that just happened:

Me - Is this from baby or little Einstein?
Sister - Little...is that supposed to make kids smarter?
Me - What, cake?

And that pretty much sums that up.

This cake did sit on top of a very wobbly cardboard cupcake stand.
I was surprised it didnt topple over. But apparently all went well and Im glad for that.

~Joe

And here are the sister strawberries from the ones posted a week or so ago. Damn that Comic Con getting in the way of tasty dessert pictures. But I digress. I did manage to get to taste one of these strawberries and I have to say, they were amazingly delicious. So good that we are adding them to our permanent roster.

~Joe

Well, that about wraps up the photos for this year's Comic Con, which was a blast.

Items of note:

• I spent the majority of my time on the exhibition floor and still I felt like I missed about half of the things there.
• I only made it to three panels, but those three panels rocked.
• I saw three free movies, all very entertaining in some way or another: Lost Boys 2 - the tribe, Tropic Thunder & Hamlet 2
• I finally, after three years of trying, made it into the Hasbro Toy Shop booth and bought what I wanted to buy.
• Had delicious Mexican food at Old Town Mexican Cafe, thank you Christina for the recommendation.

~Joe

~Joe

PS-go see Hamlet 2. It's stupidly funny.

~Kiyoshi