Saturday, August 28, 2010

Football Field

We had high hopes for this cake. Unfortunately it was the last in line of a lot of pretty detailed cakes for the week. We had spent hours hand painting number for each yard-line but they turned out to be too big. We had planned some players and other details but just didn't have time! But for a simple cake it turned out pretty well, and we learned that not every cake has to have 3 days worth of detail work! And either way in a few days it will be eaten, and since we have an amazing baker we know it will be delicious!

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Nemo!

The Finding Nemo cake is finally done! It has already shot to the top of a few people's "favorite" lists!


Wednesday, August 25, 2010

How to order



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Jack

A co-worker saw our cakes and asked us to do our first wedding cake! The wedding is more than a year away but, still, we had to do something to show our appreciation. Since her birthday was coming up we made her this Nightmare Before Christmas birthday cake as a surprise!

Monday, August 23, 2010

Sugar High Makery

This is the wonderful baker who works tirelessly whipping up stuff, de-bubbling stuff, baking stuff and making pounds upon pounds of buttercream! We will miss her reliable services now that school has started again! But hopefully soon we will be making tons of money and this will be a real part time job!



This is the tireless decorator/order taker/website manager who works full-time and goes to school (soon, anyway)... She has not had a "day off" in months but has never been happier! And maybe crazier....

Good Luck!

This was a last minute cake for a going away party that I squeezed into a very busy week! It's very simple but still pretty cute!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Monkeys!

This cake was made for a baby shower. The monkey cupcakes were really fun to make because each one got their own personality!

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Batman and Spiderman Save the Day!

This is one of the first cakes where I actually had to fake some artistic ability! I am an excellent tracer but the details on these guys could not be traced. It took me a long time to put the paint brush (with edible "paint" of course!) to Spiderman because I was afraid I would ruin him and have to start over. So far everyone's favorite part is the Generic Villain Sporting a Turtleneck. He is just as freaked out as I would be if a man sized bat and spider were pouncing on me.

The Naked Villain

A combination Spiderman/Batman cake seemed as though it would need a generic villain. This guy seemed to fit the bill.
I'd be pretty freaked if I saw a naked eyeless version of myself, too.

And also if both Batman and Spiderman were after me. He ain't seen nothing yet... wait until a bunch of young party-goers get a hold of him.

Airplane-lacking Airplane Cake

The airplane cake (military airplanes and otherwise) met with a few obstacles. Finicky buttercream icing and a host of kamikaze fighter jets made for a tense night of caking! None of the frosting colors came out the way they were intended and the frosting stars were a joke. But after much contemplating and redoing the cake ended up being well-received by it's new owner!


Monday, August 16, 2010

I guess one out of three ain't bad.

My friend Kristy wanted a cake for her son's birthday. He was interested in 4-wheelers, dirt bikes and helicopters. Since she gave me short notice (and admittedly my sculpting skills are pretty limited) I had to purchase toys instead of making everything out of gum paste. There is no store in southwest Iowa that sells 4 wheeler, dirt bike or helicopter toys small enough to fit on a cake. What do boys play with these days? I made some fondant 2D helicopters and the settled for some "crotch rocket" motorcycles. Now if this cake was depicting real life I am pretty sure these riders would have crashed and burned by now.

Katie's Cake

No matter what holiday or season we are decorating for at work my friend Katie will implement glitter in some way and also make a paper chain. Yes, a paper chain, like strips of paper you staple together to make a chain for your Christmas tree. After I started making cakes we joked about her needing a paper chain/glitter cake. Unbeknownst to her  I made the cake, and it turned out to be one of my favorites!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Want a Cake?

WELL TOO BAD!! Well, at least if you want one in August. We currently have nearly 10 cakes in the works for August, and very few days off to complete them. We may be able to squeeze in one more for the weekend of the 21st and 22nd but you better claim it fast! September and October are already filling up so if you are thinking about getting a cake you better claim it now. Soon we will be done "practicing" and my need to actually start charging actual prices to make it worth swallowing up all of our days off! :)

Shay's Cake

This cake looked nothing like the cake the customer picked out from ideas online, but we thought it turned out way better! A true, trained cake decorator could see the issued with the fondanting but luckily I don't sell to true, trained cake decorators and so far this has been one of the most popular cakes!



After a few shots a wayward thumb caused a bit of a hole in the top layer, and thus, the tag and ribbon were born to hide it!


Which is actually my favorite part!

The Cakes that Almost Cost Me My Family

One thing I said I would never do is make a Nebraska Cornhuskers cake. In fact, one day before I started constructing it I said exactly that. There are very few people in the world that would warrant such a thing and one of them is my Uncle Rick. He passed away recently from a battle with cancer and he was a big Husker fan. This cake was made for his memorial service. And barring a check for hundreds of dollars, this will be the last of it's kind!



As if my brother already wasn't planning on disowning me for that atrocity above, I also had to make not one, but TWO Iowa cakes. Seeing as how he is a graduate of Iowa State University that didn't sit well, either, but hey, it's money.



But after all this blasphemy my Makery assistant and I decided we had to make an Oklahoma Sooners cake or we may not be able to live with ourselves.

Ahhhhhh... beautiful!!!

...The Saga Continues...

So that was a bummer. But luckily, even though I fret constantly about whether or not someone is going to like their cake (which I did for 13 hours with this one) I think disasters such as this are pretty funny and I simply laugh at myself. (I once wrecked my practically brand new car into a pole while backing out of a parking spot and thought it was pretty hilarious...) After spending a few hours with my cousins from out of town I got back to work and just as the sun came up it was done!



Everything but the very front panel with the name had to be completely redone. It still turned out pretty cute, except for the sad, lifeless daisy on top, and maybe slightly less gaudy in a good way! Luckily I still had a lot of leftover decorations so all that needed to be handmade was the flower petals!


And now Saturday the 7th is officially the Friday the 13th of the cake world.

The Lady Bug Cake Saga

A good friend of mine, and staunch supporter and word-of-mouth advertiser, wanted a ladybug cake for a baby shower. I had worked on the decorations for over a week to make sure they would be ready for the cake. When it came time to actually put the cake together there were some issues. Most of the attempts to frost the cake and apply fondant failed probably due to the humidity. Everything that could have gone wrong with the cake, did....

It had to be started over several times. But 13 hours later it looked decent, with a few pretty cute details if I do say so myself!


The flower looked pretty close to realistic and even though the frosting holding the two halves of the red section was obviously melting and starting to push it's way out, the flowers seemed to disguise that!

There were even some little cupcakes to go with it!


And some pretty cute little ladybugs!



The cake was picked up and I was given a very generous amount of money for my work! Then I get a text saying the cake had not made it through the short journey home!


Amy's Birthday Brownie

I only had an hour or so to make my sister a birthday cake. Now it may seem strange but our family does not really like cake that much. Odd that we would want to start a bakery! But, we are all suckers for brownies. So this cake is actually a giant brownie, decorated with the sheet music to Happy Birthday To You. And with a replica of my sister's music note tattoo on top.

Skateboard

This cake was surprisingly easy, except for trying to make true red fondant and true black frosting. The axles (pardon my skateboard terms... my knowledge of skateboards is zero) were made out of foil wrapped Popsicle sticks and dowels. The frosting no doubt stained everyone's mouths purple because it did the same to everything it touched while I was making it.

M&M "Cookie" cake

I searched endlessly for a picture of a cake that was made to look like a cookie but was actually cake... I don't think it exists. So this may be a first! The shape was easy but getting the texture to look like a cookie was not! My Makery assistant Jaelin thought we should put brown sugar over the cake. I thought it would definitely not work so I worked with icing colors to try to get the right color. Eventually the color was okay but it still looked like frosting. I reluctantly mixed in some brown sugar... then some more... and it turned out great! It was definitely a very sugary, sweet frosting but from the feedback it tasted just fine! I think I may keep my Makery assistant around! The M&Ms are gum paste and we even looked up the font used on real M&Ms in order to make it look even more realistic!

Max and Ruby


One of the first commissioned cakes, made even before Sugar High Makery was a thought! Ruby caused a few problems but no one seemed to notice. This was basically a direct rip-off of two cakes I found online. Luckily I don't think you can copyright cakes! This is still probably my favorite!

Using every avenue!

The Facebook fanpage option doesn't give you many avenues to go into detail about the cakes, and also does not alert us of new posts and comments, so we figured we would start a blog for anyone interested! We have a website in the making right now but this will do until then!