Happy Birthday Sarah !

Happy Birthday to my dearest little girl who is turning 8 today! We love teal, turquoise and all shades of blue this year, and peacock is the favorite bird

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baby in a Gazebo Cake !

Last Sunday was a dear friend's baby shower and I had the onus of making her shower cake. Yeah!

My friend's having a little girl and whenever there is a baby girl involved, I find it very difficult not to deck the cake with flowers.

But I wanted a change and so this time I decided to do something I haven't done before - a gazebo made using Royal Icing.

A little Gazebo that is just the right size for a little sleeping princess.

The piping of the gazebo panels itself was quite simple. The challenging part was to stop worrying about it collapsing even before assembling it. The assembly process was a little clumsy, but it would have helped if I had finished reading the instructions. The side panels were a breeze, the roof was the challenge. But all's well that ends well.

Hope you liked the cake. Let us know what you think!

Happy Father's Day!

Wishing all the Fathers out there a very Happy Father's Day. Hope your families made today very special and continue to do so every day!

A wedding cake !

I got up early this Monday morning and paused to reflect on the weekend passed, over a cup of coffee. Then I kept on smiling for an unusually long time which made the other two people in my house to wonder if everything was alright. Everything was, and I couldn’t be more grateful!
 

The weekend was beautiful, clear blue skies, plenty sunshine around and great company through out. We were at a friend’s wedding where I got to look at the first wedding cake I ever made. Standing among friends and watching the sweet couple cutting the cake at the reception is a memory that will go to the scrapbook of my life that I am keeping in my head. I am so thankful to the bride and groom for allowing me to be a part of their most carefully and lovingly planned wedding. 

 

 

Everything felt new and immensely interesting, right from designing the cake, arranging a cake tasting, crafting sugar flowers in advance, making sure everything stayed put through the drive to the venue and to be a wedding guest with responsibilities. Just to say that I enjoyed it all will be an understatement. Right now everything is a happy blur, I am more thrilled than I ought to be, please bear with me :)

 

Wedding flowers were Calla lilies and ranunculus , the gum paste sugar flower cake topper reflects the floral theme . I will share more pictures when the event photographs are available.

 

First Communion Cake

May is typically wedding and First Communion season and I got to attend one of each last month. Last weekend was my Nephew's First Communion. For those of you who don't know what First Communion is, it is the Sacrament during which a Catholic child receives the Eucharist - the Body & Blood of Jesus Christ - also represented by Bread and Wine - for the first time. In other words, it is a big deal!

As is tradition, I made the cake for the reception that my Sister had planned at a swanky golf course. Being a cake for a boy, I couldn't really throw frills and flowers on this cake and call it good. The most work I had to do was in the inception of the design. I decided to make a figurine of him kneeling in submission, in reverent prayer to the Lord - a pose you'll be hard pressed to see my Nephew make in real life :D. After I finished the cake, he was so impressed by the figurine, he knelt down with his hands folded before him. But I'm pretty sure he wasn't praying, more like waiting to bite the figurine's head off. His words, not mine. Boys will be boys!

To represent the bread and wine, the plan was to make bunches of grapes on the vine with some wheat stalks, surrounded by a few doves to represent the holy spirit. But around 1:00 am the wheat stalks went out the window because I really wanted to go to bed. When I look at the finished cake, I'm glad I did chuck the wheat stalks, or it would have looked really crowded on the cake.

And if anyone thinks the fondant looks great, it tastes great too. I used the recipe from Liz Marek of Artisan Cake Company. Her work is amazing and both Archana and I are big fans.

We would love to hear from you, so let us know what you think in the comments. See ya!

springtime cupcakes

A bunch of fondant cherry blossoms on cupcakes, have a nice long weekend everyone!

A Cake of a Different Kind !

Let's first talk about a career  of a different kind.  A career in which you are on call all the time. Like it or not, you are doing the night shift. You are the chauffeur, the chef, the house keeper, the doctor, and dry cleaner. You are a Mother. You might have heard a version of this on same Facebook or Pinterest meme, but it is true. Actually, I might have missed at least ten other job roles we do as Mothers. Motherhood is the hardest role any woman has ever had to step into. And to celebrate such a momentous role, we have Mother's Day. It should be Mother's month or even better, every other weekend all year :). Like a typical mother who has a thousand things on her mind, I have rattled on forever. What I mean to say is Happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day always brings to mind brunches. I'm sure a mother invented brunch. It is very efficient, Breakfast and Lunch in one meal, fewer dishes, easy sandwiches and quiches and best of all, mimosas. I came across this great recipe for a Sandwich Cake and figured this would be perfect for brunch. It is not a traditional cake of course. The bread is baked in a 9" spring form pan and is trimmed and torted like a usual cake. I torted mine into 4 layers and made the fillings based on 3 of my favorite sandwiches - salmon mousse, avocado egg salad and cucumber tomato. The outside is covered in a combination of cream cheese and sour cream. It was quite delicious, but there's a lot of it. So try it out and let me know how yours turns out.

Love is blue !

I hope you remember when you are big,
how your mom wanted this cake to be!
Everything in place, no details left behind
A bundle of love, all dressed in blue!

A cake based on a friend’s design for her little girl’s Birthday, topped with miniature dolls from Disney’s Frozen collection, find it here

Rise of Jay !

There are cakes and then there are cakes that enlighten you ! When my friend K asked me to make a birthday cake for her son, I was excited and curious all at the same time. I was excited because K always has such inspiring design ideas and curious since I was clueless about the NinjaGo folks. Some of my wise little friends have since lectured me on this regard and now I at least know who is who. The blue Ninja on the top of this cake as you see is very BLUE, very SMART and is a favorite of the birthday boy! The Ninja’s name is JAY. If you are feeling up to soaking in some more of the trivia, Jay is the Ninja of lightning and has a keen sense of humor! No wonder it was great fun making this cake :)

The Ninga bust is hand molded from Rice Krispies Treat bar, and covered with fondant. Using RKT keeps the figure light weight and makes it less top heavy for the cake. You unwrap a rice crispy treat bar, squish and mold it like you please; it doesn’t get any easier than that. All stand up blocks are made with fondant mixed with some tylose powder and dried for a couple of days before placing  on the cake

Throw Back Thursday - Baby in a Peony Cake

It is Throwback Thursday everyone! For those of you who are wondering what Throwback Thursday means, here's an explanation from the recently enlightened (yeah, that's me :). It basically means recalling something from the past. It is a more hip way of saying, 'back in the day...'. Now a days if you start a conversation with 'back in the day...', you sound like an old woman. So in an attempt to hipsterize our blog (yeah, that's a made up word), I declare it is Throw Back Thursday at Grace Cakery!

I want to talk about one of my favorite cakes I have done to date, a sleeping baby in a peony. It was a shower cake for one of my dearest friends who was having a little baby girl. My friend likes green and so was born the idea of a bunch of pink peonies resting on a green butter cream cake. 

I used the very popular sleeping baby mold for this. The mold is simple and inexpensive, but getting the baby out of it without disfiguring it is not easy. It took me a few tries and I recommend making sure your fondant/gum paste combo is well kneaded and soft, or you'll end up with weird folds and lines on the finished baby. I use Turkish black petal dust instead of plain black for hair and eyes. Turkish black is actually a really dark brown and has a more natural look than plain black, which can look a little grey under poor lighting. 

For the peonies I used a a 50-50 gum paste and fondant combination. I made the petals white, and colored them with watermelon pink petal dust. A tip while making large closed flowers, use a small foam ball instead of fondant ball. If use fondant in the middle, the flower becomes too heavy and may not sit well on the wire. I used a spray of mini flowers and buds to complete the flower bunch. 

Well that's the baby in the peony cake. Hope you like it and let us know what you think.

Happy Easter!

Hello Everyone!

Archana and I have been very excited about finally coming together to share our love for cake decorating with everyone. We both believe our talents are a result of God's Grace and not of our own making and so, the name for our blog was a no brainer - Grace Cakery.

And what better occasion to post our first blog, but Easter itself, the Lord's Rising!

We were having a gathering at my sister's place and we decided to make Tiramisu for dessert. It was a large gathering, so we decided to make 2 six layered 8" cakes. Well we decided to have 6 layers but my 3 year old took a chunk out of one of the cakes and so we had to say adieu to one of the layers, Ha ha...

To cover the cakes, instead of the icing that the recipe suggested, I wanted something sturdier and so I used a combination of butter cream and mascarpone. The icing in the recipe is perfect for the filling though. And to give the appearance of grass, I used some edible apple grass, available at most hobby stores around Easter.

  

My favorite part about these cakes were making the fondant decorations. I loved making the little ornate love birds. I used paper embosser plates (like Cricut) to emboss the patterns on fondant. I then cut out the wings using fluted paisley cutters. For the body of the birds itself I used fondant that I kneaded with some tylose powder. I shaped it using my fingers and a cylindrical fondant tool that is pointed at one end. Sorry I didn't take many pictures as I went along. It is really difficult to stop what you are doing and take a pic, especially when there is a toddler hovering to take a swipe at things.

The other thing I loved making was the little carrots. I love applying a lot of details to tiny things, like the striations on the carrots that most people wouldn't even notice. It's like my little secret. The kids definitely didn't notice them as they popped them in their mouths at the speed of light :). I found the tutorials for the chubby little bunnies on Pinterest. I especially like the one burrowing into the ground for some carrots. Love its little paws.

Well, that's the first cake for our blog. If you want to look at pictures of cakes we have worked on before, please check out our Facebook page. If you like our blog, have any questions about the post, please leave a comment and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. See you soon!