Opening up another session of the FNCC! Who's UP? What are you working on this week? This is a place for everyone to talk about their work, their week, share photos, ask for help or provide help when they can. Everyone is welcome! Hope to see some awesome photos tonight!

Cat

Hi everyone!

Cake meetings this week but no work. I bookended last week with a baby shower cake and then an anniversary cake. I had two client meetings while visiting in San Jose and two more client meetings to book cakes after we got home on Tuesday. My Fall is booking up FAST!

Here is a photo of the anniversary cake. The clients were overjoyed but I was majorly frustrated by having to work in a strange kitchen and having the A/C go mostly out and dealing with a melting cake and praying it kept cool enough by fan to make it. The kitchen was 85 degrees for hours but, somehow, there wasn't much damage. Here is a photo of the cake before I placed a few more flowers to hide the damage. The client didn't notice it at all but, of course, it bugs the heck outta me! LOL!

It's hot as hell right now in Northern CA (my town of Sacramento has almost 2 weeks of 105+ temps) so it was over 90 in San Jose. NOT good caking weather outside of an air conditioner. Thankfully we were able to run away to Monterey for a few of those days where the temp was about 20 degrees cooler. 

Hope everyone had a great week!

Cat

Wow, I don't know how you are surviving the heat.  Here in MA it's super hot, and my AC is broken.  I won't be replaced until the 17th, so no cakes for me!  I had gumpaste flowers in my dining room and they wilted and were destroyed by the humidity!

Oh, that's heartbreaking! For us, fortunately, I'm back at home in Sacramento and I have to admit that I try my best not to leave the house between 11am and 7pm for anything. And if I do it's from the A/C of the house to the A/C of the car to the A/C of wherever I am going. I am SUCH a beach girl that when it gets over 85 I'm just dying so I depend on the A/C to survive. Hopefully in the next two years we'll be able to relocate to the Monterey area and I can kiss these hot summers goodbye!

No cakes this week, still getting my business together, so lots of research. I do have birthday cake for a 2 year old in August, so I'll be working on flavors. I'm thinking vanilla with strawberry buttercream. I guess I'll have to see what her mom says.

Had a small cake and some cupcakes.  I am taking next week off-well almost.  I am making desserts for 100 box lunches every day next week and helping to feed supper to 300 teenagers that are working with KY Changers!  I will be exhausted by next Friday-but it will be a good exhaustion.
 

ACat, that cake is precious!

It's hot here in Charleston, but it's rainy. Very rainy.

Cat, I love the cake.  I can't imagine heat like that. I grew up in Louisiana were the humidity was really bad, I don't know how you can decorate in those conditions. It was a light week for me. Much needed after last week's slam.

An all organic first birthday smash cake for a photo-op. The mom and baby were just darling and it made me reflect on how much joy I get from this line of work. I must say, even though cake decorating is darn hard work, I love, love the people aspect of the business. I can't think of any other profession where I am constantly greeted by hugs and not hand shakes. The sure joy on a customers' faces is worth even more than any amount of money I get paid for the cake. 

Next week we are celebrating my twin's 3rd birthday. So I'm going to start working on the decorations for an knight in shining armor cake and an astronaut cake. I decided to take next week off, even though I'm doing fairly simple cakes for them. I just want to spend a couple of weeks of summer with my family, the end of July to late September are going to be busy enough. 

tdove, I do know exactly what you mean about taking some time with the family. My first two weeks in August are like that...on purpose. I may agree to a small order of cupcakes or something but the last part of the month is so busy that I do want to take some time with my son before he begins middle school mid month. 

I love your little smash cake! It is totally adorable. I particularly love how you did your number...no idea why I never thought to embellish the flat numbers before but I love it! I have a hot pink/zebra Barbie doll cake coming up next month and I do think I'm going to zebra stripe the number...thank you so much for the idea! 

I have to say, about the heat, that I'm pretty much a pampered flower...A/C is always on. However this was a borrowed kitchen in San Jose and, well, I guess they are not use to temperatures like this and their A/C just couldn't stand up to it. So, yes, it was awfully hard to make the cake. The white MMF just wanted to melt...literally. The chocolate fondant was easier to deal with but the white was a nightmare. I love how hard we can be on ourselves tho...I was totally unhappy with all the flaws I saw and the client was over the moon. Enough to order two more cakes from me on the spot. So, obviously, I was being way too hard on myself! LOL!

LKING!!! OMGosh! your week sounds positively exhausting! But I'm also dying of curiosity...what do you do for the lunches? Even 100 cookies a day would be exhausting. Hope you get to escape to a Spa or at least get a massage at the end of the week! 

Cat

Sorry, I missed you all last night, No cakes for me this week.  Cupcake orders but they were just traditional red, white & blue.  The only decorating they got was a paper flag, lol.

Cat your cake is to die for.  The figures are just so precious.   Waiting to show my mom, who loves all things asian.  She'll want me to make her one.  The weather has cooled down here down south, but the humidity is up.  We've been having monsoon weather.  I hate it.  I don't like the heat or the humidty.  I'm a beach girl too, These are the days I miss not living near the water.

tdoves, I love your cake, love how you did the chevron stripes imprinted on the cake. 

Next week, I have 3 big orders.  Friday, the eiffel tower,  Sat the castle cake and Sunday is the most special, Minnie Mouse for my Great Grandbaby who is turning 3. I don't know who is more excited me or her.  She will be coming over Sat night to help make her cake.

Hi, everyone! The only thing I had this week was some cupcakes as a donation to a local church. Today I started working on a fun project. Cake for an "Oz, the Great and Powerful" inspired wedding photo shoot. When I was first asked to do it, I had to say no because it was at a time that was really busy but it was postponed so...here I am making gumpaste poppies!

tdovewings, I am in love with your smash cake! cat, those figures on your cake are just precious!

AAuntginn and Elcee, I cannot wait to see your cakes!! Oh my goodness, how fun!

It's been so hot here I only made one cake this week and it was for my fiancé couldn't keep it from bulging because the frosting was melting under the fondant! Oh well it still tasted good. It's a Walking Dead cake the border took me more than an hour to do I really need a brick impression mat I cut out all those tiny rectangles and attached them by hand.

All the baking I'm doing this weekend is just trying out new recipes for "gourmet cupcakes".  I'll be sending samples with my fiancé to work for the guys to test and some to my sister for the kid approval.  Later tonight when it's cooler I'm going to start on them. I'll be making Chocolate Malted cupcakes with malted milk chocolate frosting topped with crushed whoppers candy, Chocolate Stout cupcakes with Vanilla Stout icing topped with chocolate covered pretzels, Banana cupcakes with Honey Peanut butter frosting, White Chocolate Raspberry cupcakes (white cake with vanilla chips, filled with raspberries and topped with raspberry frosting) and a simple Silver white cake recipe I found.

Ginn, I have friends in Tennessee who have been dealing with the deluge...ugh. Muggy indeed. Talk about hard to cake weather! Can't wait to see your cakes coming up!

Elcee...you are brave! The Oz cake is going to be fun to see!

Lovebug...LOL LOL LOL...love your cake! Your fiance must have been so happy with that!

This upcoming week I have a beach themed retirement cake. Going to learn how to make an Adirondack chair this week...the mini version! LOL! See you all on Friday!

Cat

Sixinarow, trust me I am scared to death with the eiffel tower cake.  But since I love the challenges I've been dreaming about for weeks now.  Expecting powdered gumpaste from The Bakers Kitchen and going to try using it according to another thread, which somebody said can be made like ri and it has some give to it.

The other 2 cakes are no problem.  Well lets hope anyway.

I'm such a cake nerd, it's kind of sad,  I get so excited to see fantastic cakes, your Eiffel Tower is gonna ROCK!!  Delicious Desserts is making us wait until SEPTEMBER for the pig head sculpture..can hardly stand it!! But it sounds like there are going to be some really incredible cakes from you all coming up in the next few weeks, so I just might make it until then! 

I got to make two girly cakes this week one for a friend but the other was my own birthday cake for yesterday.  My indulgence is that for my birthday I get to try out new techniques that I can't guarantee will work so can't do them for friends, but have fun learning them.  So this year I asked for an extruder and tried out the birdcage style of cake.  The cake was only small so it was tricky, and then I had my first ever blowout from the buttercream underneath!  I managed to press it back in, but the fondant cracked a little.  But I'm still quite pleased with it.

I also tried out making wired flowers using the sweet pea cutters.  It was also my first time using petal dusts and loved the whole process of doing sugar flowers.  I definitely want to work on them some more!

I loved being able to do a grown-up, feminine cake rather than the children's cakes I've been doing lately.

Lizzie...that is just SO cute! I love really feminine cakes too. I get to do one the third week of this month for a birthday cake and then again the next week for a wedding cake. Your teeny birdcage looks perfect and I love your flowers. Wired flowers are a pain in the butt for me and I try to avoid them when I can and yours look perfect!

Happy Birthday!

Cat

Thank you so much Cat :-)  It is lovely to have a cake turn out just as you envisioned it.  My next cake will definitely not be feminine as it's for a young man in our church who is most definitely not in touch with his feminine side!  I'm trying to decide between chevrons or polka dots stencilled in white on a grey background.  What do you think?
 

I'd have to lean towards chevrons for a guy. Sounds like a fun cake to try to figure out. Guy cakes can be a challenge!

Cat