When good cakes go bad….

I just found this site via a message board, and it’s great.  Check it out:  Cake Wrecks

My wedding cake

I have now been married a month to a wonderful man.  So wonderful, in fact, that he agreed to help me make the wedding cake.

As a shower gift, we received a Willowtree ornament that featured a man, woman, and baby.  Because it was a great representation of our family, we really wanted to include this in the cake.  It was quite heavy to sit on top of four tiers, and we wanted to make the piece more of a scene than a concept.  So we turned the cake into a gazebo with three flavors (and ended up with three tiers.)

For the bottom tier, my husband wanted to have an earthy feeling.  He (we) wanted the rocks to have the shininess of a river rock, and decided that chocolate was the best way to achieve this.  We started with white chocolate and mixed in a little black gel food coloring for the grey stones, and  a  about one part milk chocolate to 16 parts white chocolate for the brown stones.  When we began, the new chocolate colors didn’t  set very well, and we feared that it was because of the food coloring/mix of chocolates.  It could very well have been, but we cured it by working quickly, and setting the chocolate back the fridge when it started getting too soft.

The roses were very time consuming (as they always are) and were made the “Wilton Way“  with red gum paste.   I decided to go with closed roses for the roof as closed roses are just a little more romantic.  The lattice on the bottom has a variety of stages of roses.  Unfortunately, the lattice doesn’t show up well in the photos (less learned: use a different color buttercream when wanting to bring out a fondant detail.)

Finally, I covered the bottom cake plate with the remaining gum paste.

I’m really pleased with it.  It was time consuming (30 hours start to finish), but I feel that it was worth it.

Centerpieces (Continued)

We decided on something more distinctly “island” for our centerpieces in the end.  The florists, Bernadette and Gloria from Bernadette’s Flowers, are going to work with grasses, driftwood, and local flowers to create something unique, and on budget.  To achieve this, I have a small role to play in collecting driftwood.  I’ll be sure to post a picture of the result.

I was also very tempted to pick up a larger piece for a centerpiece on the buffet table.  If I had more time, I would make a gumpaste centerpiece for the buffet table that has some height, and flowers falling off of it.  The cake itself would look like a large piece of driftwood, and the height would be from a wire that would be covered to look like a twig.

Well….we’ll see….

Business and Licensing

Last night I sat down to research the necessities of opening a home based business decorating cakes. Informal market research (ie business that I’ve drummed up by taking cakes to events I’ve participated in) has been pretty good so far. I’ve had about five or 6 orders from independent customers from that (remember, I’ve only been doing this since February). For no advertising and no soliciting (with one exception), I don’t think that’s too bad.

I got stuck at the licensing part. Unfortunatly, I’m finding that the website for starting a business on the island is not user friendly, particularly in terms of getting the right licenses and permits for a home based bakery. I know how/where to register my business and name, and they certainly made me aware of how to get set up for GST/PST, but I’m still lost about the rules and regulations for a home based bakery.

I did find some information, but I can’t tell if it’s really pertinent as my home based business would not really fit the bill that they are suggesting. It wouldn’t be a take out or restaurant, I would not be licensed to sell alcohol (the site simply says “licensed”, but I’m included to think they mean “selling alcohol” based on how the document reads). That information took me more than an hour to find, and it may even be from the  regulations from another province as opposed to those from my own.

Either way, I’m inclined to think it’s better to wait until we’re in a house to start the business, and continue my work as a glorified hobby in the meantime. My kitchen is small, and already full of things, and I’d like to continue practicing my craft prior to really putting myself “out there”. In the end, it has a lot to do with positioning, and I’d like to start out as “pretty damned good” rather than risk my reputation on a cake that just isn’t up to par for a client.

Rooster Cake

Rooster found at http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/2005/12/rooster-on-snow.html

Tonight’s challenge is to create a rooster cake. Well, make a plan to create a rooster cake. So far, this is my greatest challenge to date.

There are rooster pans available (though I have no idea where to find one), and there’s always the possibility of creating a cake with a rooster sitting on top of it. But where’s the fun in that (okay, not true – creating a rooster fondant sculpture would be a great challenge too, but it’s not exactly what was requested).

My plan (I think) is to us a pudding bowl to make the body, then smaller cake pans for the neck and head. I’ll then follow it up with fondant for the beak and the red gobbley things (you know what I’m talking about, the hat thing and the chin thing). You’ll have to forgive my lack of lingo. Then leaf cutters and maybe some hand cut pieces to provide the plethora of colors that roosters normally have.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out well.

Importance of titles?!

WordPress has a handy feature that tells me how many views there are of my pages.  So far, my first and third pages have each received fewer than 5 views (the blog is new, and I just made note of it to others for the first time last night).  My second page, however, has already had 22 views.

My only theory is that the title “Centerpieces” was a much more attractive title.  When I was planning my wedding, I punched words like “centerpiece”, “wedding dress”, “wedding cake” and other related terms into Google almost nightly.

Being married to a web developer, I am privy to lots of information (when I think to ask).  I’ve been told that the title (in the blue bar at the top) is one of the most important places to put your key words.  And then there’s putting the words in the text, meta tags (though their importance is debatable), descriptions, etc.  WordPress seems to rely on a similar means to provide related pages to viewers on this site.  So my “Centerpieces” page also directs viewers to these pages:

• Cheap Decorations and DIY ideas
• Mumbai suburban train commuters – worse off than rats
• tropical centerpiece

It just shows the significance of the little things.  Who would have thought the title of a post could make that much difference?  Not me!

To open or not to open….

I’ve been thinking long and hard about starting my own small business. My product is not unique – I would be making and decorating cakes professionally. My positioning and target markets, however, are a little different for my island. While wedding cakes are the big money makers, I’m particularly interested in shaped cakes and special event cakes. This would include birthdays, openings, parties, etc. I’ve even got some marketing strategies worked out. The thing is that I am not a pastery chef.

Bonnie Gordon Custom cake

This may or may not be a problem. While I could certainly benefit from studying pastery, and developing an in depth knowledge of baking, I’m not really interested in making pasteries, per say. Just cakes. A personal hero of mine is Toronto’s Bonnie Gordon. With a master’s degree in Fine Arts, she made an unlikely chef. However, her hobby and passion was enhanced by her background, and she’s now one of Canada’s most respected Cake Decorators. While I’m not likely to gain a title like that living on a small island (and not having the funds to travel and study with some of the most well-respected chefs around), it does give me hope that the path I’ve chosen is not an impossible one.

(As an aside, I once met Bonnie Gordon. She was staying in a hotel that I was working at with her husband. He was very proud of his wife, and she stood humbly by. He steered me to her website, and I’ve been complete enthralled with sculptured cakes since)

In order to test both my product and my market, I’ve been making cakes for events that I’ve been invited to. It’s helped me to build my portfolio, and helped me to realize that there might actually be a market for my cakes. Price points were sticky at first. Finding that balance of a price that both signals a quality product while also not shocking people is tough, but I think I’ve found a pretty good price point to start at. This was entirely from asking questions to friends, and it seems to be working (I quoted a price today and retained interest – even though the price was more than double a similar sized cake at Sobey’s).

Now I’ve just got to get my act together and get my business set up – I think….

Centerpieces

I’ve been trying to brainstorm elegant (and inexpensive) centerpieces that I can make myself for a conference dinner that I am organizing. Flowers are lovely – and on the “brainstorm” list – but not very memorable. The space is very modern, so I’d love to see centerpieces that fit the space a little better.

Here are my thoughts to date:

Bouquet of chocolate covered strawberries at Strawberry Dreams

1. Edible centerpieces. This is my favorite idea. In particular, I’ve been thinking about using a cake as a centerpiece, with chocolate fondant. My second idea was to present a plate of chocolate covered strawberries. I found this great example that was much prettier than my initial idea at Strawberry Dreams.

2. Flowers. We could go with an always elegant single stem in a square vase, or a small bunch in a more interesting vase (short square or aluminum). The problem with the latter is that you would need quite a few flowers to make it look really great, and I find that tulips fit this look best. Tulips are no longer in season.

3. Candles. Long black and white square candleholders would fit the space nicely.

4. Wheatgrass. I love this idea, but don’t have the time to pull it off.

5. Sand and driftwood. So beautiful, and so wedding-y. It does fit our island location, but I’m not sure if it’s really an idea to pitch.

The space itself is quite new, so it seems a shame to cover it all up with decorations. Part of the purpose for the dinner is to show off the building. In this case, I think the centerpieces are a great way to make an impression. I can almost hear our guests saying in the future “remember that dinner? The one with the strawberry centerpieces?”

Hello, hello!

Purse Cake

The inspiration for starting this blog is a class project for Direct Marketing. Blogging is, after all, one of the best ways to directly market to your audience as it is both cost effective and interactive.

Even though it is the reason for creating this blog, I don’t think that is where it will end. I’ve had a blog for a number of years to detail some of my adventures. Not only is it poorly used and read, it is also updated at most a few times a year. I have been thinking about starting up another blog to discuss some of my hobbies, namely cake decorating and, to a lesser degree, creation in general. Former manifestations of “creation” have included writing, a bit of sketching and painting, crocheting, sewing, performing, and a number of other things that I currently can’t think of. This seems like a great space to exercise my creative muscles and discuss some of my ideas.

How does this relate to marketing? You may have already guessed that it wasn’t data and statistics that attracted me to marketing in the first place. Rather, it was creative aspects that I found so appealing. The interesting in data and numbers came later. The best marketing is always to put out a good product, and a venue to hash out these ideas will (hopefully) both improve my ideas and allow me to “think out loud” ways to realize my ideas. And if others get involved in the process, then I can get even further ahead.

Now that I’ve done my rationalizing, I hope you’ll enjoy my journey.

Tammie