Hulk Smash!!

Ok so here is one of the most intense cakes I've done...

This bad boy was soooo heavy that I couldn't even take it out of the box to photograph it!! The bottom is four layers of chocolate cake studded with Oreos with a cookies 'n' cream Oreo filling, iced with a layer of white chocolate ganache and covered in marshmallow fondant. This tier was airbrushed (original fondant color was the golden yellow of the batman logo) to give it that night sky effect (or is it affect?? I'm pretty sure effect but I never get it right with those two). Next tier pays homage to Spidy. It is four layers of red and blue funfetti cake filled with a vanilla mouse and iced with white chocolate ganache and covered with red fondant. Accents are black modeling chocolate. Top tier is a twist on Superman, using an X instead of the infamous S to represent the birthday boy Xavier!! This is two layers of strawberry cake, filled with a mixture of cream cheese and sugar soaked strawberries. This tier was also frosted in white chocolate ganache and covered in marshmallow fondant. Accents are golden yellow fondant and red modeling chocolate. The hands (per request of the birthday family) are rice Krispy treats covered in marshmallow fondant and air brushed to give it that dirty look that you would get from smashing buildings, cars, and villains all day.


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Now here's a fun story about this cake....it took me like 30 hours from start to finish!!! People don't realize the time it takes to make these cakes like this!! Bake time is at lease 3-4 hours since you only have so much oven space and unfortunately I only have one mixing bowl for my KitchenAid so you have to do a lot of stops for dish time in between. Then another 1-2 hours to make all the fillings and frostings (I use a lot of heavy cream in my fillings and frostings so I need to clean the bowl and allow about 15 minutes in the freezer to ensure the the fillings will set up nice and not runny between each batch) then another 2 hours to just make the fondant (tinting is a whole other story...maybe 15-20 for EACH non-dark color...black, red, brown, dark blue would all take hours...yeah I've tried...might as well buy pre-made), another hour for modeling chocolate and another several hours to prep your grocery and supply list once you're done calculating all the ingredients necessary to make this little monster (over 30 eggs, 132 ounces of heavy cream and 12 pounds of chocolate went into this cake....just so you get an idea) and this is all still just prep work!!

Then after the cakes chill in the fridge (mind you you have to take the time to wrap each in plastic wrap so that they don't dry out...this starts to get time consuming since you're doing 10) you have to trim each down to get them nice and level, then tort and fill, then stack, then trim, then crumb coat, trim again if necessary, then final coat. This takes another several hours.

And finally, you're cakes are ready to START to work with. I'll stop there because I'm pretty sure you get the idea of the amount of time that goes into these cakes. So after all that plus at least another 6 hours of just covering, decorating (mostly everything on this cake is hand cut), and stacking, my mini monument was in its box and ready for pick up. My aunt had come over to watch California play Japan in the Little League World Series and she said she just HAD to take a picture of this cake so we open the box and start snapping some photos. I look at my cake and it looks different. Its not as level as it was an hour ago (and I literally use a level on each individual tier to ensure its perfect for stacking) and then I realize, my bottom tier has cracked and this cake was coming down!!!!! In that moment my world started spinning...my sleep deprived nausea was hitting me and the countless hours of the previous days' work would be all for nothing and worst of all, little Xavier wasn't going to have a cake to sing with on his special day!! I realized that all the pushing I was doing to get the Hulk hands to stick to the cake in combination with the bottom tier not having enough dowels to support it had been the cause of this nightmare!! I tried to lift the Spiderman cake with a spatula but with the weight of the Superman cake and the Hulk hands I could not do it. I called my mom and sister over for help and with the three of us we did it!!! I would have at least two thirds of a cake to deliver!!!

I was not satisfied with this two thirds cake business though. I wanted little X to have a cake as big as he was for his birthday, not one that came up short (hah). and so I put some extra support in the bottom tier and a cake board covered in fondant on top to cover all the dowels and it actually looked part of the cake!! I delivered it to little X (along with a million apologies) and explained to his mom why is was late and why it wasn't stacked. I told her I didn't trust the the bottom tier even with the reinforcements to carry the weight of the top (in total this cake was at least 70 lbs) but that I would do it if she wanted it for pictures and singing at the end. She wanted to do it then so we went for it!! I was so nervous watching Xavier take his pics and frolic with my once perfect masterpiece. I stuck around to remove the top tiers after the photo op was complete but then we saw that it wasn't sinking!! I stuck around another 10 minutes and still no sinking!!! So we left it on and victory was ours.....well sort of.

I always try to save my clients money by not purchasing the plate stacking system (a system of stacking on interlocking plates) for each cake but from now on, no cutting corners!!! I'm sure anyone would rather pay an extra 20-40 bucks just to make sure their cake will get to its destination in one piece!!

There's my story for today! Hopefully you were able to enjoy my stress a little more than I did. You can visit my facebook page @ facebook.com/SweetTiersCakeDesing to see more of the cakes and desserts I've made or email me @ sweettierscakedesign@gmail.com to inquire about any sweets you'd like for your next special occassion!! (I promise to get it there in one piece too)

Hello Kitty Nerd Cake

It's a hip world we live in. I can't keep up with what's cool or what's in, but I guess Hello Kitty can!! Here is Hello Kitty, nerd (hipster) addition.

This is a layered marble cake with a vanilla mousse filling. It is frosted with Swiss meringue buttercream and marshmallow fondant. The details are various colors of modeling chocolate. It measures 6" by about 7" and serves approximately 8.


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With each cake order I make an attempt at trying something new. Since this cake was so simple I decided to amp it up a bit with a decorative board. I originally wanted an argyle print to match the "nerd" theme of the cake design. I thought of using wrapping paper but couldn't find a place that sold a great selection of wrapping paper locally!! So then I got to thinking....fabric!! There are a few places around me that sell a HUGE variety of fabric so I picked the best of my options, attached with spray adhesive, and added a layer of cellophane to make it greaseproof since a cakes tend to be fatty (surprise!) And vioala!! A fun cake board to spice up a more simple cake design!!

You can visit my facebook page @ facebook.com/SweetTiersCakeDesign to see more of the cakes and desserts I've made or email me @ sweettierscakedesign@gmail.com to inquire about any sweets you'd like for your next special occassion!!

Snow White Party

Hello cyberworld!! I've been putting off my first post for a while now because honestly, I have no idea how to approach this sort of thing since I have never done it!! But I do want to showcase my desserts (specifically my cakes) and so I go to thinking....and all I could think about was my daughter!! Seriously. I'm obsessed!! So then it dawned on me. My first blog post ever should be about my number one! My life, my princess, my little angel Delilah.

Delilah turned one back in January, and as most parents, we decided to throw her a wedding. Ok not really a wedding but pretty much. The guest list was over 100 people, we had it catered, there was linen tablecloths, centerpieces, scenery, you name it. It was a big deal. I pretty much handmade everything because the price of some stuff is just crazy! I wanted cardboard trees to line the walls to match the cardboard cutouts of Snow herself and those cute little dwarfs (which I got a pretty good deal on..about $30 each after shipping!) but the trees were another story COMPLETELY!! for a 5-6' tree it would have costed me like $75 for just ONE!! I know. Crazy right??!! So I made them myself and they came out to about $10-15 each. That's better. Same with floral arrangements. Boy are those pricey!! I wanted to make the swag bags special for each little boy and girl (about 24 kids) but I wanted something so specific that they would have cost me an arm and a leg (or actually my head since Delilah's dad was ready to kill me after going over the budget a thousand dollars or so :/) so I made those myself too. I just figured hey, if we're gonna do this, we're gonna do it right! Every little thing that my sister had labeled as "too much" for every one of my nephews parties, I finally got to do (she's quite the minimalist when it comes to parties now since she went so far on her son's first birthday that she served steak to 200 people to match the cowboy theme) and so I did them!! Every little detail was exactly how I had thought it would be since I made it all!! About two months worth of work actually. But I have yet to mention my baby of the party..no not my actual baby who just so happens to be the birthday girl, my baby the dessert table.

Now this was an all out bake festival. I pretty much put out all that, all that I knew, all that I learned, out on a table. It was crazy. Even for me. I was non-stop for at least three days before the big day sleeping zero hours, putting together the last minute details and trying to work on the table. There were hand-dip cookies, cheesecake shooters, red velvet cookies, lemon baby cakes, blueberry macaroons, apple cupcakes, mini muffins in three variations (blueberry, banana nut, and cinnamon streusel) strawberry shortcakes, dutch apple pie, stuffed croissant pastries, candy apples (my favorite ones ever! I bought these in downtown LA on a whim. They are the red kind that's a thick red that is soft and doesn't get hard ever and are covered in flakes! I have no idea what these flakes are or how to duplicate these but if anyone out there knows please post the recipe in the comments or send it to me privately so that I don't have to drive 30 miles in LA traffic to get my fix!! PLEASE!!) and finally, a candy corner where we had red vines out, cherry chewies, lemon heads, blueberry sixlets, and personalized lollis. Since this is the feature of todays post I will post pics but the photographer (Philip Alan of Philip Alan Photography. He is truly amazing and does it all!! If you're in the area I would definitely book him for anything, special events and portraits are his specialty and he definitely delivers! I wouldn't use anyone else ever!) was scheduled to arrive for the second half of the party so it is a little run down in the pics. Sorry. I do have one pre party pic though that I took myself on my phone so it's not the best quality but it works. So here is the dessert table...

Let's take a closer look at the cake...

This is a two tiered fondant cake, 8" round on top and 10" round on bottom for a grand total of 42 servings. The top is vanilla cake with strawberries and strawberry cream filling. The bottom tier is a marble cake with a vanilla mousse filling. both cakes are iced with buttercream, and covered with fondant. Decorated with fondant accents.

Here are the Madaline cookies dipped in white chocolate tinted blue and yellow with a red bow to tie it into the Snow White theme.

Here are the blueberry French macaroons filled with a marscapone and berry filling and lemon curd. The lemon cakelettes are lemon cake covered in a white chocolate-lemon coating. The red velvet cookies are frosted with cream cheese frosting and dusted with red candy sugar.

The muffins (already starting to be poked at) have wrappers to match their flavor and the theme of the party. Red=cinnamon streusel,  blue=blueberry, yellow=banana.

Here are the apple cupcakes. They are vanilla cupcakes, frosted in american buttercream, rolled in red sugar and topped with a tootsie roll step and laffy taffy leaf.

And the candy corner...

Finally the cheesecake shooters. These are layered desserts with either apple or strawberry filling sandwiched between two layers of "cheesecake" all sitting on a graham cracker crust and topped with a dollop of whipped cream (now melted) and served with a little wooden spoon.

And there it is ladies and gentlemen! My first blog post ever! Hope you enjoyed reading a little bit about my adventure! You can visit my facebook page @ facebook.com/SweetTiersCakeDesign to see more of the cakes and desserts I've made or email me @ sweettierscakedesign@gmail.com to inquire about sweets you'd like for your own special occassion!!