A master of decorating

As an employee of Wilton, I had the incredible opportunity this year to take the 40-hour Master Course at The Wilton School of Cake Decorating and Confectionery Art. This is a professional-level course, but it is designed to cover everything from the basics of making icing all the way through to flower-making and an introduction to basic stringwork. It's appropriate for decorators of all levels - even those who have never held or decorated with a piping bag before!

As the Director of Consumer Insights at Wilton, I had professional reasons for taking the course - one of my many areas of focus is our education offerings at Michaels, Jo-Ann Fabrics, and AC Moore, so it is important for me to understand how the experience varies at The Wilton School. But, as a decorator, I also had ulterior motives, and that was just to get a lot better at cake decorating!

In 40 hours of instruction, it was amazing how much we were able to cover. I was able to build on skills I already had experience with, in addition to learning a LOT of completely new-to-me techniques. As part of the course, we decorated an 8" real cake with many of the techniques we had already learned.

Then, for our graduation cake, we decorated a three-tiered dummy cake - the beauty of decorating on a dummy cake is you use royal icing and get to keep and display the cake forever, because there is nothing perishable. I decided to keep it simple with a clean color palette, and used the cake to show off some scroll work, drop strings, bead borders, e-motion borders, chandelier borders, and flower work:

Final cake!

The REALLY cool thing about working at Wilton, though, was that I was able to convince our Creative Department to stage and photograph the cake - I know it's not perfect, but I LOVE this photo so much. It looks like it belongs in a magazine. It's amazing what proper staging can do for a cake!

Glamour shot

Taking the Wilton Master Course was an INCREDIBLE experience, and I'm so thankful to have had this amazing opportunity. I know I will carry the lessons learned with me forever!

xoxo,
Clare

A beautiful day for a beautiful wedding

Making cakes for my friends' weddings is such an honor. I am not a professional baker, so I'm always in awe that someone I love would trust me to be such a big part of such an important day. This month, I was able to do just that, making the cake for my friend Valerie's wedding.

Despite having a relatively small wedding, Valerie really wanted a large and impactful cake! So, we went with a three-tiered cake - one 10" tier, one 8" tier, and one 6" tier. The other fun thing about tiered cakes is the opportunity to have a lot of different flavors. For the largest tier, we went with a vanilla buttermilk cake with a raspberry filling. The middle tier was a chocolate buttermilk cake with a chocolate ganache filling, and the top and smallest tier was the most creative (and therefore least broad appeal) - an apple spice cake with a stewed apple filling. I loved all the flavors, but the apple cake might have been my favorite! All of this was topped with a vanilla swiss meringue buttercream.

The challenge with this cake was that the wedding was in North Carolina! As a reminder... I no longer live in North Carolina. So, my parents generously allowed me to take over their kitchen for a day and a half. I traveled with all my decorating supplies (apart from the cake pans, which I ordered and had shipped to their house) from Chicago to NC, did all my grocery shopping locally, and then got to baking. It was stressful getting used to a new-to-me oven, and my mom's KitchenAid doesn't have nearly the horsepower mine does, so there was brief 20 minutes of sheer panic when it looked like the icing wasn't going to come together. But, all worked out, and the cake turned out beautifully!

Valerie chose a rustic textured icing with no additional piping or decorating, which definitely cut down on my stress, decorating in a new environment, and transporting the cake 45 min in the back of a friend's car. The design went perfectly with her rustic and simple wedding design.

YAY

Do you see the cake to the right of the wedding cake that says "YAY"? I also made that! That was a lemon pound cake with a lemon glaze, and I used fondant to make the letters and bake them into the cake. It was a fun effect, but it was a LOT of work, and the fondant took up so much of the cake that it really impacted the taste and texture (in a not so positive way). I wouldn't necessarily recommend this approach, though I do think I will try it in the future using cake inside cake versus fondant inside cake. That's a very big thing these days and I haven't tried it yet.

Full dessert table

Cakes, like people, always look better
when photographed professionally

Thank you, Valerie, for inviting me to be part of your special day!

xoxo,
Clare

Cakecatular (cookietacular???) now ready to accept cookie orders!!!

I've been making cookies for various friends' events over the years, but have never really sat down to think about my pricing for various designs, shapes, and sizes of cookies. Finally, I have a cookie pricing sheet and look forward to making cookies for all of your upcoming special events!

Click here for more details!

And a big thank you to The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle for the pricing guidance!!!

Happy eating!

xoxo,
Clare

Wedding shower cookies

My friend Luci had her wedding shower in Pittsburgh this past weekend, but I was unable to travel for the event. In my absence, I sent some fun cookies for the shower. Luci's colors are black, gray, and white, so I used these colors to ice sugar cookies and brownie roll out cookies with royal icing. I used stencils to create the damask and daisy patterns, and brush embroidery for the abstract floral design.

Take me out...

...to the ballgame...

Being new to the city (and especially working out in the suburbs), it was important for me to be able to meet new people my age. So, a friend of mine suggested I join a softball league. The softball wasn't a great idea, but providing snacks each week for the team was right up my alley!

I used Tootsie Rolls for the bats and gloves and Airheads for the baseballs and jerseys. Super fun!

Royal icing flowers

One of the best parts about working at Wilton is that I have a lot of new learning opportunities that were not available to me previously. Or, at least, they were not as accessible as they are now. During my first few months with the company, I had an opportunity to take one of the cake decorating classes featuring royal icing flowers.

You would never necessarily eat royal icing (though it is technically 'edible,' it dries very hard), but it is a great medium for making flowers ahead of time, because they keep for months!

Below are some of the types of flowers I learned, as well as the final cake I made. Apologies for the bad cell phone pictures!

A Michigan Wedding

My sister's good friend from high school gave me the honor of baking for her wedding, which was in beautiful Ann Arbor, Michigan. Erin and James are a beautiful couple, and I was so happy to have the chance to be a part of their special day.

This was one of those perfect weddings. Erin and James put so much thought and love into every detail that it felt perfectly authentic. The wedding and reception were held at Cobblestone Farm, which was beautiful, from the small outdoor ceremony, to the bumping reception inside the barn, with, I must say, the best wedding reception playlist to end all wedding reception playlists (compiled by the groom himself!).
Erin and James knew they wanted a variety of flavors for their guests, so we decided on 3 flavors of cupcakes with a small cutting cake. James had designed the wedding invitation himself, which served as the inspiration for the cake design. The invitation and colors for the wedding were dark chocolate brown and apple green, and the invitation featured graphic line and dot patterning, with a leaf featuring their initials on the front. I wanted to be sure to incorporate these elements in the final cake design.

With the wedding taking place in November, Erin wanted to be sure to include some seasonal flavors in addition to your 'safer' or more traditional flavors. We decided on a chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream and chocolate drizzle, an apple cupcake with vanilla buttercream and caramel drizzle, and a honey cupcake with vanilla buttercream and honey drizzle. The cutting cake was a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream, topped with fondant. The honey cupcake was hands-down my favorite.

I also wanted to be sure to incorporate the leaf design with Erin's and James's initials into the cake, so I made a candy topper with melted chocolate and melted confectionery coating.

The final set-up at the reception was a tiered display, complete with cupcake labels designed by James.
Congratulations to Erin and James!!!