Friday, March 25, 2011

Real Life: Gateau Givenchy

I was recently asked to audition for a spot on Slice Network's newest show, Cake Walk.
Part of the audition process required me to submit a show piece for the producers to see my work.

The piece I created was inspired by Cake Blanchett's Givenchy gown worn at the 2011 Oscars.
The dress was a true work of art. I translated it to edible art.

xoS





Sunday, March 6, 2011

Trials and Tribulations of a Cake Designer: Transporting

Many will agree that one of the toughest and most stressful parts of running your own cake design business is the delivery. 

On the Food Network Challenges, the music cues and the dramatic sounds waves through the audience as the competitors are asked to move their cakes from their working station to the presentation table one meter in front of them.

Every week I deliver my creations all over the city. It would be typical for me to drive through over 7 stop signs, 25 traffic lights and an array of bad drivers before I arrive at my destination. Weather condition is another lemony snicket... sure, our 6 months of snowy road conditions and sporadic rainfalls don't help, but neither do those hot summer days when the temperature hits 30 degrees celsius and I have a butter based cake sitting in my back seat.

I remember one incident late last year when my girlfriend and I had to deliver a cake from downtown Toronto to Muskoka, about a two hour drive. When we hit Vaughan (about 30 minutes in), my breaks warning light went on (the image with the exclamation mark wrapped in parenthesis). Awesome. (Side note: it was pouring rain and I drive a rear-wheel car). But only a cake designer knows, there's never time to spare and delivering a wedding cake late was unthinkable, so we kept going.  Needless to say, the cake made it and so did we.

One thing I've learned is that it is very important that cake designers assemble a "cake kit" - like a first aid kit - filled with all the necessary tools you need to fix any damages during transportation. Sometimes I like to call my backseat a cake hospital. I've had to perform a few surgeries in my time but I'm happy to say we've had a zero percent  death rate.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Welcome to Candyland

"Where is Pearl Harbor?" I asked my fourth-grade history class. "Here’s a hint: It’s a place where everyone wants to go." One student blurted out, "Candy Land!"  - Readers Digest

Many of my friends get excited when they see or hear about the Candyland game. It brings back memories of childhood events. Not me. I actually never even heard about Candyland (thanks, mom) until about month ago when I received a cake request from a client.

Similar to the Monopoly board I designed a few weeks back, I like to thoroughly investigate new projects to ensure that I maximize all the little details that only a "player" would know. So two weeks before the execution, I began my research. I picked up my own copy of the Candyland game from a local toy store, 3 pounds of gumballs from bulkbarn and a couple bottles of wine from the liquor store (it was my selling point to get my friends to give up their Friday night - what can I say, I needed 2+ players).

I don't think the wine bottles contributed positively to the analysis and the gumballs made my teeth hurt after 2 minutes of chewing... but the game was loads of fun and I was excited to execute the project.

xoS