Cake Artist?

A common request from followers of this blog, is for me to write about what happens behind the scenes. People seem to be interested in the design process and how we get to our finished product.  I've ummm-ed and ahhhh-ed about blogging about this as I am frankly quite embarrassed to show you what goes on, especially for a self-confessed perfectionist this is a bit difficult to digest... but for the sake of a bit of humour, I will swallow my pride!  Here it goes...

Some of the sketches we provided our client

I've mentioned in previous blogs that I'm no artist on pen and paper, and that I'm almost always hesitant to send a client a sketch of our cakes. I'll have beautiful visions and images in my head, but when I try to put pen to paper, it never comes out the way I intend.   

The recent Lego Superheroes cake... thankfully it turned out how we had pictured it in our heads and not what was on paper!!

We also enjoy having the freedom to make changes to the design of the cake whilst we are making it as we are often able to create an effect that we didn't think was possible, whilst designing it (for example Domo with one arm up and the other down, or the weight of the sun topper floating above the cake instead of sitting on it) or improving the overall look of the cake (displaying the Hello Kitty cake on a rectangular cake board instead of a round board as quoted).

I take pride in having real attention to detail, and at the same time, our cakes have clean lines, look fresh and have an uncluttered finish. But somehow my pictures always look like a scribbled mess and even I can't decipher what I've tried to transcribe from my head.  Even my eleven year old niece critiques my sketches and tells me that she'll have to teach me how to draw one day.

With cakes like Genevieve's Winter Wonderland themed cake, she was happy for us to design the cake whichever way we wanted, as long as it was not a "Frozen" cake.  So originally we had planned a more "busy" cake that was round and unsculpted. Having the flexibility in design meant that we were able to sculpt the cake into an actual iceberg, and then decide to keep the lines clean and uncluttered, and not over-complicate the cake with the igloo or polar bear up top.    

Having the liberty to change the design gives us the flexibility of making the cake look better than what we are confined to by our drawings

Quite often, clients get so excited about their cake, they ask to see a sketch of what to expect. I'm always happy to provide a sketch, but always pre-warn them so that they won't doubt our cake-making abilities.  

So here I am exposing my vulnerabilities to you all... please don't judge me!!!  

Admittedly we now have a new design studio which helps the sketches look slightly more acceptable.  But for a great laugh, and for the ultimate mind-blowingly embarrassing picture... here are two I drew when designing my kids' cakes.  Amazingly though, I showed them to my four year old and asked her what the sketches were of, she confidently exclaimed "Ohhhh that's my bucket cake, and that's Xav's digger cake!!".  So there you go, it can't be that bad? ;P

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A grand note, worthy of a blog post...

Throughout the years we've received heartfelt testimonials and reviews from many of our loyal customers.  I have scattered some lovely reviews on some of the pages on this site.  But today, I received such a beautiful testimonial penned by a loving granddaughter, I actually didn't know what to do with it, so I decided to blog about it.  I'm not going to say that it was more beautiful than any of the other testimonials I've ever received, but perhaps the reason why it was so touching to read was because we actually felt so honoured to have been asked to make this cake in the first place. 

Those of you who follow our facebook page (www.facebook.com/cakeme) might have seen that we wrote about how we always feel chuffed to be entrusted to make someone's milestone or special occasion cake.  So to have been asked to make a special grandmother's 90th cake, it was truly an honour.  Ninety.  Wow, just a decade away from a century, what an achievement!

The testimonial made me feel so warm and fuzzy I didn't want to condense it, so if you're interested, you're welcome to read it here. 

She mentioned:

“My grandma, an avid pianist and music lover, also has an inclination for all things purple and my challenge was to articulate this particular theme to the team at Cake Me. Thankfully Liz and Khanh combined their creative minds and exerted a little engineering flair to come up with a number of cake ideas accompanied by detailed sketches for my family to select.”

When were designing the cake, we weren't sure whether the family had wanted a sculpted grand piano cake, a cake with a grand piano topper, or a piano-themed cake.  After consulting with them further, other than "piano" and "purple" they themselves weren't sure what design they wanted either.  So we drafted up a few very rough sketches and sent it off to them, and they decided that the latter option was what they wanted, a piano-themed cake.  To be honest, I'm always anxious about sending people sketches as I'm no artist on pen and paper, so I don't want people to doubt our cake abilities after seeing my drawings.  So you can imagine how very happy I was to hear that they appreciated my scribbles and even went as far as describing them as "detailed sketches." ;)

The piano-themed cake for a grandmother who is affectionately known as "Pepeng", and the top of the piano with the lid off. 

Creating a beautiful cake, ensuring that it tastes divine, making sure that it is personalised for the individual, giving the cake its own character and all the attention to detail, literally takes hours and hours. Quite a few people have asked us over the year why we choose to do cakes.  And the answer has always been that the joy in seeing someone's face light up when they first see the cake is incredibly rewarding.  Quite often we don't get to see the cake recipient as the cake is delivered to a venue, or the cake is ordered by a loved one, or is picked up by someone else.  So we rely on testimonials like these.  It truly has to be a labour of love, or we wouldn't do it.

It brought us immeasurable joy and satisfaction reading how the grandmother herself actually felt:   

“On the day of the unveiling, no one was happier and more impressed than the celebrant herself, my grandma. Whilst it did take a bit of coaxing to get my grandma to cut into the cake (She had repeated that, “The cake was too beautiful to cut”), all guests fell into an appreciative silence as we enjoyed the chocolate mud ganache filling.”

This is love. Grandmother "Pepeng" with her granddaughter on her 90th birthday. 

“So thank you, Liz and Khanh for making my grandma’s birthday all the more memorable—we couldn’t have trusted a better team of cake artists to handle my grandma’s birthday with the talent and experience that was delivered on the day.”

No, thank YOU.  We love cakes, and creating your grandmother's cake was truly an honour for us.  Happy 90th Birthday Pepeng.

And this is exactly why we do what we do.