Star Wars Cake

It's been a long time since we blogged anything, so today's a good day to change that! :)  Let's catch everyone up to date with what's been going on in our baking world.

First, we've had a lot of fun this past month creating some fun projects for customers.  We had a request for a birthday cake that couldn't have ANY chocolate in it because they had given chocolate up for Lent (a cake without chocolate...such a travesty) and we had two King Cake orders for Mardi Gras this year.  Earlier this year we got to plan and create a Disney Princess cake for a preschool-aged birthday party.  And we also set up a Twitter account where we tweet about how much we're craving brownies (who doesn't crave brownies??).  You should go follow us, especially if you love to see what we're up to!

I think we're all caught up now!  So let's move on to the main event: last weekend's cake!

We love Star Wars.  We are geeky bakers and we have no problem admitting it.  We saw Star Wars several times in theaters over the Christmas season.  Han Solo is our space crush.  If you don't at least mildly tolerate Star Wars, this blog post probably isn't for you.

So when someone gave us the task of creating a Star Wars themed cake, well....we couldn't help but dive into this idea with both feet.  Again, please read the paragraph above: We love Star Wars.

The challenge became, though, what do you put on a Star Wars cake?  There are so many iconic moments, characters, and scenes from that movie, it's hard to pick just one and turn it into a cake you love.  We finally settled on an idea that seemed to be simple enough to execute, with a pretty high return on the Awesome Scale if we managed to successfully pull it off: We were going to build the Millennium Falcon.

To build the Falcon the right way, we would have to use some skills we don't always bring out for most of our cakes.  First off, we were going to have to build the ship out of compressed Rice Krispie treats, to maintain a better height to weight ratio.  For long time readers of this blog, you may remember we first used Rice Krispie treats in this cake we made last year, but it's not a technique we normally use.  And for this cake, it would be our biggest krispie creation ever!

Millennium Falcon supplies all ready to go!

Working with Rice Krispie treats (hereafter dubbed RKT because we're lazy) is not always the easiest.  If they're not compressed properly they tend to flake off at the worst possible moments.  It also takes a lot of work to smooth the surface in preparation for the fondant you're going to be layering over all of it.  And, of course, it's hard not to want to just eat them all! (RKT are a weakness for us).

Dowel rods became a life savor for us when creating this.

In the end, though, we managed to get a shape we were fairly happy with.  Dowel rods helped to secure the front of the ship while we prepared it with both icing and fondant.  It took the strain of the weight so that no random parts of the ship fell off.

Also, can we just say, in general, before a cake is done, they are some of the ugliest things we've ever seen.  They're lumpy and oddly shaped, and sometimes you put a piece of cake together and just think, how in the heck is this even going to come together into something that even resembles the end result we're trying to achieve.  Yet somehow, miraculously, it almost always does come together in the end.  Those little end details and piping work usually manage to take a cake from blah to beautiful.

Look at how awkward this is, halfway through the creating process.  It's going to look a lot better than that by the time it's done.

So one of the reasons we really liked the idea of this cake is how much piping work it required -- we love a good piping challenge.  This one was no small task, either.  The piping all over the ship is what transformed this RKT from odd blob to the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.  It gives the cake depth and details in a details and symmetrical way that we adore.  We would honestly make this cake every day if we could!

Base cake and icing reporting for duty!

After the ship was done, it was a pretty easy assembly of the base cake with the Star Wars logo running along side of it, some small stars detailed on, and then the placement of the completed Millennium Falcon on top.  Over and done with.

Check it out, and tell us what you think:

So there you have it!  Our first (of hopefully many) Star Wars cakes that we were able to create!  It was definitely a hit when we delivered it, so we can't wait for another Star Wars cake request to come along.

As a reminder to everyone who is planning out Easter dinner already, make sure you get your order in with us for the holidays.  Cakes, pies, cheesecakes, we've got you covered!  Help support small business and contact us today!

We'll be back soon with another update or 12.  As always, for more frequent updates on all the delicious goodies we're baking up, make sure to follow us on social media.  We promise looking at photos is completely healthy for you!

See you soon!

15 Things We Learned in 2015

For the past few years we've spent the last month or so in quiet reflection (ha, there's nothing quiet about our life) of the year we've had as a bakery.  We're a big fan of organized, meaningful lists, so we've come up with this as a way to laugh at ourselves, smile at the year we've had, and get ready for the new calendars we're preparing to hang.

We don't know about you, but from a bakery point-of-view we killed it in 2015!  Take a look at the list below to see all we've accomplished in the past 12 months!

15 Things We Learned in 2015

1. Setting a goal and achieving it is the best feeling in the world!

Last year we decided that for 2015 we wanted to book one wedding cake.  Just one.  We wanted to improve our skills enough that one sweet (maybe crazy) couple would say, yeah, you know what, let's do this, let's roll the dice and make this happen!

We didn't really have a game plan other than a simple, "Put yourself out there more!"  But it worked, somehow, because by December of this year we had made a wedding cake for 3 different weddings this year.  Three!  

It's so awesome to look back a year ago and see what a huge year it's been for us in the wedding world.  To others, 3 weddings may sound like nothing, but to us, it's hopefully the start of something great!

2. Wedding cakes are fantastic.  And stressful.  And fantastic.  And stressful.

As much as we've loved dipping a toe into the wedding world, we can't say it's been a smooth transition.  Something always seems to go wrong when the stakes are higher.  You know?

It certainly helps when you know what you're doing.  Or at least can fake it long enough to figure it out.  But our first few wedding cakes were not without their issues.  One of the cakes melted after we finished it, causing us to have a panic attack 45 minutes before we had to drop it off.  Another cake almost didn't survive the car ride to the reception hall.  

But at the end of the day, all 3 of these cakes represent 3 different couples who got married this year in Pittsburgh.  Each cake represents their own personalities: traditional, bold, romantic, quirky, unique, elegant, they're each one of a kind and pretty amazing.  And it's even more amazing to stand back and think, "Yeah, we did this!  We made these cakes!"

3. It's never too early to start planning out supply shopping trips

Our order volume has definitely increased this year, and it's something we've had to account for.  We can no longer just run to the store willy-nilly whenever we run out of milk.  Nope, like seasoned veterans we now understand that time management is crucial to a good baker. 

4. There's a thing to be said for stacking coupons at the store

Like our better time management skills, 2015 was also the year of the coupons!  With the price of eggs sky-high, it's important for us to remain competitively priced without losing money on the products we offer.  One way we've done this is through couponing.  Yeah, we've turned into one of "those" people at the registers.  But hey, it works, and in the long run it should make you happy too!  We didn't need to raise the prices on anything we offered this year, a savings we passed onto you!

5. Large cakes let our creativity shine

When we first started baking things for Pittsburgh, we still didn't have the training we needed to really conquer big cakes.  Sometimes it's still a learning process for us, if we're honest.  One of the downsides of being self-taught, the learning curve is much bigger.

But now that we've had the chance to make some awesome themed cakes this year, we must admit, it's a wonderful creative outlet for us!  There's nothing better than imagining a cake in your head and then watching it come to life before your very eyes!

If we had to pick a favorite cake we've designed in the past year, this would be top 3 easily.  Not because we're big boat enthusiasts, but because it was such an ambitious project for us to take on.  When we were approached to make this cake for a 60th birthday party, immediately this image popped into our head.  Let's make a boat shaped cake, stick it on some water, and serve it up.  But could we make this idea a reality?  

It took a lot of time, and careful detail work, but when this cake was done we were so proud of the results.  It was exactly how we imagined it, and the customer loved it too.  That's a win win!

6. Cheesecakes aren't as scary as everyone thinks (no really)

Another area we've really expanded in our bakery this year is our cheesecake creations.  Cheesecakes were always those big scary baked goods that no one ever seemed to want to touch.  They were too difficult, too fragile, too expensive, and just not worth the time.

But we decided to give it a whirl this year, and we're glad we did!  No, they aren't the easiest thing in the world to make, but it's a good challenging item for us to make, and an even better item to offer to our customers.  In November and December alone we sold 4 cheesecakes for the holidays!  That's some great additional business we might have missed out on in years past.

7. We still make mistakes in the baking world.  Major mistakes.

A week or so ago we were dipping pretzel rods into melted baking candies to make some Star Wars light sabers for a party we were attending.  Seems fairly simple, right?  Melt candies, flavor them, dip pretzels, let dry.

Except, we forgot you can't use an alcohol-based flavor on the candy melts, or it ruins the candies and you can't apply them to the pretzels.  So we ruined a huge batch of candies and had to go to the store for more.  It happens, and we're human.  Oh well.

8. Christmas cookies are great, but they lead to sleep deprivation

As we're writing this list, we are officially done with cookie baking season for the year, and enjoying the normal sleep patterns that January-October afford us.  While we love Christmas cookies as much as the next holiday elf, we don't want to see another cookie sheet for awhile.

9. When you're an adult, no one will yell at you if your dinner is the extra better in the bowl

Sometimes baking = late nights.

When you don't have time to cook yourself something healthy, cake batter it is.  With lots and lots of milk, of course!

10. There will always be someone who doesn't like what you do

Earlier this year we met with a potential client about a wedding she wanted us to bake for.  We brought some samples of our work, and while we talked she sat and ate a few of the things we had made.  After a few bites she very bluntly told us she thought it was awful and didn't want to work with us, abruptly adjoining the meeting.

At first we were a little surprised.  No one had ever ended a consultation like that before (even if they didn't end up booking us, they were still polite enough not to walk out).  Then we were worried something was wrong with our offerings.  Maybe they were horrible and we shouldn't be doing this?

But after some time, we realized what we offered wasn't what this woman was looking for.  And that's ok.  There isn't a one-size-fits-all in any world, especially a baking world.  It didn't work out with this one person, but for the dozens of other people we baked for this year it did.  Sometimes that's ok.

11. You can conquer the baking world with a powerful stand mixer and 5 lbs of sugar

True story.  If you like to bake and haven't invested in a good mixer, get to it!  And before you buy, research research research!

12. Know your limitations and stick to them!

Sometimes when we get calls about new orders it's exciting to us.  We want to say yes to everything, because it's still such a thrill that people actually want to hire us!

But we also need to sleep.  And function.  And shower.  We're a small bakery, one, maybe two people work on your items when you place an order with us.  There's only so much we can take on.  Sometimes growing a business means learning how to say no to orders you can't possibly take on.  That happened quite a few times this year, and we've learned it's ok!

13. Don't be afraid to try something risky.  Even if it doesn't turn out

This year PSR had it's first international order (read all about our adventure HERE) that was a step outside of our comfort zone.  Our customer wanted us to design a dragon out of cake, that required us to use baking skills we had never tried before.

At first we weren't sure if the cake would turn out the way we wanted it to.  And looking back, if we were to do this cake again we'd probably change a few minor things.  But even though the risk was high, the reward was even higher when we managed to pull it off and impress our customer.  And isn't that what it's all about??

14. Do something nice once in awhile, just because you can

Our little brother (not so little as he towers over us in height) has had a fun year helping out our bakery.  He's taste-tested more odd flavor combinations than any one person should have to.  He's stepped in to bake in a pinch when we're low on time and have 750 cupcakes to get out by the end of the day.  He's driven us (verrrrrrrry slowly) to wedding venues and helped us set up wedding cakes, navigating traffic, grumpy pedestrians, and tricky staircases.

We wanted to repay him for his birthday this year, because he's been helpful even when he didn't have to be.  Our brother is an avid comic book and Disney fan, so this year's Big Hero 6 was a film that was practically made just for him.  We knew right away that we wanted to turn it into a cake for him.

It was a labor of love, and one that we offered up for free.  But the end result was pretty great.  The San Francisco Bridge wrapping around the cake, some awesome figurines that he could keep and enjoy, it is another Top 3 cake of the year.  And one we truly fell in love with!

15. Dishes still suck

Maybe 2016 will be better?  We're not betting on it, though.

See you next year, fools!! :)  We can't wait to see what 2016 brings our way!

Pittsburgh Bakery - Pokemon Birthday Cake

Well it's been awhile!

Consistent blogging is never going to be our thing, we guess.

But we're back, with a fun new project we just worked on last week that was a fun break from all the pies we baked for Thanksgiving.

A lot of our business comes from friends and previous client referrals, and we can't tell you how much we love and adore your support.  No really, without you guys talking us up so much we'd be watching a lot more Netflix.  A friend recommended a new order to us though 2 weeks ago, and it was a cake we had so much fun making: a Pokeball!

We're geeky here at this bakery.  We regularly supply Geek Girl Brunch Pittsburgh with nerdy treats for their get togethers.  Our favorite cake of the year so far would probably be THIS Big Hero 6 cake we make over the summer.  So when you request we create a Pokeball cake, of course we're going to be 100% in on this idea!

What we loved about this cake was how easy it was to create, as well as how cute the cupcakes turned out.  Who wouldn't want a pokeball or two when they're made of sugar and super sweet??

We have another fun birthday cake coming up this week that we're super excited about and then the holiday rush is upon us!  If you haven't gotten your order in yet for holiday treats, don't wait, we have a limited number of days open still.

Until next time...and we promise it won't be 6 more weeks!

Birthday Cake: High Sea Adventures

Oh my word, where has summer gone?  It’s mid September already??  Mid-September???  Every year we think we want autumn to arrive, and every year we’d trade all our pumpkin spiced yumminess for another week by the pool.

Blame it on the calendar, but we’re super far behind on our blogging too.  Apologies to the three of you who regularly read our site (and boy do we appreciate it!)

In August we had a fun order for a themed cake we’d never done before.  Sarah is an old friend of PSR, and her dad was celebrating his 60^th birthday.  She had no idea what she wanted for a cake, she only knew they wanted to celebrate that he was 60.  Enter PSR!

When we meet customers to discuss orders with them, most people are worried because they don’t have any idea what kind of cake to request.  Relax, we always tell them, this isn’t our first consultation.  We usually ask some questions about themes, ideas, visions, etc., and within 20-30 minutes we can make a rough sketch for you of our vision for your baked goods order.  For Sarah, she listed a few things her dad was into, including boating, and we latched onto that idea.  A few napkin sketches later, and we have our vision for this cake with Sarah’s stamp of approval.

This cake ended up different than planned, though, which is something bakers don’t always tell you about – we change our minds a lot, sometimes mid-assembly.  For Sarah’s cake, we wanted to have just a boat to eat, but the more we worked with the idea, the more we felt it was incomplete.   The boat itself was also very unstable, so we added a cake base to give it a little more color and support.  

The end result, though, is something we couldn't have planned better if we tried.  It was a perfect addition to a 60th birthday family celebration!

Up next: We've got a lot of orders coming your way in September, from an order for a College event to another Pittsburgh wedding.  Stay tuned for more details, we'll try to blog sooner rather than later!

The Dog Days are Over!

August, where have you gone?  Summer, where have *you* gone??

It's been a wild 6 weeks here at PSR.  We spent a lot of time traveling and a little time baking.  Sometimes it just happens to work out like that when supper hits.  The call of the ocean, the mountains in all their glory, we headed out of town on several occasions and didn't think twice about it.

Ok, maybe we thought about it twice.  But that's it!

As August begins to wind down, kids head back to school, pumpkin spice EVERYTHING hits us, PSR is back with some awesome news and updates for you.

1. We have a fun themed cake coming up this week we're excited to share with you.  It will be a challenge, but one that we're totally up for.  Stay tuned on our facebook page for live updates, because we will be showcasing alllllll of the skills we've magically learned over the years.

2. PSR has signed up to help the Geek Girl Brunch Pittsburgh chapter with some awesome baking orders they have.  So be prepared to see a lot more geek-themed baked goods pop up in this blog and on our fb page.  We're super excited and already have a million ideas for some wonderful treats we'd like to eat!

3. As a friendly reminder to all you fall-lovers out there, our pumpkin cheesecake cupcake is available September - November only.  To borrow a phrase from 1999, it's the bomb dot com.  No really, it's amazing!  But it's only around for a few months, so be sure to order a few before it's too late!

It's Thursday, right??  We lose track of time some days.  Time to go enjoy the last few weeks of humidity in the burgh!

Birthday Cake: Big Hero 6

Maybe, just maybe, we'll be almost caught up on our blogging finally with this post.  Maybe!  Yay for rare weekends off!

Recently we've had a ton of orders for cakes, and not so many for cupcakes.  For some reason, it seems to come in waves.  All April we baked up dozens upon dozens of cupcakes for orders (we had to reorder cupcake boxes, that's how many we shipped out), but since then it's been a steady stream of cake designs.

Cakes are definitely more challenging to make and decorate than cupcakes, but they let us have a little more creativity, which we like.  After all, there's only so many things you can do to decorate a cupcake.

If you remember last year, we made a surprise birthday cake for our little sister, who owns her own photography business (don't remember??  It's ok, click here, catch up, we'll wait till you get back to continue).  We felt a camera cake would best fit her personality, and we were happy with how it turned out.

Fast forward to last week, our little brother was turning 23 and we wanted to make him a cake too.  He likes Disney movies, Asian culture, and goldfish crackers.  We took the first two likes and combined them into a Big Hero 6 cake.

The hardest part about this cake, ironically, was finding the figurines we would add to it.  Disney, stop marketing the crap out of Frozen, already, you have other wonderful films that aren't getting the attention they deserve.  Like Big Hero 6.  

San Frantokyo turned out pretty well for a last minute cake, and it tasted yummy too.  So now we've made cakes for both our siblings off our bucket list, finally!!

More cake updates coming soon.  We're excited to tell you about all this, guys!! :)  Stay dry out there this week!

PSR Goes International (kinda)

Sometimes the baking business is the pits.  Dishes to wash, invoices to write, budgets to magically budget.  If you think our lives are some magical fantasy episode of Ace of Cakes or something, that's very far from the truth.

But for every ugly dish we have to wash and dry long after we want to crawl into bed, we have moments that are fun and special and remind us why we got into this business in the first place.  Moments like this weekend, when we completed our first international order.

An international order for PSR is like the Pittsburgh International Airport claiming it's an international airport.  Sure, they have a daily flight to Toronto and Cozumel, but most people don't think of the PIA as an international travel destination.  Same with a bakery in Pittsburgh.  International orders?  What?

Here's what happened, though.  A woman contacted us from the UK to let us know her son's birthday was coming up, and he was now living in Pittsburgh.  She was hoping we could bake and deliver him a cake.  It took some planning, since most of our customers pay with cash or check on delivery (thanks, PayPal!), but once the logistics were worked out, we decided to make a cake with a Welsh dragon on top.  And write "Happy Birthday" in Welsh on top.  Because, you know, we majored in languages in college (nope, we didn't).

The cake turned out fantastically, though.  Take a look at some of the photos below of the prep work and finished results!  And stay tuned, we still have another wedding cake and birthday cake coming up soon that you'll want to see (no, really, you will!)

The head and neck of the dragon were molded from rice krispie treats.  It's a light-weight replacement for cake that's easy to sculpt)

Also, if you're like us and didn't know the difference between Great Britain and the United Kingdom, we found this handy dandy map for you.  This isn't just a baking blog, you guys, we're here to educate!!

Surprise Cake

So for the past few posts we have been hinting about a surprise cake we were creating soon but couldn't give you the details about.  Maybe that was kind of mean of us to do, dropping hints and offering no other details, but we have been so excited about this cake for so stinkin' long it was hard not to just tell everyone what was going on.  But we were patient, and the cake was finally delivered last night so we can tell you all about it.

This is our little sister, Allison.  She used to be that annoying little sister who follows you everywhere, but she has grown up to be a pretty awesome human being, and one of our best friends.  She runs her own wedding photography business (shameless plug here) so it's safe to assume she's pretty obsessed with photography.

A few months ago, we decided to do something nice for all of our siblings for their birthdays.  As much as we bake for customers, we don't ever really take the time to bake for close friends and family, mainly because we're so busy filling business orders.  But we decided to go with a themed cake for Ali's birthday, and what better theme than a camera?

The cake itself was actually a pretty straight forward design.  It's nothing ridiculously over-thought, and the cake inside is a classic vanilla bean (after red velvet, that's the cake Ali prefers).  What made this cake a bit of a challenge, though, was we did not make this in our own kitchen, where we have all of our supplies labeled and organized and ready to go.  We made this back at home, in our parent's house, where nothing seems familiar, and the only supplies we had were the ones we remembered to pack.  Imagine trying to paint a picture with only half of the paint brushes you normally have.

Even though we were limited in supplies and space, and the humidity tried to melt the fondant a good half dozen times, we're fairly happy with how the cake turned out.  Simple, whimsical, and pretty, exactly how the perfect cake for our baby sister should turn out!

Next up -- a pretty awesome cake for the baby brother.  But again, that idea will have to stay under wraps until we finally deliver it to him.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, guys!!  Enjoy the beautiful weather!!

Because I'm Happy??

What a week!  No seriously, it's been a crazy week of ups and downs.  Our computer has been on the fritz (computer gods, please help us out here), we messed up the side of our car in an awful no-win parking garage situation (thank you Pittsburgh Parking Authority) and today we sliced our thumb with a knife.  No seriously, this has been our week.  Can we get something happy?

To be fair, though, we've also had a lot of good things happen to us this week.  We met with a bride to go over some potential wedding cake ideas, managed to perfect our Ferraro Roche cupcakes (yes, you read that right), and we managed to make some delicious cheesecake.  So, does that mean our week was a wash?  A lot of good, a lot of bad, everything ends up just where it began?

We have so much coming up in these past few weeks, 60th birthday party cakes, a 2 year old's birthday, and let's not forget our Easter cupcakes that we're so excited to bake and ship out!  We also have 2 pretty awesome surprises in the works, but we can't leak any details quite yet.  We just know they're going to be some of the biggest cakes we've ever made!!  Sorry to tease you with such a sentence like that, we promise as soon as we can share more with you we will!

Until then, we'll be kicking back watching these Buccos, enjoying that spring is finally here.  Did you hear that?  SPRING IS FINALLY HERE!  Hope you're having a great weekend!!

Big Dreaming

We're a few weeks late with this, but we wanted to talk to you today about our New Year's resolutions.  Not our personal ones, mind you, but our bakery resolutions.  It's good to look forward into 2014 to see what we should be aiming for, right?  Well here are 3 resolutions Pittsburgh Sweet Relief has for this coming year.

1. Build an Epic Cake
We've made some pretty awesome cakes in the past 18 months of business (hellllllloooo, who could forget that we made this awesome cake...twice!) but this year we're thinking bigger and better.  We're thinking lots of tiers, lots of colors, lots of whimsy and imagination.  Honestly, we're thinking we want to go a little crazy here!  Our goal by December 31, 2014 is to have successfully made a truly amazing cake for someone that beats everything we've previously done!

Oh, and if you're on the fence about whether you want a big crazy cake for your birthday party/wedding/graduation/retirement/shower/etc you should drop us a line.  We're gonna offer huge discounts to the first person who lets us try this out for their event.  Monumental discounts.  So contact us.

2. Increase Our Business
This is a no-brainer, but it had to be said: obviously we want our business to grow.  We want more of you guys to fall in love with everything we have to offer.  This requires more dedication on our end, though.  2013 was a crazy year: We changed jobs, made new friends, sort of reinvented ourselves.  Personally, it was great, but all the time we devoted to training for a 5k was less time we had to devote to building our business.  It still grew, thanks to the wonderful support of all of you, but this year, we want to focus back in on what we love: baking wonderful things for you, and telling everyone about it.  Easy peasy, right?? :-)

3. Perfect Something New
In the past year we've learned a lot of new tricks to the trade.  We've learned a pinch of salt can go a long way.  We've learned that macaroons will always continue to be difficult for us to perfect.  We've learned that making flowers out of gum paste is a really relaxing way to spend 6 hours.  We've learned 365 days later we still don't like doing the dishes.

This year, though, we want to take something, learn it, and perfect it.  You know our staples are cookies, cakes, and cupcakes, and we don't feel like there's anything wrong with that.  In the past year we've dabbled with cheesecakes, bread, pies, and pastries, and we've learned lots of secrets to all of them.  Now it's our turn to step it up.  We're going to perfect the art of something, and add it to our repertoire.  We're going to make the effort to continue to educate ourselves about the baking world, and not stop until we've become successful at something new.

Big goals for 2014, we realize that.  But if you don't aim high, you don't achieve big things, right?? :-)  Anyway, these are our goals.  If you see us, hold us accountable.  Maybe we'll give you a cookie if you help us hold up our end of the bargain.

Polar Vortex Round II starts this week.  Get those fuzzy socks back out, it's gonna be a cold one out there!!

August Living

IT'S AUGUST!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)

We're sorry for all you haters out there, but August is our favorite month of the year!  Besides it being our birth month (and who doesn't love their birth month??!!?!) it's also,  in our opinion, the best summer month out there.  It seems like all sorts of fun things happen in August.  Family vacations, bonfires, early football games, pool parties....did we mention vacation??  Because we're going on vacation in less than 2 weeks, and we absolutely cannot wait!

We have one last order this weekend, and then we're peacing out for a 14 day hiatus until we're back with some more orders in late August/early September.  In that two week span we will:

1. Head to the beach with our favorite sister for some sun and surf (and boys!  Lots of boys.)
2. Attend our first ever Backstreet Boys/Jesse McCartney/DJ Pauly D concert in Cleveland.  Don't be jealous, even though we know you are.
3. Head out to a first place Buccos game.  We love baseball games in general, but heading out to a Buccos game right now...it's absolutely electric
4. Try out a few ideas we have for some new cupcake flavors.  Fall is coming...is it too early to start investing in some pumpkin?
5. Watch lots of awful television that we haven't had time to catch up on.

Even though this is a job we love (and we mean LOVE!), we still like to take some time off every once in awhile to sort of relax, refocus, and get all our ducks back in a row.  Whenever we've taken some time off in the past we've come back chomping at the bit to get back in the kitchen...that's always a good sign that you're doing something you love.  Most people don't like returning to their jobs after vacation, and to be honest, if someone wanted to pay us to never work again, we'd be fine with that too.  But coming back from vacation and heading back into the kitchen...we can't wait!

It's been a tremendously busy few weeks, and we've been honored and humbled by all the love, support, and (maybe most importantly) orders you guys have sent our way these past few weeks.  Birthdays (lots of birthdays!) weddings, baby showers, we have seen just about everything under the sun these past few weeks.  And we love it!  It's great to watch as our business slowly starts to grow through recommendations from others who have sampled some of our previous tastes.

Now the only question remains...who's going to bake us a birthday cake??

Have a fabulous weekend, guys.  Let's go Bucs!

Cookie Cake: Minecraft Edition

Hello friends!  Another beautiful weekend has come to an end, and we're not sure where all the time has gone.  Probably into the kitchen, where we've spent a good chunk of our weekend.

We had a fun task this weekend of making a very different birthday cake: a Minecraft themed cookie cake.  Carson's birthday party is Tuesday, but he's not a fan of cookie cake.  That's ok, though, because his mom told us he was a huge lover of cookie cake (who isn't?)  She wanted to know if we could make a cookie cake themed after a video game he loves, Minecraft.

If you've never played Minecraft, it's an interesting concept.  It's like Legos meets survivor meets Erector Set.  The game involves building homes out of different "element blocks", creating things through mining, and pretty much wasting a bunch of time you already don't have.  What's interesting about this game is how many people are flat out addicted to this game.  Kids as young as 5 play it, as well as some of our friends who are in their 30s.  It really doesn't have a limit to what it can do, unless your imagination limits it.

The graphics of the game is somewhat different and takes some getting used to.  Everything's very geometric and simple looking.  We felt like the game walked off our 1992 family computer.  Once you get past that, though, it's easy to become addicted.

With the idea of cookie cake as the background, we wanted a tasty cake that was decorated well.  We decided to make it 3D with some fun cookie blocks we built, that really kept true to the spirit.

So what do you think?

These pictures seem a little blank, and it's true, they're missing some things.  There are some Minecraft figurines that need to be added to the cake too, but they won't go on the cake until it's ready to be eaten.  We'll post some updated pictures later this week.

Happy birthday Carson!  Hope you have a fantastic day!!

And to the rest of you out there, hope you have a wonderful week.

**UPDATE**

Finally got a picture of the completed cake.  Looks like it was an awesome party!!

Dog Days of Summer

Man, guys, it's so hot!!

We hate this stretch of the year, when the heat and humidity just kill any motivation to bake that we have.  It's no small wonder we love baking in the winter, when it's super cold outside.

Our sister is a photographer (shameless plug, click here to view her ridiculously good photos) and she always talks about how her wedding business has a "down time", usually in the winter where not a lot of people choose to get married.  We wish we had the same "down time" in July with our baking, but alas we don't.  It seems you people always want to eat cake!

So through these hot months we crank up the air conditioning and pray for cooler days.  As in, nothing like this past week.

Nevertheless, baking still goes on.  We have quite a few orders in these hot and humid summer months, which is great news for us.  Starting a business is a ridiculously slow process (we think we've seen paint dry quicker than this business take off), but we're happy to see things starting to snowball. We have more orders now than we did a year ago, and it's a trend we're looking to continue in the coming months and years as we move into the next phase of our "Build a Bakery" stage.

We have another themed birthday next week that we're excited to tell you about in future posts.  If you follow us on Facebook you might already know what the cake is going to look like.  It should be a blast to make, and will allow us to do something we've never done before.  This blog is all about new experiences, so we're happy for the chance.

We're also trying to find some good reasons to spread our skills around for reduced or no costs.  If anyone reading out there knows of a good cause in or around the Pittsburgh area that might have need for some baked goods, give us a call.  Your talents and gifts are wonderful things, but they mean so much more when you share them with others.

We're out to go cool off the kitchen.  Wheeeew-eeey, this heatwave needs to break!

Stay cool, friends!

Baking Up Fresh: Dr. Who Birthday Cake

Happy weekend friends!  It's mid summer, the Pittsburgh Pirates are in first place in the MLB, and we are rocking the baking as we head into the July 4th holiday weekend.  If only summer time was a little cooler so we didn't have die slightly every time we opened the oven.

This weekend we've been busy baking a themed birthday cake for our baby brother.  He's finally turning 21 (huzzah!!) and we decided to surprise him with a Dr. Who cake to ring in the anniversary of his birth.

Haven't seen Dr. Who?  It's ok, we haven't either.  So it was a little challenging when we decided to make this cake, since we don't even know what the show's about. (since making this cake, a doctor, who can apparently change actors depending on the season, can time travel, or something like that, and tries to save the world.  We think...)

All we know is the one lady in Dr. Who is also in The Office.  So we found some comfort in that.  At least it wasn't too weird.

Since we can't make a cake of Nellie (how creepy would that be to see!!??!?!?!) we decided to go with the classic Dr. Who image: the Tardis.

We have no idea what this is actually used for in the show.  We think it's for time travel, but don't quote us on this.  We still haven't seen a single minute of this show.  However, if you type "Dr. Who" into google we guarantee images of this pop up.  So we thought, why not, let's build a Tardis out of cake.

Sounds simple...pretty straight forward too.  We forgot what a pain in the butt dying fondant navy blue is, though.  Since it's cheaper to buy fondant in bulk white, we hand-dye 95% of all our colored fondant, the only exception being black.  The darker the color is, the harder it is to dye...which is why we buy our black fondant.  But navy blue...that's about as close to black as you can get, which means it's going to take a lot of dye, a lot of kneading, and a LOT of time to get the right color.

To give you a perspective of time, it took us almost an hour to get our navy blue just the right color.  Partially because we're perfectionists, partially because we added too much black dye and it started to veer into the "grey" category.  With some work, though, we got it into the perfect shade we were looking for.  After that, it was just some simple decorating, and the cake was good to go.

Here's the finished result...what do you think?

Pretty close if you ask us.

What we loved about this baking challenge was our own lack of understanding on this cake theme: we've never seen the show, and it's not like we have the time to sit down and watch 10 episodes to get into the feel of the cake...we had to just jump right in and hope for the best.  Thankfully this show has such an iconic image we could use to replicate into a birthday cake.

Enjoy your holiday week, it's supposed to be beautiful out!!