A bride of mine, mentioned me on her site... Limoncellostyle... it's "an event preparation company offering custom invitation suites, custom cards and DIY rescue for social events." She does a fantastic job, check out her site and her blog. 

Questions...

Do I watch the cake tv shows? Yes, of course... love them! 

Do I watch the theme cake decorating contests? Yes, was actually scouted by a Food Network cake scout, so who knows what might happen!!! 

Do I want to throw up when someone make a figure sized between a brick and a bread box out of modeling fondant, airbrushes it and calls it edible? Um... sort of. Technically it is edible, and I think it's cool that things can be made out of this sugar! But yeah, no one really eats (or would want to) eat it. For the most part, I think the majority of the cake, should be cake, I don't mind a few decoration pieces, but at least 75-80% of what is standing there, should be edible. 

Pulling the Trigger

Ugh... I did it. I just spent an exorbitant amount of money on boxes.

Yes, boxes. 

I've always wanted to have a signature line of Sin truffles... the 7 deadly sins and the 7 heavenly virtues. So I've pulled the trigger on some small truffle wedding boxes (holds 2) and some medium devil tail boxes that will hold 4 truffles. I know.. not 7, but I don't think I can get 7 separate truffles ready in time! We have a big event for a group called Connect Providence on February 10th. So, I'm going to start slow, build up the line, introduce a few now around Valentines day and go from there. 

I'll post some pictures when I get the boxes! 

I hate spending money, but I'm excited about the prospect the truffle line! 

Slow, Slow, Slow....

So, it's January. Not a really big month for weddings. We had a couple of weddings on New Years, but that's it, the next wedding is March 14th. We have a few smaller parties and birthdays booked and we always get a few extra orders every week, but it's a lot slower than the summer. 

We're filling the time making cake dummies for an upcoming wedding show and making pieces in advance for other cakes. I'm working on duplicating a Vera Wang dress, Keri is making a sophisticated shell cake and our intern Emily is working on really cut beachy cake with a couple standing in the sunset. Then we're going to start getting pieces ready for a Alice in Wonderland theme cake, a Star Wars cake, a house shaped cake and a few others. We'll post some pictures when we're done. 

We do have lots of tastings though. We are booked completely for the next 3 Saturdays. Tastings on the hour from 10 till 3 every Saturday! You never know what to expect at tastings. Some brides know exactly what they want, bring in pictures and want that cake to the letter. Other's bring in a few photos and you piece-meal a cake together from their favorite items. Others have no idea. They're the hardest. Sometimes you sketch out a few ideas and one will catch with them then you can expand on it and narrow the sketch down to fit them. Other times you sketch out tons of ideas and because they don't really have a clear vision of what they want, they can't choose any of them. It's frustrating for everyone and I always feel bad when we have that kind of tasting. So we'll see what tomorrow brings! It's always fun though, I like being part of such an important and meaningful event. I like that I can bring a bit more happiness to an incredible day in their lives! 

Hostess with the Mostess

Thursday night my friend Laura and I went to Boston (in the freezing cold) to see Jen and Jen from Hostess with the Mostess website. 

There were some great cocktails from Chamboard, I had the French Martini... 1.5 oz of Vodka, .25 oz of Chambord and 2 oz of Pineapple juice! It was yummy. Laura had the Kir Royal, .25 oz of Chambord finished off with champagne. The hotel, Nine Zero, passed some delicious appetizers... scallops in bacon, mini cheeseburgers, lobster salad on brioche... all in a beautifully decorated room. After some drinks and some food the fun was to begin. 

Jen got up in front of the crowd and gave some great pointers on how to decorate chic and modern on a budget. Some examples she gave were to use paper from a scrapbooking store as placemats... they come in a variety of colors and designs and coordinate with each other. She then used the same paper to wrap a plain glass vase with, cut out the designs and made napkin rings and put rub on transfers on plates to finish off the look. It was all so easy, yet I would have never thought of it! She also suggested splurging on one big floral arrangement and then using floral pieces in large tall cylinders filled with water and rocks. 

Then Chambord did a cocktail presentation showing us how to make the drinks that were available. When they asked for a volunteer to come up as to try the "Boston Creme Pie" drink, my hand shot up! I went up and I think I made the presenter nervous when I mentioned that I was a pastry chef. He rimmed the glass with graham cracker crumbs then mixed up 1 oz of chambord, 1 oz vodka, 1 oz cream and .5 oz sweet and sour and shook well. It was good, though it was more of a raspberry cheesecake, then a raspberry boston creme pie. (Personally, I would switch out the vodka for vanilla vodka!) 

We had a lot of fun and I look forward to using their ideas in some upcoming parties! 

Blogged by SNAP!

The photo girls from Snap, Trish and Mariah, dropped by the other day and did a nice little piece on Sin! Check it out here.... Snap blog.  Their photography is great! Check out their website too.... Snap!

La Bella Bride Wedding Show

Yesterday Keri, my assistant, and I did our first bridal show at the Hotel Viking in Newport. It was sponsored by LaBella Bride Magazine. And of course it was snowy, icy and crappy out! Just our luck. It's hard to tell if it was a good show or not, due to the weather, it was slow, but would it still have been slow if the weather was good... don't know. We got about 30 bridal leads (less than I was hoping for) and many of them were for 2010 weddings. We'll contact the brides this week and set up tastings for them. If we're lucky we'll sign about half. We have another show in February, again in Newport, at Ocean Cliff. Hopefully the weather is better! 

Not knowing what it was going to be like, we decided to go simple. We had 2 cake dummies, sign up sheets, cards, and 3 types of samples. We did mini cupcakes for the samples so we wouldn't have to slice sheet cakes. And we choose our favorites... red velvet, chocolate bourbon and chocolate chip. Maybe we should have done a white or a carrot cake, but people seemed to like the cupcakes, so I think we were all right. 

There were 2 other cake vendors there... Victoria from Toria Dolce in CT, and Scrumptions from East Greenwich. I spoke with Victoria, she's a great person, but didn't talk to Scrumptions, nor did I get to sample anyone else's treats. 

Everyone loved Keri's French Chic wedding cake dummy! I'll post pictures later, when I figure out how to do that! 

Coming up this week is the Channel 10 NBC wedding on Friday and a small wedding on Saturday, both are getting the glitter cake (these will be the 3rd and 4th glitter cakes in the last 3 weeks... a very popular option for a winter wedding!). We're also concentrating on coming up with some Valentine options and are trying to do a very fancy cake dummy for the next show... I don't know if it will work, we'll keep you updated. Also I'm attending the Hostess with the Mostess show on Thursday in Boston. 

Until then... Sin a little! 

Welcome!!

Hi! 

This is the first post in my blog. I hope to keep it updated at least once a week. I'll be adding pictures of cakes that we've made, stories from the bakery and information on what I go thru running a small company. Maybe even a few recipes! 

I hope you enjoy the show...