Friday, October 31, 2008

Happy Halloween

We have these little pumpkin cakes from our new book. I think they look like mini pumpkins with funny faces just like Mr. Potato Head.

I love Halloween! When I was a little girl I used to spend a lot of time planning my costume and then proceed to complain to my mom if she made me put a coat on to cover it up.

Well, yesterday was a lot of fun and a really hectic day. I started out at the Today Show in the morning, showing Kathie Lee and Hoda some of our cookie lollipops from our new book, Confetti Cakes for Kids. Instead of making them in the design of candy lollipops we created ghosts, pumpkins and witch hats. (kinda like we did in our first book, The Confetti Cakes Cookbook, but less fashion focused.Watch it here and click here for the recipe.

Everyone at the Today show was so nice to work with, it takes so much behind-the-scenes preparation for just a four minute segment! We had brought along a few cakes too but we ran out of time.

We made this Witch Hat cake especially for the show but I don't think anyone could see it!

After that show I ran over to Martha Stewart to shoot a segment for a wedding special on The Style Network. I'll let you know when that airs.

Well, we have a jam packed couple of days with more classes today and next week, while we work on sugar decorations for our upcoming cakes and start making cookie dough for our next big event! And the Food Network just called for a HUGE challenge....

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Batman Lego Video

Cake is covered in rolled fondant marked with rolling pins to create brick effect

Remember a few weeks ago I told you that we were working on another video? Well it's finally done. It's of the Batman Lego Cake we made for the launch of the new Batman Lego Video.
The video is an abbreviated version of the process for making the cake and all the figurines but I hope it will give you a sense of it all. My friend, Lisa Stock, the amazing filmmaker edited down over ten hours of video tape and that was with stopping the camera every few minutes or else she would've had over 12 days worth of footage. The cake took about twice as long since we had all those stops but I hope you think it is worth it, see the video here. Here are some more still photos of the process.

Cake is airbrushed

I was hoping to get to my computer to write more but between cakes, classes, interviews and the release of our new book, Confetti Cakes for Kids, there has not been one extra second (or at least that is what I tell myself and thus the reason I have been avoiding the gym too.) Just to prove it to you (or me as the case may be) here are two great blog postings from two of my students from the last two weeks (I actually taught over eight private classes and four more this week too!) Tessa came from California and Bettinia came from Germany!

Just starting to decorate with the windows

Lastly, this Thursday morning I will be on the Today Show! I'll be on with the two hosts, Kathie Lee and Hoda around 10AM EST. So we are frantically trying to get all the cakes and cookies finished for that segment. I have a rehearsal the Wednesday night before so everything must be finished by tomorrow night...o.k. Bye!

Back of Cake

Sunday, October 12, 2008

It's LIVE!

Here's the cake Michelle made to surprise her College friends on "Rach to the Rescue"

After many, many months our brand new website is up and running! The new site will allow you to see some new cakes, link directly to our videos and pre-order our new book, Confetti Cakes for Kids, directly from us or Amazon. This is all thanks to countless hours from our amazing web designer Kristin Schreiber who is so creative and efficient and this all happened as she became a new mom! I swear she took less then two weeks off. So if you haven't seen the new website check it out here.
Behind-the-scenes at Michelle's beautiful house.

The last few weeks have been so busy and besides finishing up the site: we had three beautiful cakes go out, the segment of me on Rachel Ray aired (which I never got to talk about so here are some behind-the-scene photos), I did another segment on the show ABC News Now, and we were featured today on one of my favorite blogs, cakewrecks.com.

Delicious chocolate cake and swiss meringue buttercream!

Our Batman LEGO cake has gotten so much press I can hardly wait until our video comes out. I am meeting with the producer tomorrow to see the first cut so I'll keep you posted.

Michelle was a great sport and she received the VERY first copy of Confetti Cakes for Kids! The entire segment came together because of the two awesome producers Cara and Wes!