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Introducing Our New Look

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Erica OBrien in wedding cake | 4 Comments
You may have noticed that our blog has a new look. Our website will soon be revamped as well. Please visit Erica OBrien Cake Design soon for updates.

Skilled artisans make their craft look easy–effortless even. A good musician offers no indication of the hours and hours of time spent practicing. The same is true for cakes. I often get calls from potential clients–fans, no doubt, of popular television shows like Ace of Cakes–who request a cake for 30 guests in the shape of a Prada shoe sitting atop a Ferrari. When I tell them the price, they’re floored. I don’t blame them: On television, a 40 hour job is edited down to 20 minutes. Combine that with the artists’ expertise, and a challenging cake design looks ridiculously easy.

Logo design is no exception. Effective logos are eye catching, artistic, and memorable, all while accurately representing the organization or business. If you’ve ever thought, “I could do that myself”, you’d be wrong. There is a whole process to logo design. There are fonts to consider, issues of balance, design principles and theories, not to mention the psychology of branding. Color, I found out, is the last step. A good graphic designer, like any artist, makes the whole process look deceptively simple.

I turned to graphic designer Monica Majors of Paper Cut Industries to design my new logo. Hers is an in-depth process that begins with a questionnaire (I just love a questionnaire) about your business. The answers help her identify your style, taste, brand, and look. Then, after careful consideration, she presents “Round 1″ of your logos.

Round 1 includes three options, all in color and black and white. A good logo, Monica explained, should stand on its own and not be dependent on color. She further fine tunes and tweaks the logo in subsequent rounds until she arrives at the perfect design.

These are my “Round 1″ logos. I really liked Option No. 1, but I wanted the logo to somehow be more symbolic of cake. I asked Monica to create variations of Option No. 3 using different fonts and colors.

I narrowed down the colors to pink and a greenish aqua. I liked the round shape because I felt it best represented cake. I thought perhaps we could create a border around the circle to symbolize the piped border found on a cake. Here’s “Round 2″.

Finally, “Round 3″. My idea for a piped border around the logo didn’t have that “clean” look I really like, so we scratched that. While I like a lot of the script fonts Monica chose, they too lacked the streamlined style I’m known for, so I opted for two different sans serif fonts. I had a really hard time choosing between Option No. 3 and Option No. 6 in the Round 2 logos, but I finally settled on Option No. 3. In Round 3, Monica recreated the final design in a variety of color combinations.

And finally, introducing my new (larger-than-life) logo.

Thank you so much Monica. I love it.

Please note: All images are copyright material of Paper Cut Industries and are not intended for reproduction without their express written consent.

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Tricks of the Trade: Reviving Old Fondant

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Erica OBrien in dried fondant, fondant, tips + tools | 9 Comments

Once your fondant is past its prime, there’s really nothing you can do to restore it to its formerly silky smooth state. However, while it will never be perfect, there are a few things you can try to make old, dry fondant workable again.

1. Glycerine. Glycerine is an ingredient in fondant that keeps it pliable and prevents it from drying out too quickly. (For a fascinating, scientific explanation of glycerine’s role in keeping fondant flexible, read this post on Joe Pastry’s blog.) Glycerine is a humectant (a moisture-retaining substance), so the molecules in glycerine bond with and trap water molecules, keeping your fondant moist (Source: Joe Pastry, 2008).

It’s one of those ingredients you can buy in a drug store (as a humectant, glycerine also keeps hair and skin moist) for a fraction of the price of a cake decorating store. If you’re willing to forgo the fancy branding you can get a quart-sized bottle of Essential Depot glycerine (below, left) on Amazon for $13.95; the 2-ounce bottle of Wilton glycerine (below, right) is around $5. At just .43 cents per ounce, the Essential Depot is a much better value than the $2.50 per ounce Wilton glycerine. Just be sure that if you buy glycerine that’s not specifically marketed for cakes it says “Food Grade”.

To use, simply knead a little glycerine in to your fondant. Begin with about a teaspoon per pound of fondant, and work quickly to knead it in. This will buy you some time before your fondant dries out, but not much. Re-roll and apply your fondant.

Glycerine can also be used on fondant that’s been rolled out and applied to a cake but has a dry cracked appearance, sometimes known as “elephant skin”.  Gently rub glycerine onto the cracked fondant using the tips of your fingers, taking care not to rub through to the cake.

2. Shortening.Usually known by the brand name Crisco, hydrogenated vegetable oil (shortening) is 100% fat (as opposed to butter, which is about 80% fat). Kneading a small amount in to your fondant can make it smoother and easier to work with. Be very careful: adding too much can make your fondant heavy and stretchy. (If this happens, add additional corn starch or sifted confectioners sugar and knead in until the proper consistency is restored.) Shortening, like glycerine, can also be rubbed onto cracked fondant after the fondant has been applied to the cake to remove the appearance of elephant skin.

3. Food Processor. The food processor method works especially well for smaller pieces of fondant. Simply place a small amount of fondant into the bowl of your food processor and pulse. The blades of the food processor with heat and soften your fondant, making it easier to work with. (This is also a good method for coloring fondant: Just add your food coloring along with your fondant to the bowl of your food processor and pulse.) The food processor will most likely break your fondant up into small balls which can then be easily gathered and kneaded together. Be sure not to put rock hard pieces in the food processor. (I learned the hard way that this can cause irreparable damage to your food processor.)

4. Microwave. The microwave is the absolute last resort. If your fondant has become so dry that kneading becomes virtually impossible, 30 seconds or so in the microwave will heat it enough to make it kneadable again. (Do test your microwave first using 10 second intervals.) However, this is a one shot deal. You have to work quickly to roll out your fondant and cover the cake, for once microwaved fondant cools down, your fondant will become even drier–almost crumbly–and cannot be used again.

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Ruffle Cake, Three Ways

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Erica OBrien in wedding cake | 3 Comments
I can never predict when design inspiration will strike, but when it does–in the children’s section at Target, searching the internet for office supplies, driving on the 405 Freeway–I feel compelled to recreate it in cake almost immediately. Next thing I know, I’m racing to my studio to execute the design. Sometimes, but not always, I actually like the result.
Ruffle cakes are usually covered completely in ruffles. Why not, I thought, be more subtle with my ruffles, using them only as an embellishment? The first cake was inspired by the ruffle bibs popular on shirts right now, like this one I saw on Ruffles and Stuff.
The next ruffle cake started off sort of mauve. Note: Shades of purple fondant change and fade rapidly and unpredictably. Whenever I make a cake with any shade of purple, I always do a test strip in advance. (Roll out a small piece of fondant and allow to dry. This will give you a more accurate idea of what your purple-tinted fondant will look.)

I’ve always loved those rocks with words etched on them, and attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to make them out of fondant. (I’ll have to give this another try at some point.) I wanted this ruffle to be vertical, like the ruffles on the pillow below, but it needed something else so I added a ruffled rosette.

I didn’t know it when I created this last cake, but after searching endlessly on the internet for the image that inspired it, I realized that the inspiration actually came from one of my favorite shirts of my daughter’s when she was just born. Although it was a deep green, it had three small horizontal ruffles on the front, just like the top tier in the cake below.
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How I Got Started in Cake Design {Part II}

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Erica OBrien in cake decorating, cake design | 6 Comments

Growing up, we usually got ice cream cakes for our birthday parties. (My mom was always really good about ordering them in advance so we could special-order the flavors we wanted rather than having to settle for the pre-made ones.) Although I remember not liking cake much–it wasn’t until I was much older that I understood how good a cake made from scratch and filled with French buttercream can be–you couldn’t tell from this picture of me in 1973 at four years old:

Okay, so I started cake design with Wilton, and I was pretty good. (You can read How I Got Started Part I here.) I got a really solid foundation from the Wilton classes, but I was well aware that Wilton is sometimes frowned on in the cake industry as somewhat amateurish, and, truth be told, it made me self-conscious. So I went on to take more professional-level classes at various schools in New York City. I remember once, at a gumpaste flower class at The New School, the instructor asked us to introduce ourselves and tell a little about our cake design backgrounds. I sheepishly mentioned that my only cake design experience thus far was with Wilton, to which she replied–and I’ve always been grateful she said this–”Everyone starts with Wilton!” I never felt self-conscious about my humble beginnings again.

I was introduced to fondant at a store in Jackson Heights, Queens, where I bought a lot of my supplies. Fondant had already gained popularity in South America, and was widely used in England and Australia. I liked the look of fondant and took the class. This was my first fondant cake (again, very Wilton), for my sister’s baby shower. My nephew (my sister’s first ”baby”) is almost 10 now, so I guess I did this about 11 years ago.

Once I had the designing down, I had to tackle the baking. At first, I used box cakes. Real cakes seemed too intimidating, and besides, everyone told me they liked my cakes better when I used Duncan Hines. (With all those yummy artifical flavors and preservatives, could you blame them?) I finally took a cake baking class at ICES, and realized that the problem was both my technique and my recipes. Cake baking, unlike cookie baking or other types of cooking, is a true science. There’s no such thing as eyballing measurements, adding a pinch here or a tweak there. All of the ingredients in a cake interact in very specific ways, each causing different chemical reactions, so it is absolutely imperative to follow a cake recipe exactly and measure accurately. That said, just because a recipe is in print, doesn’t mean that its been tested or is even very good. It took a lot of experimentation to find recipes that worked for me. I didn’t invent my own (although my carrot cake does have a secret ingredient), and I am happy with the recipes I now use.

I specifically remember that this cake, from 1996, was a Duncan Hines yellow cake.

An old boyfriend bought me my first KitchenAid, and it served me well until, at age 35, I met my soon-to-be husband. He was 25, lived with his dad, worked only part-time, and owned his very own KitchenAid. I fell in love and moved to California to be with him, bringing my KitchenAid along with me. (We eventually sold mine for fear that it would bring bad karma.) I got a job teaching at a high school in Los Angeles and made the mistake of announcing to my students on the first day that I was from New York, thinking they’d find me cool. Instead, things rapidly deteriorated into a Biggie Smalls vs. Tupac style rap war, with me representing the east coast and my students the west. You’d be amazed how often our coastal difference surfaced, and my focus on New York history only confirmed their suspicion that I thought the east coast superior. (The fact that I was teaching early American history and most of it takes place on the east coast was a moot point.) I went home crying almost every day.

This is where the zaniest, craziest thing I ever did for cake comes in. You can read more about it here.

I’ve been at it for about 15 years, and I’ve come a long way. At first, I did cakes for free, for $10, for coworkers, for family, and for friends. I practiced for 10 years before I had the confidence to do it professionally. Once, when a magazine contacted me and asked if I had any designs inspired by family heirlooms, I lied and said yes. I made four cakes in a day, had my husband photograph them, and got three of them published. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never had a disaster befallen one of my cakes (more about that in a future post), but I’ve learned so much from every single one. And the best part is, I’m still learning.

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More Cakes Inspired by Imagery

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Erica OBrien in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I got such a positive response to my last post on cakes inspired by imagery that I decided to use the same format again.

Here are two more inspiration boards and the cakes they inspired.

Photographer Ashleigh Taylor Henning (adorable, talented, really nice) wanted to create a photo shoot based on the restaurant scene in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. Being pretentiously, even obnoxiously unfamiliar with the movie (really though, I’ve never seen it), I had no idea where to go with the cake, so Megan Gray of Honey and Poppies created this inspiration board (mostly) for me. (Blame her for not properly crediting the photos.) You can see more images and read more about Ashleigh’s concept on Green Wedding Shoes, but here is the inspiration board and a few shots of the cake.

I created the next cake for a Tuscany-inspired shoot with Jeannie Ward and photographer Chris Griffiths of Imagery Immaculate at Serra Plaza, a new venue in San Juan Capistrano. I was particularly struck by the texture on the lace (top left photo) in the inspiration board, and recreated it on the cake by pressing fondant onto a sieve and outlining it with piped royal icing. You can see the rest of the Tuscany-style Wedding images on Style Unveiled.
Thank you so much for stopping by. Cheers!
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How I Got Started in Cake Design {Part I}

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Erica OBrien in cake decorating, wilton | 7 Comments
A lot of people ask me how I got started in cake design. Here’s the first part of the two-part story.

It’s ironic that I bake. My mom was not the type to have a home-baked snack on the table for us when we came home from school. She was more the health food type, going to great lengths to incorporate some wheat germ (the kale of the 1970s) into our meals whenever possible. If anything, whipping up a batch of cookies from scratch seemed a task akin to cutting crown molding (which, if you’ve never done it, is basically impossible. Seriously, check out this link and tell me if you think you could do it.) She did encourage us to be creative, however, and was never a stickler for a clean kitchen (though I know she’d disagree). Combine that with the fact that she was a single parent with a full time job, and that gave my sister and I a lot of time home alone to experiment.

Our first mixer was a hand-held one. I assume my mother got it as a wedding gift, but I’ll have to ask her. It looked a lot–though not exactly–like this:

It worked fine early on from what I remember, but in its later years, it became somewhat possessed, turning on spontaneously and without warning, always while resting in a bowl of runny batter, causing the batter to splatter all over the kitchen. In one particularly traumatizing run-in with the mixer, I was demonstrating for my sister how it tickled to gently run ones finger along the blades of a rotating beater, only to have my entire hand rotate along with it and wind up stuck between the two beaters. We had to go over to the next apartment (my mom, needless to say, was not home), with my hand still stuck in the hand mixer, so that our neighbor Joe could free my hand by bending the beaters.

While some of my friends had lifelong ambitions and knew since second grade what their career path would be, I never had any aspirations and never wanted to be anything in particular. Even the career choices most popular among my elementary school counterparts–veterinarian, pediatrician, teacher, lawyer–held no allure for me. My mom encouraged me to pursue whatever made me happy.

In college, I majored in Liberal Studies. Here is a picture of me that I just had to include because, well, it’s friggin’ hilarious. I’m the one with the big hair…Oh, sorry. I’m the one in the center with the big hair.

I graduated in 1991, in the midst of a deep recession and with no clue what I wanted to be or do. I got a job at a real estate law publishing company in Manhattan (I thought maybe I wanted to be a writer; receptionist at a publishing company seemed close enough), and the walk from the 23rd Street F Train exit to my job on 21st and Broadway took me right past New York Cake and Bake. I frequently found myself wandering in, in awe of all the gadgets, tools, and equipment. I had no idea what any of them did, but I was deeply intrigued. The store was like a museum to me, a place to just wonder at all the things you’ll never be able to master. One day in 1995, I walked by and they were advertising an inexpensive Wilton class. I signed up.

I loved the class, like I knew I would, and to make it even better, I was good at it. This is a picture of my very first tiered cake, in the pre-fondant days. Note the quality photography and classic Wilton drop flowers, string work, and ruffle border. I remember that I loved this cake, though looking at it now it’s hard to remember what it was exactly that I loved about it.

Lest this blog post should go on forever, I’ll be telling the rest of the story in a separate post. Please read the rest of my story in Part II.

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Cakes Inspired by Imagery

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Erica OBrien in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

This might surprise you, but I actually don’t like it when a client leaves the cake design completely up to me, giving me the artistic freedom to create whatever I want. I can’t speak for other artists, but I’ve found that this makes it almost impossible since there’s so much that inspires me. When the possibilities are endless–and so is your imagination–the task of narrowing it down and choosing a focus becomes very overwhelming. Instead, I like working within a conceptual framework and using my artistic eye to interpret the design in my style.

Event stylists and even the occasional client often provide an inspiration board–a collection of images intended to convey the mood of the shoot or event–and I find them immensely helpful. (I sometimes create my own  inspiration boards. I’m not a graphic designer, so I copy and paste the images into Microsoft Paint. Someone more skilled would use Photoshop. There’s a board builder on Style Me Pretty, and I think some people are now using Pinterest in lieu of building boards.) Being very visual, working with inspiration boards is my favorite way to design. They usually contain a color palette, and many non-cake photos with prints, patterns, shapes, or other designs for inspiration (hence the name). 
 
Below are several inspiration boards and the cakes they inspired. I would love to see how other cake designers would translate the images into cake. I just think it would be fascinating to see how different artists interpret same thing.
Greco-Roman Wedding (stylized shoot). Board and styling by Vanessa Van Wieren of Alchemy Fine Events. Cake photos by Jill Thomas.
Jose Villa Workshop. Board and styling by Jill La Fleur. Cake photos by Jose Villa.
Lavender Inspired Wedding (stylized shoot). Board and styling by Brooke Keegan. Cake photos by Lane Dittoe.
Steel Magnolias (stylized shoot). Board and styling by Amorology. Cake photos by John Schnack.
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A Modern Indian Wedding Cake

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Erica OBrien in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

I usually ask clients to bring photos of cakes they like to the consultation. Often, at first glance they seem to have nothing in common, and it’s my job to help the client gain focus. I love the challenge of finding the common elements that tie all the cakes together. Radhika, a bride I recently worked with, had a lot of ideas for her wedding cake, and brought in a lot of photos (below) for inspiration. (I recognize several of them as Sweet and Saucy Shop, the now-defunct I Dream of Cake, and my designs, but unfortunately I can’t credit all of them.) See if you can find the common thread:

Essentialy, I determined that Radhika likes cakes that incorporate modern, cleaner interpretations of more traditional designs. Then she threw me when she sent these images for inspiration:


It helped that Radhika created her own sketch (seen here on the right) that included the clean, modern, graphic style I’m known for and the traditional Indian elements she wanted to use. The sketch was pretty, but it didn’t quite work for me.

The detail on the bottom tier was too small to balance out the bigger, bolder designs on the top two tiers. I suggested that the designs on the three tiers go either small-big-small or big-small-big, and she opted for the former. In my first sketch, I tried to balance the design a little more and use Radhika’s color scheme of turquoise, orange and fuchsia.

Something about the colors wasn’t quite working, so I turned to the online color palette generator that I love. From there I determined that Radhika should really replace the orange in her primary color scheme with yellow, and include the orange as a secondary accent color. A few screen shots from the site are seen to the right and below.

Once we finalized the color palette, we talked about changing the cake to four tiers. She really wanted a 3-D sugar paste flower, but it just wouldn’t work within the original three-tier design. She decided on a four-tier (thank you Sonia Sharma, Radhika’s event planner), and when I created the sketch I knew I was on to something:

The wedding and reception were held on May 14th at Rancho del Diablo Dormindo in Malibu, California. Here are some photographs of the cake.

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Four Cake Design Essentials You Won’t Find in a Cake Decorating Store

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Erica OBrien in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

I get lots of my supplies and tools at cake design stores, particularly online stores where products are often less expensive. But I also use a lot of tools that you won’t find in any cake design store. Here are four I can’t do without:

1. Vodka. I buy the cheapest vodka I can find in the largest quantity. Vodka evaporates much more quickly than water and therefore won’t dissolve the sugar in fondant the way water will. I mix vodka with luster dust to liquify it and use in my airbrush. I also use vodka rather than airbrush cleaner to clean my airbrush. Simply fill the color cup with vodka and spray until it runs clear.  For cleanups on fondant-covered cakes, lightly moisten a paper towel with vodka and gently wipe away stray marks.

2. Non-slip shelf liner. An indespensible tool, non-slip liner is worth its weight in gold, although it’s very inexpensive. For about $5, you can buy a large roll at Target. I place it under my cakes and my commercial cooler to prevent them from sliding around during transport. It can also be used under a cutting or rolling board so that it won’t slip on the table surface.



 3. Sandpaper. I use sandpaper to soften the edges on dummy cakes (where the side meets the top) so that my fondant won’t tear as easily. I also use it to smooth the seams on the sides of the dummies. Sanpaper works perfectly on dried sugar decorations. Rather than risk cracking them by applying the pressure of even the sharpest blade, I smooth rough edges on dried gumpaste and pastiallage pieces with sandpaper.

The trick is to know what grit to use. The lower the grit the rougher the sandpaper and conversely, the higher the grit the smoother the sandpaper. 100-grit sandpaper is rougher than 200-grit sandpaper. “Grit” referes to the number of abrasive particles per inch of sandpaper (woodzone.com). An easy way to remember is to imagine a 1″ square. Think about how small and fine the particles would have to be to fit 300 into that square inch, and how much bigger (and rougher) the particles would be to fit 50 particles. I tend to use finer sandpaper on my sugar pieces (300 or 400) and slightly rougher sandpaper (150 or 200) on my cake dummies.

4. Easy Cutter. I use 1/4″ wooden dowels (be sure to buy them at a hardware store rather than a crafts shop) to support my cakes. To cut them, I use the Midwest Easy Cutter, a tool specifically designed for cutting small wood strips. It has a guide so that you can ensure your cuts are exactly 90 degrees. Some of the larger Jo-Ann Fabrics stores carry them in their woodcrafts department, or you can purchase them at the online art store, Dick Blick.


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Have a favorite cake design tool that’s not intended for cake? Please feel free to share it here.

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Brides Magazine Most Beautiful Cakes

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Erica OBrien in brides magazine 50 most beautiful, martha stewart | 8 Comments

Perhaps you’re familiar with Brides Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful Cakes issue. Perhaps, like me, you’ve studied it for hours on end, wondered at the cakes’ perfection, marvelled at the design concepts, and perused the artists’ websites.

Or maybe that’s just me.

It’s not that I didn’t dare to dream of someday being in it. It’s that it never even occurred to me to dare to dream it. Then I got an email from the editor of Brides, asking me to submit sketches for the issue, and a dream I didn’t even know I had was suddenly within reach.

The editor outlined the in-depth selection process in the email: Submit sketches–as many as you wish–that reflect new and unique techniques and designs. If the sketch is accepted for the semi-finals, the artist submits an 8″ by 8″ sugar tile sample to demonstrate the technique. After the sugar tiles are reviewed, the artists are notified whether their cake is accepted for the photo shoot for the magazine. Even at this stage there is no guarantee, the email warned: design execution issues, acts of nature, or damage in shipping can all render the final product unphotographable.

I got right to work.

I consulted my inspiration file, my mom, and my husband, and created four designs. Of course anything can be drawn on paper, but actually making it out of fondant can be a challenge, so I had to sketch designs I could actually execute. (I didn’t, but that’s another story.)

I submitted my sketches and waited. And waited. Finally, I got the email: they liked two of my designs. They wanted to see one exactly the way I drew it, and for the other they wanted to see two variations (one the way I sketched it and another that combined an element from a third sketch).

I created my sugar tiles and, after allowing ample drying time, shipped them off to New York. Some more waiting and then another email. They liked one of the sugar tiles, the one with the variation from another sketch, and wanted to shoot the cake for the issue. My cake design made it to the finals!

So, next week, I leave for New York with my cake and deliver it to their studio.

Meanwhile, here are two of my designs that didn’t make it. For each sketch, I created a board with a brief explanation of the design and inspiration.

Here, I used a ruffled shower curtain and pillow for inspiration. I liked the colors in the shower curtain (on the left) but wanted it pleated like the pillow (on the right). The sketch looked better in my imagination than in real life, and I wasn’t surprised they didn’t like it.

The next design, one of the two accepted to the semi-finals, was very Martha Stewart inspired, and I used her muted tones for the color palette (which is where I think I went wrong).

Here’s the sketch. Although at first glance you think “I’ve seen that before,” you’ve seen it out of paper and never out of fondant.

And the sugar tile. I think if I had it to do over again, I would make the cake white and the pleated pinwheels bright colors so they would pop.

Barring natural disasters or extreme bad luck, you will see my cake in the September issue of Brides. Even if my cake doesn’t make it to the magazine…Forget that. My cake better make it to the magazine, but I’ll let you know.

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