Celebration Cakes

This past weekend has been a whirl of cakes, including celebration cakes.

I was given full creative freedom to come up with whatever I wanted, and had really specific ideas for how I wanted the cakes to be.



Wes's cake- my good friend's husband had his 40th birthday. He is a craftsman/metalsmith/carpenter/designer and makes beautiful objects. I felt inspired by his use of metals and clean, minimal materials. His cake felt to me like it should be looking like metal stacked, sort of Frank Gehry-esque.

As for the flavor, his wife gave me their favorite chocolate bar--organic dark chocolate with ancho chilies, with dried cherries scattered throughout. I baked a dark chocolate cake with ancho chili, a layer of sour cherry compote, then a espresso and vanilla whipped buttercream. All covered in a dark chocolate glaze and dusted.



Helemai is a friend from jewelry design who is from Estonia and hates anything too sweet. For her I baked the carrot cake from my book with the lemon zest cream cheese frosting. Her favorite colors are yellow and orange, and I felt like crazy, messy flowers sort of like a vintage fabric, would be perfect.






Clyde's kindergarten teacher had a surprise baby shower in class, unfortunately Clyde was home sick with the flu, so we only got the shots of the cake before she did. A vanilla whipped buttercream in a pale blue, with white flowers, silver glitter dusted stamen.

Life is sweet...we all need to celebrate with cake!