A Stroll Down Memory Lane - 2011, Part 1

photo: Christie Pham Photography

It's been a few months since our last "Stroll Down Memory Lane" post. I purposely paused the retrospective after the year 2010, knowing 2011 would require a lot of time to write. 2011 changed our lives in incredible ways! The single biggest event that year was our book deal for EXTREME CAKEOVERS with our publisher, Clarkson Potter. Then all the hard work began! Also that year, Rick began teaching his "Discover Your Inner Artist" classes with his first stop in Canada. The classes were arranged the previous year, long before a book was on the horizon. After returning from Canada in in the Spring, we immediately started the book.

In 2011, we received the coveted "Best of HONOLULU" award for "Best Custom Cakes" by Honolulu Magazine, and Rick's wonky cake was selected for the cover, which were thrilled about! The Hard Rock Cafe Waikiki had its grand opening party which Rick made an outrageous Tiki themed cake for. The year was also full of photo shoots. Just when one was ending, another was starting. We still look back and don't know how we did it all - juggling cake orders, working on the book, traveling to teach, and trying to maintain a blog! It was a crazy, nonstop year of 13 hour workdays. We discovered what we were really made of!

Before all the craziness began that year, we were "just" making cakes, which we've done quite happily for the previous 6 years we were in business. In fact, it is hard to imagine not making the cakes for clients. It brings tremendous satisfaction and keeps the creative juices flowing, and one of the reasons we chose to accept orders while working on the book. We've selected some of our favorite cakes from that year to share with you.

In January 2011, Rick made the gorgeous wedding cake (above) shown next to its inspiration piece, the bride's designer Anne Namba gown. It is one of our favorite wedding cakes ever! The client also ordered a sculpted cat groom's cake pawing a 3-tier wedding cake.

Less than a week after this wedding, Rick made a sculpted Snoopy cake driving a race car for a birthday party. It was all made of cake and took quite some time to make!

A Stroll Down Memory Lane - 2010. Part 1

2010 marked our 5th year in business, and was a turning point for cakelava. We began having a larger presence in the media, and Rick received his first invitation to teach classes in the early part of 2010. He was shocked and honored when he was asked to teach in Canada the following year and excited to to share his craft. He always wanted be able to give back to other decorators, as his mentors had done for him and this was a perfect opportunity to do it.

Rick and his assistant Annie's "Spongebob Birthday Cakes" Challenge on Food Network aired in April 2010, on Easter Sunday. It was an Easter Sunday we will never forget! Despite it being a family holiday which prevented people from attending our viewing party, we still had more than 100 guests in attendance who were there to support us and cheer Rick on! Around the time the episode aired, the media was often at our shop, filming Rick as he was making cakes and doing interviews.

It was a very interesting year for us. Hawaii started feeling the effects of the recession around this time, and there were less "destination" weddings - non-residents coming to Hawaii - and those that did often had smaller guest counts because some of their guests had lost their jobs or they couldn't afford to take such an expensive trip. In general, I think it was difficult time for many people in the cake industry, and we knew many people who shuttered their doors, which is always heartbreaking. We had counted our blessings we had a solid reputation by that time and was still getting regular business. Maybe as not as much as before, but considering the time, we were extremely fortunate.

As I reflect on 2010, I think of that year as the "end of the innocence" - not that life was so easy in the previous years, owning a business never is, but it was the last year we would focus solely on making cakes for clients. Early in 2011, Rick started teaching and began receiving more offers for other locations. Our traveling started and would become a big part of our lives in the coming years. We also got an amazing book deal for "Extreme Cakeovers" with Clarkson Potter in 2011, and would then balance the writing of the book with cake orders and teaching gigs. I remember at particularly hectic times of our lives in the last couple of years that we would reminisce about the days when we would "just make cake." Now, we wouldn't trade the opportunities we've had for anything in the world, but it demanded a level of commitment to our business that we never imagined!

I have chosen the cakes below as a sampling of some of our favorite designs that year. There were so many more I would have liked to include but couldn't for lack of time. We hope you have been enjoying the retrospective!

Rick was excited to try out these shapes for Laura and Oliver's wedding cake. The couple was married at Lanikuhonua, a gorgeous outdoor location on Oahu. Rick handpainted their cake to resemble the beautiful graphic motif from their wedding invitation. I was really smitten by this cake and loved how stylish and unique it looked. Luckily, so did Laura and Oliver!

Legally Blonde Cake

www.cakelava.com

When someone has committed the majority of their life for the sake of education, it's no surprise that they would also start the planning for the graduation celebration well in advance.  Our client booked her "Legally blonde" themed Law School graduation cake with us almost a year before the Big Day, which happened last Sunday.  We were excited about the theme.  We love the movie and she had all the right components for the cake -- blonde, owned a cute chihuahua, and would shortly become a law school graduate.  We adore the dog cakes! This one was such a fun theme and Rick was given a lot of leeway in the design of the cake.  He chose a pink leather purse with a chihuahua and gavel. Both the chihuahua and the purse were sculpted out of chocolate cake and the gavel was also edible.  We arrived at our clients home before her and met her family who were amazed by the cake.  Hopefully she had the same reaction when she saw it.  Wishing her a huge congratulations on her committment to education and a very successful career in law! 

Meet Shakira, our newest Canine Cake!

www.cakelava.com

The month of March has been absolutely whirlwind between cakes, Canada classes, the next round of classes in June 2012,  and other exciting projects in the works. We've been on a non-stop adrenaline rush since the month started and its leading right into the month of April!  If you are a follower of "Musings from Cakeland" blog, you know we recently returned from Canada where Rick was teaching 2 classes.  We left for Ontario on Sunday, March 6th.  The last cake that left our shop was in the evening of Saturday, March 5th when Rick had an opportunity to make this super cute half Chinese Sharpei, half Australian Cattle dog mix, named "Shakira". 

We were excited to make "Shakira" sculpted out of cake for our client, who has previously ordered cakes from us before and always brings us fun and interesting projects to sculpt.  How could we not fall in love with a doggie this cute.  To see this face right before we left Oahu was a wonderful goodbye!  Rick sculpted "Shakira" completely out of cake and had him relaxing in the grass.  The cake was a gift by our client for a friend of hers and she was thrilled with the cake when she saw it.  We had grown slightly attached to the dog in the process of making him and it was nice having that spirited dog energy in our shop shortly before taking off on our big adventure.  A huge thanks to our client Traci for introducing us to the loveable Shakira! 

A Pug, A Shiba Inu and A Pair of Air Jordans

Shortly after our plane hit the runway at Honolulu International Airport after an 8 day trip to Florida, we went from vacation mode to work mode and immediately started thinking about the doggies and shoes cake. Hours after we entered our shop on our first day back at work, our bride Lauren, whose wedding was last weekend, came bearing a gift, a pair of brand new very collectable retro styling Nike Air Jordan XI Concord sneakers for Rick to use as a model for her wedding cake. It wasn't exactly a "wedding cake" as we might think of one, there were no tiers to stack, no flowers, and it was completely a surprise to the groom, who thought he was having a black and white cake with roses. Boy was he in for a surprise!

Lauren called this a "groom's cake", but we thought of it more as a wedding cake because it represented both the bride and groom's lives. Barnaby is a sneaker fanatic and Lauren adores her dogs, a Shiba Inu and a Pug. Rick spent the better part of his birthday last week working on this cake, as it was comprised of four separate sculpted cakes that were married together on a single board. It was gigantic, or as he likes to say, ginormous and Rick had to nearly clear his plate to make this cake on our first weekend back to work. This is not the kind of cake to just ease into after being away. It took a lot of planning and measuring and cake and time -- about 18 hours of working on it! All four sculpted pieces are cake, no cereal treats were used. Lauren's dogs are absolutely adorable and we fell in love with them over the days they took over our kitchen. She explained to us that the pug was the playful, mischievous one and wanted him to interact with the sneakers and the Shiba Inu is a very sweet dog and wanted their personalities to be conveyed. When we arrived on site with her cake, there was a swarm of staff from the hotel, including the Pastry Chef who came over to check out the cake. Suddenly everyone pulled out their cell phones and started snapping photos of the cake, including us. It had its own paparazzi. We were thrilled with how the cake turned out and so were the bride and groom, who tells us even the doggies vet, who attended the wedding instantly recognized her pets. We'd like to say a special thank you to Lauren and Barnaby who shared their photos with us. Enjoy!



The playful little pug gnawing on the lace of a sneaker collector's prized possession


The sweet Shiba Inu patiently waits to be delivered


Having way too much fun at their wedding! Unsure where they should make the first cut, Lauren and Barnaby go for the pug's backside.


If the shoe fits, compare it!


Wine tasting and shoe smelling. Delicate notes of leather and sugar


They boxed up their doggie to take home. Family portrait with the newlyweds!


Rick posing with his cake

Ohime in Cake

This past weekend the theme was LOVE and romance, where every cake made, except for one was a wedding cake. This sculpted dog cake was the exception, but even as a birthday cake it was still a romantic gesture because it was ordered by a woman for her husband's surprise 50th birthday party. What could be lovelier than two people growing older together and celebrating with their child, whether human or canine? When the cake was ordered, more than a year in advance by our client, she was terribly excited that Rick was able to make their Jack Russell Terrier, Ohime, which is Japanese for "Princess" . Ohime appears to be a mix of Jack Russell and possibly Chihuahua, but we aren't sure of the exact breed. We just know she's really cute and stole our hearts! Our client explained to us that she and her husband had become "Dog people", you know the types, and they were head over heels for Ohime. Ohime was her husband's pride and joy and asked if we could include his other interests, golfing and playing poker. At first I thought, a poker playing dog, where have I seen this before, but Rick made it work just by having the items present and keeping the focus on their princess, Ohime. In person, Ohime was large, incredibly realistic and all made of cake. She was made out of our Guava Lava flavor, a pretty pink cake perfectly suited for a princess!

Coincidentally, one of the anchors from a local news station was here interviewing and filming Rick over the Valentine's Day weekend and she and her cameraman were very taken by the dog cake, and asked our client if they could come and film at their party. She of course agreed and we're excited to see the footage when it airs in the future. We will keep you posted.

More to come soon.

Aloha, 'til next time!