BOSTON, Massachusetts "Discover Your Inner Artist 3" classes at The Cake World!

We are thrilled to announce our third and final set of "Discover Your Inner Artist 3" classes for 2013, which will take place at The Cake World in Boston, Massachusetts in July. This will be the first time Rick is teaching his craft in New England, and the only North American east coast location in 2013. Due to our book's release in Summer 2013 we will not be traveling for classes past July, so if you have been wanting to learn from Rick, we would love to have you join us at one of our three scheduled locations next year - Austin, Amsterdam and Boston.

The philosphy behind Rick's "Discover Your Inner Artist" series of classes is to teach students how to let go of their artistic inhibitions and dependence on fancy tools, molds and cutters and learn how to trust their own "inner artist", which we all have. The classes explore some of his favorite art techniques and take a free form artistic approach to cake decorating, promoting creativity by embracing the idea of letting go and not feeling like you need to achieve such a precise or uniform look to cakes. Rick often says "It will work itself out". Once you have the knowlege of many different techniques, your confidence as an artist builds and you take more risks with your work, giving you more means to an end.

We've had great success with "Discover Your Inner Artist" and "Discover Your Inner Artist 2", with students expressing they haven't tried many of these techniques before. Students who have taken either or both DYIA and DYIA 2 will already be familiar with some of the techniques and can jump right in to learn these designs, which are slightly more involved. However, the first two series of classes are not a pre-requisite to "Discover Your Inner Artist 3" classes.

Students who enroll in the Peacock and Dragonflies and Waterlillies 2-day classes will learn handpainting, airbrushing skills, fondant application on taller tiers, including a concave design, how to pipe with royal icing, how to create a custom waterfall-style cake topper, and how to make handcrafted decorations without the use of molds or fancy cutters.

To register, visit here. The Cake World is offering a 10% early registration discount until November 20th. Students may either pay in full or in installments. Please contact The Cake World with any questions about the class or for travel information. There will be a limited number of openings in each class, to allow Rick to give students more individualized attention. We hope to see you there!

2 day class, Dragonflies and Waterlillies

2 day class, Painted Peacock

"Peeta" the Chihuahua

www.cakelava.com

Rick loves making the sculpted dog cakes and I always enjoy seeing how realistic they turn out. Having been a dog owner ourselves, we have a special appreciation for these cakes, and know how important it is to capture the personality of each client's special pet. Our bride Ashley asked Rick to make her and her fiance's pet Chihuahua named "Peeta". The cake would be a surprise for the groom on their wedding day. Rick sculpted "Peeta" out of chocolate cake. He added a golf ball in front of the dog to tie in the groom's love of the sport. Congratulations to our couple!

A Candy Colored Wedding and a Sharp Looking Groom's Cake

www.cakelava.com

Summer really flew by this year! When we weren't traveling or meeting book deadlines, we were making and delivering cakes, like this bright and whimsical wedding cake and "sharp" looking groom's cake for our couple Lisa and Kent. Lisa and Kent have a real sweet tooth and even based their wedding theme on their love of candy. Their wedding colors were inspired by brightly colored candies with accents of chocolate. When we met with the couple earlier in the year, they requested a fun, flamboyant, brightly colored topsy turvy style of wedding cake with playful wire pieces coming out of it. They left the design in Rick's hands and he designed the cake with their candy theme in mind. When they saw their sketch, Lisa and Kent loved it and Rick was excited to make it! Not surprisingly, their cake flavors were two of our sweetest, Peanut Butter Fudgey, and Kona Toffee Crunch. Kent is a huge fans of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and this flavor and the Kona Toffee Crunch which has candy toffee pieces was a perfect choice for both of them!

www.cakelava.com

During the time Rick was designing their wedding cake, Lisa contacted us requesting a surprise groom's cake for Kent. She shared with us that Kent's new obsession was knives, specifically, local knife artist, Ken Onion's beautiful pieces. She gave us photos of Kent's favorite Ken Onion pieces and two were selected for variety. She asked that Rick incorporate camouflage into the design, so he placed the knives on a hand painted camouflage board. She chose a banana cake flavor for Kent's special surprise cake.

When we delivered both cakes to the hotel, we knew their guests were in for a special treat. The room was decorated with brightly colored stripes and polka dots, and there was a candy bar prominently on display. The wedding cake was brought to one side of the room and the groom's cake to another area of the room, which we affectionately called "The Man Cave". The knives cake looked right at home with photos of the groom, including one of him and Rhianna, who he apparently has a big crush on because there was a life size Rhianna cut-out figure flanking one side of the table. We also heard the knife designer Ken Onion would be attending the wedding. We knew the knives had to look just like his beautiful creations. No pressure there!

Congratulations to Lisa and Kent! A big thank you to them for including us not only in their special day but also for inviting us to their "Mahalo" party they threw for their wedding vendors and close friends. What a SWEET couple!!

The Craziest Two Months!

 It has been two months since our last blog post, and what a crazy two months it has been! In early August, our book "Extreme Cakeovers" was launched in-house by our publisher, Clarkson Potter and shared on their blog, The Recipe Club. Three times a year, about a year in advance of the book's release date, Clarkson Potter editors share the projects they have been working on with in-house editors and their marketing and sales team. "Extreme Cakeovers" is due to be released in Summer 2013, so it was our book's turn to be featured! We were very proud to on Clarkson Potter's Cookbooks for Summer 2013 list and so excited when we found out who the other authors were -- some of the best in the industry! Our editor Ashley, who has been so wonderful throughout the process actually made one of the cakes in the book that she brought to the launch with her. It was the Marketing Director's birthday and she loved her jukebox cake. Knowing that our editor who is not an experienced cake decorator, was able to recreate the cake Rick designed was special and absolutely thrilling to us. We heard the cake was a huge hit and only made us more excited for 2013!

It was the first time the public was given a sneak-peek at the cake cookbook we have been working on for over a year, and we were thrilled to put it out there! We surprised many people who were expecting an advanced cake decorating how-to book, when it fact, "Extreme Cakeovers" is a cake cookbook that anyone can pick up and use, not just professional cake decorators. We will post more on "Extreme Cakeovers" including information on how to purchase it, as we get closer to the book's release. Stay tuned!

Less than a week after our book was launched by Clarkson Potter, we had visiting family in town, and a handful of days to spend with them before we flew to London, UK, for two "Discover Your Inner Artist" classes at Exotic Fantastic Cake Decorating School. It was a lovely class and we met new friends and many talented cake artists. Students flew in from all over Europe and we even had a student fly in from the Middle East to take the class. London was amazing, as a city it is hard to compare to, except for maybe New York City, which is one of our favorite places in the world! We did a small amount of touring around, as we had a tight schedule and needed to get back to Hawaii, and had only two weeks until our next travel adventure!

No sooner had we arrived back in Hawaii, unpacked our bags, made a few cakes, then it was off on another trip for a class, this time to Allentown, PA. The Allentown class at Mother of Cakes Sugar and Cake Academy was Rick's first class in the United States, strangely enough, and it felt good to be on our home turf. The students were fabulous, and everyone was quite advanced, which seems to be pretty typical of our classes. The Pennsylvania class, like the other class had been announced about a year before we arrived and there was much anticipation to meet the students, who were also very excited! The students in the PA class came from all over the continental U.S. as well as Puerto Rico and Valencia, Spain. We even had a student join us from the Canada "Discover Your Inner Artist 2" class, which was a lot of fun. We're just launching the "Discover Your Inner Artist 3" 2013 classes and information will be posted soon!

Rick at Mother of Cakes, Sept 2012, photos by Mother of Cakes

While we were on the East Coast, only an hour and a half away from New York City, we headed into Midtown to meet our publisher! We have been working for over a year with our editor and an amazing team of people at Clarkson Potter and had never met them face to face. Crazy! It was a visit long overdue! With only less than a full day to enjoy in Manhattan, we decided that if we do nothing else there, it will be worth it to meet everyone. Our publishing team gave us a warm welcome when we arrived and gifted us with a bunch of new cookbooks. We were on cloud nine. It was so special for us to be able to share in the excitement of our book with the people who made it possible!

We want to thank our hosts, Exotic Fantastic and Mother of Cakes, for giving us the opportunity to teach there, and to all our students who have supported Rick's teaching career! 

Here we are nearing the end of September, enjoying incredible memories made with 25,000 miles flown in the past month and enjoying just being home again, at least for a little while...