A Stroll Down Memory Lane - 2008, Part 1

2008 was a banner year for cakelava. It was the year our business really took off and doors opened with opportunites we never imagined waiting on the other side. Rick made over 200 cakes for clients, and between taking orders, meeting with clients, deliveries and the start of more serious media attention, our entire company (of 2) was extremely busy!

We started the year in our new studio, and in retrospect, I don't think we could have handled the amount of business we had if we were still in the incubator. Our work load had basically forced us to look for a shop in 2007. cakelava had incubated and it was time to move forward. In our new studio we had our kitchen and office and a client meeting space all together. No more driving to a local coffee shop to meet with brides and their coordinators. It was wonderful, but also an incredible amount of work!

Although we had started getting media interest in the earlier years, 2008 was a huge year for cakelava in terms of press, specifically magazine and television interest. Rick was invited by Grace Ormonde Wedding Style Magazine, The Bride and Bloom, and Pacific Edge Magazine to design cakes for their magazines and we were regularly asked for photos for internet sites. In the latter part of 2008, Food Network contacted Rick again to compete on "Challenge". They contacted him in 2007 for an "Extreme Cakes" Challenge, but Rick felt he wasn't ready to do it in the conditions we were working in at the time. We kept in touch with them regularly until finally in 2009, Rick did the "Spongebob Challenge". Also in the latter half of 2008, we got a call to make a cake for a Mark Burnett show and would later travel to Maui to shoot it. Then there was a "pillows" cake, a cake made for our bride who is a yoga instructor. That one cake circulated across the internet and magazines, and has become one of Rick's most famous designs!

Below is a selection of cakes made in 2008. When I was selecting cakes, there were so many to share that I am splitting the post into two parts, with the next one to follow.

Rick made this cake for a couple who requested a fun, non-traditional design with a Hawaiian flair. The shape of the cake was inspired by a Colette Peters design. Rick has long admired Colette Peters and she remains one of his favorite designers. As a policy, Rick doesn't replicate other people's work, and this cake was one of the few times he drew such direct inspiration. The couple were ecstatic with the cake and making the shape was a feather in Rick's cap, as it was not an easy one.

We've done many sushi platters and rolls over the years, and a similar design was the basis for one of Rick's cake classes. The platter is cake and all sushi are handmade. I don't recall exactly what the writing on the bottom said because I can't read Japanese. Feel free to translate it if you would like to. What I do know is that this cake was for a 21st birthday and started a sushi cake trend at cakelava that continues to this day.

This beautiful cake photographed by Chrissy Lambert was designed for a couple who were the recipients of a free dream wedding, in a giveaway sponsored by Parasol Events and the Honolulu Advertiser (now Star Advertiser) newspaper. Parasol assembled a dream team of vendors and we were fortunate enough to be asked to participate. The lucky couple got a cake that Rick designed for them using their elegant cherry blossom theme. That week was a crazy one for us because we had Primrose and Alex's wedding at The Kahala resort immediately followed by 3 wedding cakes Rick designed for a Grace Ormonde Wedding Style Magazine shoot at the Halekulani, one of which is shown below. Grace herself was in town for the shoot and she stopped by the wedding where this cherry blossom cake was at. We heard from the coordinator at the wedding "by the way, Grace is here and saw your cake". No pressure or anything!

This was one of 3 cakes designed for Grace Ormonde Wedding Style Magazine. The shoot took place at the beautiful Halekulani resort in Waikiki, and if I recall correctly, this shot was taken in the Presidential Suite. Stefanie Riedel of Absolutely Loved took the amazing photo, which was later featured in the magazine. I think it was Grace that started calling this cake the "mermaid cake", and the name stuck. Once this cake went up on our website every bride with a beach theme was asking for it and this was even more the case when the magazine was released. We have been a fan of Wedding Style Magazine and it was such an honored to be asked to make the cakes!

The ivory bamboo with black plumeria pattern cake was featured in two different magazines, a bunch of websites and a book. This gorgeous photo was taken by Dave Miyamoto for a shoot at the Bayer Estate, a popular wedding venue here. Rick has used this plumeria pattern on other cakes and it always makes for a striking deisgn. This cake, like many others is one that he made on a number of occasions for brides wanting a similar style.

 

The theme for this wedding combined antique details with traditional romantic elements. Kendra and Johnathan's cake was one of the earlier "vintage" inspired designs Rick made. Rick had free reign on the design, but drew inspiration from antique frames and romantic roses to create this elegant cake for the couple. We both really love this design and the couple was so much fun to work with!

A month after we did the Grace Ormonde shoot, we did The Bride and Bloom Magaazine shoot, again with photographer Stefanie Riedel. Rick was given a color palette to work with and was asked to design a cake around the colors. I scoured the internet to find just the right ceramic cake stand to place the cake on and this one fit the bill beautifully! Rick and I went with Stefanie down to Kailua Beach for the shoot. After the Bride and Bloom shoot, Rick made the cake at least a couple other times, once in orange, and once combining the bamboo from cake above with the same floral vine pattern. Every version has been beautiful!

We've always loved this cake! It was made for a wedding that was quite extravagant at the Paul Mitchell Estate here in Kailua. The stunning photograph was taken by Cassandra Dieterle, whose company also coordianated the wedding. The color palette for this wedding was ivory and purples and very elegant, all of which was brought into Rick's design for the couple.

There there was the "Rachel" cake. We are still making some version of this cake for brides that fall in love with it. Rick has made the Rachel cake, with the taller unusually shaped tiers in a variety of colors, and modifications to the design (like adding turtles or fish). This cake has stood the test of time and has become a cakelava "signature" design. It was beautifully photographed by Frank Amodo.

Speaking of cakelava signature designs, this is the "Gwen" cake, named after the bride who Rick designed it for. The Gwen cake has all the classic cakelava tropical decorations -- Giant tiki and torches, hawaiian flowers, and the all-bamboo tier. We have a bunch of emails from people asking us how Rick made the cake and we've seen knock-offs of the design, (even from cakers in our own backyard) offering the same cake on their websites, unfortunately, and often without credit to the designer. The "Gwen" is a small cake that made a super-size impact and is a design we are very proud of!

 

 Cake sculpting is one of Rick's favorite things to do. This beaver groom's cake is one of many he made in 2008, but I specifically chose this one because it is so darn cute! Our bride surprised her fiance with an Oregon State University beaver. Rick enjoyed making the cake and I think it will always be one of our favorites!

When we met with the couple this wedding cake was designed for, they told Rick they wanted a cake with "underwater invertebrates". It was an odd request but we always love those. The theme lent itself well to the use of a lot of color, which Rick always enjoys! All 3 tiers were sculpted out of cake and the decorations were hand made. Rick recalls making all "those damn spines" that were placed into the sea urchin on top. This cake was definitely a labor of love and took a good amount of time to make!

It's funny what you recall when you are reminiscing about cakes. Rick remembers when he was making this cake that the power went out at our shop just as he was starting on the headphones. He was on deadline, so he had to make the headphones in the dark. I didn't actually remember that power outage because I wasn't the one making the cake. What I remembered about this cake was that it was ordered by a bride as a groom's cake for her fiance who was a DJ. We were asked to make a Technics turntable with a blue "scratch" record. She was terribly excited about surprising her fiance with the cake and we went sent this photo of the groom with his cake.

 

 This was Rick's first Millennium Falcon and he says it remains one of his favorites. We are big fans of Star Wars and relished any opportunity to make Sci-Fi cakes, and specifically Star Wars. Rick was thrilled to get this order and he was determined to make sure every detail was spot on. I think he also knew that both of our brothers who adore Star Wars and all the Star Wars fans who would later see it were depending on him to do it right! He made us all proud!

 

Ah, The "pillows" cake. It is one of our most widely circulated cakes, making its way into international magazines and all over the internet. It was featured on Brides.com then on the front page of both AOL and MSN.com. Rick designed the cake for a wedding couple who wanted an unusual design and the bride was a yoga instructor, hence the Indian influence in the composition. All the pillows are made of cake and one of the pillows has a swirl pattern which Rick incorporated after seeing the bride's tattoo. Since the bay area couple was getting married in Hawaii, they wanted to include a Hawaiian element and Rick added the lei in front as well as made the board blue, which symbolized the ocean. Beautiful pillows floating in the ocean. Namaste!

In my next post, look for more cakes from 2008. You won't want to miss some of these!

A Stroll Down Memory Lane - 2007

Yesterday, we started our retrospective of Rick's cake designs over the years. If you missed the first post, you can view it here. Today, we are sharing the cakes made in the year 2007, two years after cakelava opened. 2007 was a great year for our business! cakelava had built a solid reputation in Hawaii with very little advertising, and we were starting to receive national attention, which is always exciting for a local small business. It was a year when we took many artistic risks and when we moved into our first storefront, which we are still located at, in Kailua. Moving into our own space required a huge leap of faith and as fate would have it, we found the perfect space for our needs the same year we started looking. Finding a retail space with a commercial kitchen in a desirable neighborhood in Hawaii takes a lot of luck and commitment, and financially, it is an enormous undertaking. You haven't truly experienced bills until you move into your own shop! You wouldn't believe the condition of some of the shops we saw! We're supposed to make food in there?! 2007 was the year Rick made his first "pole" cake, which is shown below. He has made several since then but this one was the largest and required an hour long assembly at the site!

 

The "pole" cake was made for Tanya and Louie who were married in April. Rick spent days working on their cake, making sure every piece was as perfect! He made this cake while working at the culinary incubator, and it was transported tier by tier and assembled on-site at the Hawaii State Art Museum. The location couldn't have been better suited to the design of the cake, as it was an art piece by the time he was finished with it! I remember Rick making every flower and all the decorations. I helped him string what felt like thousands of tiny beads which were placed by hand, strand by strand, at the bottom of each tier, and this was all done on-site! He placed purple feather boas at the bottom of the cake, and constructed a special stand for the cake, with each tier floating above the other. It gave the cake an almost ethereal presence. It was just one of countless trips to the hardware store we have taken over the years. The pole cake worked its way around the internet and the couple's wedding was featured on theknot.com. It was an amazing cake and the couple fell in love with it!

This little beauty is called the "Kelly" cake, named after the bride. The couple's wedding was in February 2007 out on the North Shore. Their song was Jack Johnson's "Better Together", and some of the lyrics were piped onto the cake board, which is difficult to see in the photo. Rick made all the pieces and added a wavy water-like texture to the fondant. Shortly after this cake went up on our website, brides kept asking for some version of "the Kelly cake". Everyone wanted the Kelly cake and we found ourselves with a bunch of orders with surfboards, tiki torches and palm trees on them. We found out quite by accident that Bride's magazine had a photo of Kelly's cake in a feature they ran on destination weddings and even though our name wasn't associated with the cake, there were brides that tracked us down because they had seen the cake!

 

The "Nina" cake. Nina's wedding cake was like the "Kelly" cake above, where for a while, every bride was asking for a similar design. It was a gorgeous design, no doubt, and what you may not know is that Rick iced the cake with buttercream. The flowers are handcrafted but the rest of the cake is buttercream. The cake stood 3 feet tall and was also made before we had a shop. I recall how Rick and I were carrying the cake together and it felt like it weighed a ton. We were so excited about the cake and the bride and groom were such a sweet couple! The bride also hired us to make her fiance a groom's cake of a sculpted helicopter. It was the first time Rick made a CH-53 Delta helicopter, and like Nina's cake, it was a well-requested design. He has since made many CH-53's, both the Delta and Echo. The helicopter was all cake and also iced in buttercream, not fondant. To this day, Nina's wedding cake remains one of our favorites and the couple has ordered many cakes from us since!

2007 was the year Rick made his first and only Skyline Chili with Beans can. The cake was ordered by a bride as a groom's cake. We had never heard of Skyline before, so she sent us a can of the chili which we still have in our shop, years later! The cake was done in buttercream, and it was hilarious in person, and a wonderful contrast to her elegant wedding cake. Rick designed the bride's wedding cake using a Hawaiian quilt pattern as inspiration. The cake was featured in a number of magazines and on the internet.

 

 

At the time, we called this cake the "Hibiscus" cake. Years later, we have a another "hibiscus" cake, that has a pattern of hibiscus all over it, and the cake Rick taught in classes. In 2007, this was our hibiscus cake, and like some of the other cakes that year, it became instantly popular with brides and Rick found himself making similar designs for the next couple of years. The 3-tier cake was made the following year for a bride who adored this cake and wanted a smaller version of it. Different, but just as beautiful! We both love this design!

It seemed that many brides around this time had wedding themes with butterflies in them, so Rick was often making and painting butterflies. The cake above was made for a couple who wanted a whimsical cake, with a garden/butterflies theme. The cake is done in buttercream, which Rick was very comfortable working with.

Our first sandcastle cake at cakelava. It was all cake and the decorations were handcrafted. It was the first of many sandcastle cakes we've made for weddings.

The bride who ordered this cake was studying architecture at the time and adored Antonio Gaudi. She asked Rick to sculpt a wedding cake inspired by Gaudi. It was a most unusual request, which meant it was right up our Alley! The cake is beautifully photographed by Chrissy Lambert, who we've worked with frequently over the years. The colors were chosen to mimic the couple's wedding colors. Almost 8 years later, it remains one of our most unusual wedding cakes!

 

We made our first United States Marine Corps Birthday Ball cake in 2007, and began a relationship with the MARFORPAC which led to other cakes in the following years. We are very regularly asked about this cake and have a small collection of emails from people all over the country who have inquired about it. It seemed to have resonated with so many people. The cake was 3 feet tall and Rick made all the pieces. I love the photo showing the general cutting the cake with a sword during the ceremony!

On our next post, we're pulling more cake photos out of the vault as we move into 2008!

A Stroll Down Memory Lane - 2005 to 2006

I've long been meaning to go through our photo archives and organize them. The problem is that I couldn't find the time to give our precious memories the attention it deserved and instead we would keep adding to the photos without taking the time to savor the experiences. Nearly 15,000 photos and approaching 8 years in business, it was long overdue! Earlier this month, Rick and I sat down together and looked through years of photos, both personal and business related. Ever since our business began, it seemed we were always moving forward, never stopping to look back, and it was an amazing experience to see the cakes over the years. It was incredible to see how much has changed, in terms of his style and approach to cakes, but at the same time noticing how much has stayed the same. There are certain features in Rick's early designs - using bamboo and tropical/Hawaiian themes, for example - that he still uses almost 8 years later. It was fun to reminisce together about the cakes, and we approached the memories from different perspectives, him from a designer's point of view, as the person who made the cake, and I remembered every client who ordered the cake and their event details. I remembered the process of working with them and he recalled the making the cake. I feel blessed to have been on this crazy ride with Rick and gotten to witness some of the best cakes he has ever made!

As we were looking through the photos together, I had an idea that it would be fun to write a blog showing a sampling of Rick's cakes over the years. Many of these cakes are no longer on our website, and we have had thousands of new people join our communities and social networks who may not have seen these designs. This project was a huge undertaking, because just choosing a "sample" of Rick's cakes (out of well over 1000) is no small task and then writing about it - also no small feat. I decided to make the time to do it. It would be a labor of love and one I hope you all enjoy!

2005 to 2006 - the early years. Rick was working out of a commerical shared kitchen incubator at the time. It wasn't until 2007 that we moved into a shop.

 

cakelava opened for business in March 2005. 6 months later, Rick made this cake for a wedding. Rick first made the all-bamboo covered tiers for our wedding cake before we had even opened cakelava and it has been well-requested over the years.

Rick designed this cake with pretty swirls and stylized flowers in 2005. After this cake was shown on our website, we had numerous clients asking for some version of it. He did the color gradations going from darker pink to lighter. The "ombre" look has become very trendy and we still get requests for it!

2006

 

The "packages" wedding cake, or at least that is how we referred to it. was a cake that helped put cakelava on the map, locally. The cake ended up on the front page of the "TODAY" section of our local paper and was quite a challenge to make, considering we were working in a kitchen with no air conditioning and Rick made everything by hand.

Rick made this cake in June 2006, using the bride's wedding dress as inspiration. He has made many versions of this same design over the years.

This wedding cake was designed around an English country theme with a sculpted water pitcher on top. We both really loved this cake!

The couple who hired us for this wedding cake was smitten with the cake Rick made for our wedding and wanted a similar design but done in blue (ours was pink) and instead of a giant Tiki on the front, they requested a surf shack that would be named after their dog "Monster". The couple and Monster were handcrafted and placed on the side of the cake. The bride also ordered a sculpted Hummer H2 to as a groom's cake. Rick was still making cakes at the culinary incubator when he made this cake. It was around this time we thought about moving into a shop...

This was one of a number of Moroccan cakes Rick has made at cakelava, and most have been delivered to the one Moroccan restaurant on the island. Moroccan cuisine is one of my favorites and I enjoy seeing the intricate tile work and the beautiful color combinations. This was a striking design!

Rick made this unusual wedding cake in August 2006. It was one of our favorite "wonky" cakes at the time and has remained one of our all-time favorite cakes. We are nostalgic about it because it was around this time that Rick was defining his artistic style and this cake made its way around the internet and magazines. It was beautifully shot by photographer Dave Miyamoto.

August 2006, a week after the whimsical wonky cake shown above. Theresa's cake will forever be known at cakelava as "The All-Bamboo" cake, and Rick will forever be making this design for brides who fall in love with it! This one cake became a defining point for our business, as it made its way across the internet, ended up in countless magazines, including People Magazine when it was named the best cake in Hawaii! I can't even count how many times Rick has made this cake, exactly as seen, or in varying amounts of the tiers. We even have a large photograph of this cake in our studio.

Rick made this cake near the end of 2006. It was made for a bride who is a graphic designer and wanted a cake that would incorporate the pattern on her wedding invitation. There is a funny backstory to this awesome photograph, taken by Chrissy Lambert. When we delivered the cake to a beach house, there was a lot of dishes in the background and she wanted to get a great shot, so she went into the bathroom and grabbed the shower curtain, placing it behind the cake, and voila, problem solved. No stacks of dishes behind it!

I remember the hundreds of edible pearls that Rick made for this cake. It was made in November 2006 for a magazine photo shoot and taken by Dave Miyamoto. The cake was so pretty and colorful!

In the next post, we will explore some of the cakes made in 2007, which was quite an eventful year for us! Stay tuned...

Thoughts on the Last Day of 2012

We are part way through the last day of 2012, and counting down the hours to 2013, a year that has tremendous meaning to us. Before we can appropriately make the transition to 2013, we honor the events of 2012 by reflecting back on an incredible year! The first half of 2012 was spent working on the book and making cakes for clients, with little to no social time to spend with our family and friends. We knew the demands of writing the book would be high as we went through editing and a final photo shoot, and had scheduled any work-related traveling for classes starting in June, as book commitments would be winding down.

As soon as June arrived, that is when our traveling really started, and it felt like we were always getting ready to fly for a trip, or just returning from one. In 2012, we logged 50,700 miles, approximately, and all but 5400 of the miles occurred in the last 6 months of the year! Those 50,700 miles pulled us away from home for weeks at a time, and on a few occasions, left us with only a couple weeks between trips.
We flew to foreign countries that we have dreamed about visiting our whole lives and took in as many new adventures as we could handle. In the fall, we met our publishing team at Clarkson Potter in New York City. Arriving at the Random House building and getting to meet the many special people involved with Extreme Cakeovers was exhilarating and easily one of the highlights of our year!

The weeks between trips were spent getting over jet-lag, making cakes, working on final touches on the book, and trying to stay sane! As crazy as life got, we wouldn't trade the experiences and memories we had for anything and feel grateful to all of Rick's students and hosts who have supported him sharing his craft around the world. We met cake friends from all over the world who will be in our lives for years to come. Rick taught 8 classes of his "Discover Your Inner Artist" series, and by the end of the year, there were a lot of students with beautiful clownfish and hibiscus cakes and hundreds of photos to document the experience. The traveling experiences were unforgettable but the schedule was pretty excruciating to maintain and after our last trip of the year, we were anxious to enjoy some down time before our next flight.

Our traveling is far from over. We have more scheduled trips and new classes for 2013, which we are really looking forward to! In 2013, Rick will be debuting his "Discover Your Inner Artist 3" two-day classes, starting in Austin, Texas, in conjunction with the cake show "That Takes the Cake", and ending in Boston, Massachusetts, shortly before our book's release. For a list of Rick's classes, please visit the "Classes" page at the top of our blog. In addition to the classes and the book's release, we will be busy making cakes. Rick has designed some amazing cakes for clients in 2013, starting just days after the new year!

2013 will be the year we finally get to make the transition from "writing a book" to "published author" and we couldn't be more excited about the release of our literary "baby", Extreme Cakeovers in the Summer! We have put our heart and soul into this book, ever since it was purchased in 2011. We probably lost a few years of our lives in the process of doing the book and had many near-sleepless nights because we were unbelievably excited, or stressed, or a little of both. We can't wait to present more content from the book once we are able to and will post information on the blog, website and social media as it becomes available. Stay tuned!

Finally, we want to thank everyone who has supported us this year and wish you all much happiness and success in 2013!