Meredith and Miles ~ Real Nashville Wedding

Hello world!  I’m finally back to blogging…wow, there have been so many exciting things going on at Creative Crumbs lately! 

I’m so happy to share Meredith and Miles’ beautiful June wedding.  I have known Meredith for several years, and it is always so special to create cakes for my friends. Plus Meredith and Miles (and Meredith's mom, Jeni) are some of the nicest people I have ever met!  I mean, really, look at those smiles! 

Photo by John Gentry Photography

Meredith wanted something simple, but fresh and contemporary.  Designing a cake with her was so much fun!  We eventually decided on a tall slender cake with soft swirls of buttercream, decorated with a few fresh peonies to match her bouquet.   The result was stunning!

Miles is a big UK fan, but he and Meredith didn't want a fondant-covered groom's cake either, so we designed a buttercream cake with a KY Wildcat on top.  I don't use sugar paper for any of my designs, so I hand painted the wildcat logo...it takes a little more time, but the results are worth it!  

Though I've lived in Tennessee most of my life, and consider myself a Nashville girl, I was actually born in KY.  My grandmother is a HUGE Kentucky basketball fan, so I can't wait to show her pictures on my next visit!

Congratulations to Meredith and Miles!  Thanks for letting me be a part of your special day!  Blessings on your marriage!

~Abby

Cake flavors:

Wedding cake: Almond cake with almond buttercream

Groom's cake: Chocolate cake with cream cheese buttercream

Wedding Pros for this event:

Photographer: John Gentry Photography

Caterer: As You Like it Catering

Venue: Hillsboro Church of Christ

A Nashville Wedding ~ Lindsey and Brandon

Happy Sunday, dear readers!  I have been absent from the blog for quite some time, but I’m back now!  Spring is just around the corner and with it comes wedding season!  I have had the opportunity to meet with many amazing couples who are so much in love...I can’t wait for all the cakes, cupcakes, and more I get to create for each one's special day!

This week’s real wedding features Lindsey and Brandon’s beautiful reception at the recently renovated Cannery Ballroom.  This was my first time delivering there and it was stunning!  The ballroom had a great view of downtown too.  The fabulous folks from A Dream Come True Events and Catering did a great job on the tablescapes as well!

I first met with Lindsey and her mom back in the fall and they have been so much fun to work with!  Lindsey’s wedding cake was frosted in vanilla buttercream and featured a winding cascade of whimsical sugar roses.  

I was quite excited when I arrived at the Cannery Ballroom and saw the monogram lit up on the wall above where the cake would be displayed.

Lindsey mom ordered a special little gluten-free lady bug cake just for Lindsey to cut since she couldn't eat the regular cake.  The blue color matches the bridesmaids' dresses as well as the tables linens from the guest tables.

Behind the cake you barely see a framed verse.  Each guest table featured one as well.  This one was a beautiful testament to Lindsey’s love… 

“I’ve felt for the first time in my life, the joyful consciousness that I am truly loved by a truly good man, one that with all my heart I can love and honor – one who loves me for myself alone and with an unselfish, patient, gentle affection such as I have never thought to awaken in a human heart.” 

- Anna Bronson Alcott 

(who I found out is the oldest sister of Little Women author, Louisa May Alcott)

Brandon's groom’s cake was a surprise for him...I love being in on surprises, haha!  Apparently, he and his buddies are big fantasy football fans and each year the winner of their fantasy football league is awarded this belt as a trophy.

You can see the groom holding it up in the picture on the groom's cake table...he's the reigning champion.

I didn't get to see the real thing, just pictures, but it features a bottle opener (on the right), bottle holder (on the left), and name plates with each year’s winner inscribed on it.  These guys are hard core, so I made sure to capture every detail on the cake!

I think Lindsey and Brandon had the best wedding favors: muslin bags filled with ground coffee.  “A nice warm brew from the Young’s to you!”  Love it!  How great would pumpkin spice coffee be for a fall wedding…  Yum…

Congratulations to Lindsey and Brandon, and thanks for letting me a part of your wedding day!  I wish you every blessing!

Jenn & Jermaine : Nashville Wedding

Happy Tuesday!  I usually blog on Sundays, but I just got the pics for Jenn and Jermaine's wedding from Five by Five Photography and I couldn't wait to share their event!

Jenn and Jermaine are an amazing couple and I feel so blessed to have been part of their special day!  Their wedding was simple, rustic, and romantic.

The wedding and reception were set at Camp Marymount, about 45 minutes outside of Nashville.  The location was wooded but elegant, and the unusually warm December day made it even more perfect.

The bride created all of the decorations for the ceremony and reception.  Her attention to detail was incredible...

Instead of traditional tiered wedding cake, Jenn choose a family recipe for her cake.  I am always honored to make a family's special recipe, but it makes me a little nervous too!  Nothing like baking a cake for the bride's grandmother who created the recipe!

Photo courtesy of Five by Five Photography

 The recipe was a traditional Viennese torte.  It was layers of orange sponge cake filled with  a chocolate maple frosting.  The flavors melded together perfectly into a rich but delicate dessert.  I actually used the sponge cake (minus the orange) for my yule log cake last week.

Jenn and Jermaine both have a passion for music so they choose a fun musical-themed groom's cake.  I absolutely LOVED the green hard shell suitcase Jenn picked for the "cake stand."

Photo courtesy of Five by Five Photography

The cake was Dutch chocolate cake with milk chocolate ganache filling and chocolate buttercream....mmmmm...chocolate....

The piano keys were also made out of a chocolate (imagaine that!).  I used semi-sweet modeling chocolate for the black keys and a combination of white modeling chocolate and semisweet modeling chocolate for the "white" keys.  The snoopy face is cut out of white modeling chocolate and painted with dark brown food coloring.

The catering was provided by Kitchen by House Blend.  I actually met Jeremy and Holly at a recent bridal show and got to taste a few of their dishes (two words: butternut squash bruschetta.  Okay so that was three words, but it was delish!)  Their food is flavorful, fresh, and unique...not your typical catered meal.

Photo courtesy of Five by Five Photography

Laura Stewert with Top Shelf Bartending and Staffing provided all the beverage service for the evening and she was awesome!

Flashtastic Photo Booth provided the ever-popular photo booth...it was hoppin' all night long. All of the guests (including me) had a great time!

All the rentals were provided by Southern Events Party Rentals.

Many blessings to Jenn and Jermaine on their new life together!

Vintage Lace Cake

Happy Sunday!  Hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful day as much as I am!  

This week's "cake" is one I made to display at an wedding event this weekend.  I put "cake" in quotation marks, because there actually isn't any cake present here:)

Display cakes are a great way to show off designs, techniques or just sizes in 3D, instead of simply in pictures.  The decorating process is the same as with a real cake - I still use fondant, buttercream, royal icing, gumpaste, and food coloring to make all the decorations - I'm just covering up styrofoam bases instead of cake.

Display cakes are also fun because I get to come up with the ideas for them!  I always have input on the designs of the cakes I make, but for display cakes, I get to pick the inspirations not just execute them.  I had an idea this week that I wanted to make something with lace and brooches, but I didn't want it to look too old-fashioned...and here's the result!

All the brooches are handmade out of fondant and royal icing.  The rose lace is piped using a special technique I discovered a couple of years ago.  Its one of my favorite lace designs.

I'm going to be working on some additional display cakes this week to take to an event next weekend too.  For those of you in Nashville, come out to Centennial Park next Saturday, September 15 from 10:00 - 6:00 for Made in Nashville!  Its going to be an awesome event featuring all things local and benefiting the TN Literacy Coalition.

Happy Baking (or decorating!)

Beautiful Summer Wedding

Happy Sunday! 

I've been a little MIA on the blog lately because I've been so busy with events!  I truly LOVE baking and cooking for others' special events!  It’s always hard work, but I feel so blessed to be able to do what I love!

This week's cake was particularly special for me.  I had the wonderful opportunity to make the wedding cake for my sister's best friend, Anna (and groom, Jared). 

The wedding was absolutely the most beautiful wedding ceremony I have ever attended!  Anna and Jared truly customized the whole day to reflect their love and respect for God and each other.

Designing the cake for Anna and Jared was a lot of fun!  Anna was so prepared…she knew exactly what colors and designs she wants…all I had to do was put it all together.  Anna LOVES fresh flowers, so in addition to pearls and piping, she wanted lots of flowers.  We decided to go with a buttercream cake, with swirls piped on the sides and candy pearls running around the base of the tiers.  She then wanted yellow, blue, and white flowers cascading down the whole cake, with a few clusters here and there too.

While doing a buttercream cake in the summer make me nervous, I love the look of fresh flowers and buttercream….so bright and fresh!

I took step-by-step shots of this cake so you can see the transformation from plain cake to beautiful work of art.

Step 1: Buttercream, and stacking the tiers.

Step 2: Placing each candy pearl by hand….I think I counted over 300 pearls.

Step 3: Piping swirls on the side with buttercream.  Some brides opt to use a pattern from their dress for the design, but Anna didn't have a specific pattern she wanted, so I just made it up as I went along!

Step 4: The trip there….always the most nerve-wracking part.  You never realize how many potholes there are in the road until you’re transporting someone’s wedding cake!

Step 5: Adding the flowers……voila!

Since the cake was in the middle of the room, we decided to add some large clusters in the back too…..you can never really have too many flowers.

Congratulations to Anna and Jared and many blessing on your new life together!

25th Anniversary Cake

Whew, its already a busy week and its only Monday evening!  I'm working on three different birthday cakes and a wedding cake this week!  So, be on the lookout for several fun blogs coming up....a Snoopy cake, an entire drum set made of cake (even a base drum and cymbals), a proposal cake (awww...), and the best strawberry cake recipe (made from real strawberries, no mixes or strawberry jello here).  Lots of work, but I love it!

Last weekend, I got to make another 25th wedding anniversary cake.  It was a simple, classic buttercream cake decorated with fresh pansies.  

The flavors in the cake were just a fresh...a buttery almond cake, filled with tangy orange curd, and frosted with vanilla buttercream...delicious!

I actually tried/made up a new recipe for the cake.  As the cake was baking (and I was peeking in the oven door, hoping that it would turn out since I made a double batch without testing it out first) I kept hearing my mom's voice in my head, "Never try out new recipes on clients."  Oops. :)  But, thankfully, the cake turned out beautifully!!  It had a perfect crumbs, delicate texture, and tasted great!  So, my gamble paid off this time, but I was a little worried for most of the baking time.

We planned to use pansies from their garden, which sounded like a great idea, until it started pouring down rain.  Luckily I got the cake inside without it getting too wet, but I can't say the same thing for me!  It was worth it though...the pansies were such a sophisticated choice.  I tried to arrange them so that the baby pansies trailed down the tiers.

Stay tuned for some more great cakes in the next few weeks...
As always, happy eating!

20th Wedding Anniversary Cake

Happy Sunday!  Some family friends of mine celebrated their 20th anniversary in December, and I had the honor of catering their anniversary celebration as well as making a cake for the occasion!  I wanted to base the cake off of their original wedding cake, but update it as well.  Many of my friends know my position on wedding cake with columns, staircases, and fountains like this one!  They are SO early 90’s!

Thankfully this couple’s original wedding cake wasn’t nearly as over the top as you can see:

For their anniversary cake, I decided to stack the cakes directly on top of each other instead of separating them for columns and use fresh flowers in reds, burgundies, and different shades of greens to mimic the flowers on their December wedding cake.

The flavor was Red Velvet (yum!), so even the pieces of cake looked somewhat Christmas-y too!  

The finished cake featured red carnations, deep red roses, a few sprays of lime green flowers, baby's breath, and dark green leaves.

 Happy Anniversary to Les and Laura! 

Merrill Moore Wedding Cake

Happy Sunday!  Wow, October is a big month for weddings!  I’m getting ready for another big event next weekend.  This week’s featured cake, from the first of October, was for my friends Brian Lennon and Merrill Moore.

The reception was located on a farm in Franklin and was the most beautiful fall wedding I have ever seen!  The whole theme was country chic - classy and elegant, yet simple and natural.  The food was great southern BBQ.  And the flowers from Phillipe Chadwick were absolutely stunning….circus roses, mums, daliahs, and daisies in reds, oranges, yellows, and greens.  And of course the cake was great! Merrill wanted a simple buttercream cake with fresh flowers to fit with the rest of her décor. 

This cake was the largest wedding cake I have made so far.  It feed 250 people! 

All in all the cake and frosting took:
4 dozen eggs
7 lbs butter
16 cups of sour cream
12 lbs powdered sugar
18 lbs flour

That’s a lot of ingredients!

Since the bottom layer of the cake was so large (16 inches across), I tried a new technique to help it bake more evenly and more quickly.   I used Wilton flower nails, which are supposed to be used to pipe buttercream roses on to, but I put them in the middle of the cake to conduct the heat into the core of the cake.  

It worked perfectly!  The cakes were much flatter and baked in 10-15 minutes less time than without the flower nails!  I still had to trim the cakes to make them perfectly flat, but not as much as I usually do.

I had to make 6 mixer bowls full of icing to cover all the cakes…which in case you are wondering, is a ton of icing!  I felt like I was frosting cake for hours!  

Sometimes I stack the cakes before I transport them to the reception site, but since this one was going about an hour away and I didn’t have anyone to help me lift that cake, I decided to take all the cakes separately and assemble them on site. 

So, once I got to the reception and unloaded all the cakes, I stacked them together and added the fresh flowers.  Since the flowers weren’t pesticide-free, I wrap all the stems so that they don’t come in contact with the cake itself.  Here my brother is wrapping flowers for me.

Once all the flowers were on the cake, the finished product was absolutely beautiful!  It looked so perfect against the barn and red gate on the farm.

Since I had to cut so many slices of cake…250, remember?...I recruited a couple of friends to help me serve.  We cut 200 slices in less than 10 minutes!  Now, that’s a record!

Congratulations to Brian and Merrill!  

Wedding Cake: Liz Hornsby

Happy Sunday!  Sorry for my absence last week…I was so busy baking and decorating cakes, I didn’t have time to blog about them!

This week’s featured cake was for Liz Hornsby and Ben Channell (you’ll get to see his groom’s cake next week!).  Liz wanted a simple buttercream cake with a blue ribbon to match her bridesmaids’ dresses and a few simple sugar flowers here and there.

She also chose a delicious combination of vanilla cake, whipped cream and sliced strawberries, and vanilla buttercream – the perfect combination for a summer wedding!  It tasted like strawberry shortcake!

After the cakes were assembled with all their whipped cream and strawberry deliciousness inside, I frosted them with their final coat of buttercream.  I started by spreading the frosting with a spatula and smoothing it somewhat.

My trick to perfectly smooth buttercream is to use a paper towel and a fondant smoother as the final step.  (A little tip: Viva paper towels work the best since they don’t have any texture). 

Lay the paper towel over the cake and lightly rub it with the fondant smoother to buff out any imperfections.  Carefully pull off the paper towel and repeat all the way around the cake.

Liz’s bouquet included roses and callas, so I made several of each out of gumpaste to decorate the cake.  To make sugar roses, you start with a teardrop shaped piece of gumpaste, then wrap gumpaste petals around until you have the desired size. 

I start with one petal…

Then add two more to make a bud…

Then I add three petals to make a small rose…

And I finish it with five more petals to make a medium rose.  If I want to make larger roses, I add another layer of seven petals.

The finished cake was perfectly suited to Liz and her wedding: beautiful, classy, and simple.

Here is the happy couple cutting the cake…

 Check back next week to see Ben's groom's cake...and a challenge!

Wedding Cake: Andrea Montgomery

Happy Sunday!  If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I made my cousin’s wedding cake yesterday and drove it to Indiana (about a four hour drive from Nashville). 

I built a contraption to keep the cake cool on the drive so it didn’t fall.  This was important because as the butter in the cake gets warm, the cake becomes very soft and can slowly slump.  Usually this isn’t a problem because by the time the cake gets really warm, it’s time to cut it.  But since I was going to be driving for four hours on top of the usual time during the ceremony and reception, I needed to keep the cake cold on the drive.  You can see last week’s post for exact details of my invention. 

I am very happy to report that it worked beautifully!!  The cake was still in perfect condition when we got to the venue.

The ceremony and reception were at the beautiful Granary in New Harmony Indiana.  The town was so charming and the location itself was one of the most attractive wedding venues I’ve ever seen.  My cousin’s theme was butterflies, which fit perfectly with the natural character of the Granary.

The cake was to be an ivory background with lace clusters cascading down the tiers.  We later changed the lace design from the original inspiration in my sketch to match the lace on the bodice of her dress.

After all the cakes were baked, the first step in the decorating process was to cover each tier with ivory fondant.  The fondant is rolled out fairy thin, 

Then carefully laid over the tier and slowly smoothed down the sides.  This is probably the trickiest step for me.  You have work carefully to avoid puckers in the fondant.

Once all the tiers are covered, they are ready to be stacked.  Like all cake decorators, I use wooden dowels inserted into the cake to support it.  That way each tier is resting on the dowels, not on the actual cake below.  I then push a larger dowel through the middle to keep the cakes from sliding around.

Here it is with all three tiers before it decorated. 

I piped the design in magenta colored royal icing, and used a paint brush to drag in the icing a little bit to create a lacier look.  This makes a really neat textured look.  I have used it several times before, but never with a colored icing.  I have always done it with white or ivory on a similar background.  I really liked the affect with a dramatic color.

The design had to be piped on all three tiers.  Each is slightly different and highlights a different floral arrangement from her dress.

After the cake was decorated, we loaded it up in the van using my cake cooler.  I was a nervous wreck the whole time!  But, we checked it once halfway there, the dry ice seemed to be doing its job so I relaxed....but just a little bit. :)

Once we got the reception, I added some butterflies to complete the design and tie it in with her theme. 

All in all, it was a very successful adventure.  I was so happy with the cake and with my invention.  And the wedding was sooo beautiful.  Events like this are why I love what I do!