25th Anniversary of Jazz & Pizzazz

Welcome back to another busy week.  Don't forget to try our new chocolate hazelnut crunch cupcake and let us know what you think.  While we look forward to the summer, the kitchens have been hot from all that baking!  Let's get on to our greatly anticipated cake.

Glenn and Mary came to our bakery a few months ago in preparation for the 25th Anniversary of Jazz and Pizzazz, a production put on every spring by the Chantilly High School Music Department.  This is a huge event for them, and they asked for show-stopping cake.  After some sketches and thoughts put down on paper, they decided they wanted to replicate their stage.  We didn't have a photo of the stage to work with so we did a bit of sketching to come up with the blueprint.  From there, the pastry chefs an decorators took over.  The other thing the chefs had to consider was that they were displaying this cake for two days in honor of all alumni coming in for the celebration, and it was too large to fit into our fridges in Centreville.  So we stopped baking production mid morning to cool down our kitchen and to clear enough table space.  The bottom "stage cake" was to be made with chocolate devil's food cake and the backdrop was vanilla buttercake.  The entire cake was covered in vanilla buttercream, then covered in black fondant.  We added purple shimmery "curtains" on the two sides and on the front of the stage, some steps and a microphone in the spotlight.  The back wall had their 25th anniversary logo, which was a must.  But what made this cake so special were the handmade musical instruments on the top.  There was a drum set, guitar, trombone, saxophones and trumpets.

I had the honor of attending the show on Friday night after delivering the cake.  What an experience!  The talent of all the students and the dedication of the teachers, staff and parents at Chantilly HS are truly incredible.  This did not feel like a high school production at all.  I cannot imagine the number of hours that were put into this, so I encourage everyone to put this on their reminders of "TO DO" for next spring.  And to show my support, I invite the Chantilly HS students, faculty, staff and parents to come by either location for a free cookie through Friday, June 3 when you mention this blog.  Until next week and another fun adventure.