Sushi Anyone??

Welcome to another week.  We have been bringing out all the fun summer time treats.  Check out the new cake pops in different flavors (the death by chocolate is my favorite), lemon cream tarts, key lime pie, chocolate dipped strawberries, and a very refreshing watermelon smoothie.

This week we are featuring a grooms cake we made to highlight the groom's love of sushi.  First we made a rectangular cake to look like the trays that sushi is served on at the restaurants.  We rolled out white fondant to cover the entire cake.  To create the wood grain effect, we used a light brown color and a paint brush to apply the color.  The bristles of the brush resembled the imperfections of a wood grain.  As the sushi tray was drying, we started on hand-rolling all the sushi.  We took out fondant and started out with some dark green seaweed, dark red tuna, light salmon, white rice and orange roe.  Once we had all the components ready, we rolled them together to create a mouth-watering display of sushi.  We finished it off with a pair of chopsticks, some soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger.  The cake looked fantastic and delicious.

Join us next week for another fun cake adventure.  Until then, come visit Victoria or myself in Centreville or Manassas and have a brand new cake pop on us (through Friday, July 1).  Remember to enjoy the beautiful weather and don't forget to pick up dessert for your 4th of July picnics.  Parfait bowls, strawberry pies, cupcakes and strawberry shortcakes are perfect for your BBQs!

A spring wedding

I know it's a little late in the day, but I haven't forgetten about the blog.  I have had quite a full day of spring cleaning (a few months late) and decided I must treat myself to a very cold cup of bubble tea with a warm chocolate chunk cookie tomorrow.  So come join me for a complimentary bubble tea in either Centreville or Manassas (through Friday, June 24) to toast my long-lost and very much forgotten about muscles!  And if you need help with your overdue spring cleaning, I offer up Victoria's muscles - she is fantastic, fast, efficient and remember to look for her in Manassas and she will be ready with extra large trash bags!

Well, after last week's wedding cake mishap, I thought you might enjoy one reading about one of our favorite wedding cakes we have done recently.  This cake was done about two months ago at the height of cherry blossom season.  The bride and groom really wanted to highlight cherry blossoms and had a special love of chocolate.  So they went with a three-tiered wedding cake with alterating layers of mocha and chocolate sponge cake iced with chocolate buttercream, then covered in dark chocolate fondant.  Since the cherry blossoms they chose have a hint of pink, they wanted to accent the cake with a thin pink fondant ribbon band.  We then piped some branches in a slightly lighter chocolate and made our own version of a cherry blossom tree.  The cake looked fantastic!  We were all in awe of how well the cake turned out.  The design was very clean and elegant, it had a touch of traditional with a very modern twist - WE LOVED IT!

 We also want to congratulate all the recent graduates.  Congratulations Class of 2011 and good luck on your next adventures!  Don't forget to stop by or visit our website at http://www.cakesbyhappyeatery.com/ for some sweet treats.

WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?! - Don't forget to always stay cool.......

Well, our kitchens certainly kept us busy this past weekend.  The hot and humid weather sure did not help us out any.  So we wanted to share a little reminder to everyone as the summer is about to officially begin (the 90+ degrees for the last two weeks was just spring!).

On Friday morning, our Centreville kitchen started up early to produce a wedding cake to be picked up at 9am.  The bride and groom were having a small wedding with about 15 people on Friday afternoon.  They chose a two-tier red velvet cake with cream cheese filling and buttercream icing.  For the design, they wanted something simple and elegant.  They went with a light pink ribbon wrap with scroll work and fresh pink roses on the cake.  We had the cake ready for them when we opened at 9:00.  That morning, it was already 90 degrees outside, and they weren't serving the cake for another five hours, so we made sure to remind them to refrigerate the cake when they got home.

Well, almost two hours later they walked back into the bakery with the cake box.  One of our staff members (Brian) asked what was wrong, and they lowered the cake box.  I think Brian's heart may have jumped a little when he saw the remnants of the cake.  All the buttercream icing had melted, the cream cheese filling had also melted and the cake was sweating.  Brian asked what happened, and our nervous groom admitted he had stopped to run an errand before going straight home, therefore he left the cake in the car by itself, with no air.  This happened almost two hours since he left with the cake from the bakery!  Since it was over 90 degrees, it meant the inside of the car was like an oven, and the entire cake could not handle the extreme heat.

We were not able to save their original wedding cake due to the melted icing and compromised support structure.  We asked them to come back in another 90 minutes so that we could figure out our next step.  Luckily, we had some more red velvet cakes for orders that were picking up later that afternoon, so we pulled those cakes and trimmed them for a brand new wedding cake and had the baker start on another batch of red velvet cakes for the later orders.  We quickly filled and iced the new cakes, then decorated them to look like the original cake.  When the groom returned, he had two cakes - a beautiful wedding cake for his beautiful bride, and a groomscake that was sure to be the talk of the pre-summer heat!

So here is a little rhyme from our desserts so that you will never forget to keep dessert cool:
Our gentle reminder that just like you, please keep us (desserts) cool,
We don't like to sit, unwind or relax by the pool,
For we are not made to stay hot,
And we will try to give it all we've got,
But you may forget about us and go take a dip,
And if you do, we will most certainly drip, and may even strip!

Sweet Sixteen

Welcome back to another crazy busy week!  The kitchen in Manassas is busy producing all things graduation for Friday.  We have some fantastic graduation cookies that have been flying off the shelves.  Centreville just created a new sponge cupcake, it tastes like velvet, butter and air wrapped up in a cupcake!  They are only $1 each, but if you mention our blog through Friday, June 10, we will share it with you on the house, and we will make sure our Manassas location has some starting tomorrow (Wednesday).

I thought we would feature a recent sweet sixteen birthday cake we made a few weeks ago.  I received an email about two months ago from Nanci about planning her daughter's 16th birthday party, to be held at a restaurant in Fair Oaks. They were looking for a showstopper that was friendly on a budget.  The first picture they had in mind was a three-tier topsy turvey cake, but that did not fit within their budget.  So I asked what elements from the cake they liked, and we went from there.  The birthday girl was very flexible and loved hot pink, zebra print and black.  So we sketched out a tall two-tier cake, with the bottom iced in hot pink buttercream with a black fondant ribbon band around.  The top tier was covered in a zebra print with a small row of hot pink dots to tie the two together.  To finish it off, we made a 16 out of hot pink fondant and outlined it in black then added in little dangling balls of black, white and hot pink to complete the fresh and young feel for the party.  Nanci was excited when she saw the cake. 

The cake was iced completely out of vanilla buttercream, with just a touch of fondant for the ribbon bands, 16 topper and colored balls.  Our decorators do an amazing job of making cakes look glass-like smooth without the use of fondant.  So come on out and visit us at either location.  If you need to cool down, we have plenty of bubble tea and smoothies to help you out!  Until next week.

Emily