Birds of Paradise Wedding Cupcake Tower

Whew … the busy season has officially begun at Sweet Element Cakes!  It looks like it’s going to be a doozy of a summer, and I’m going to do my best to keep up to date here this year!

Last weekend I finally had the opportunity to use this sweet custom cupcake tower designed & built by the ever infamous Mr. Sweet Element.  We delivered this tower to The Casino building in Silas County State Park in Kinnelon, NJ last Saturday.

This birds of paradise themed spiral wedding cupcake tower was designed for a super sweet couple, Daniel & Erik.  These grooms had the unfortunate experience of having their wedding postponed from last summer to this spring because of the hurricane weather we experienced last August, which caused all state parks to close the day before their wedding!  I’m happy to report that they had gorgeous weather for “Wedding Day Take 2″ though!

During our initial consultation, I was told that while they definitely wanted a cupcake tower for their wedding, they didn’t want a traditional stacked “wedding-cake-like” tower.  Since I knew they wanted a non-traditional tower and they also wanted to use birds of paradise in the design somehow, I came up with the concept of a tower that would incorporate a vase for the floral arrangement and a set of spiral steps for the cupcakes.

In these shots taken from beneath and the side, you can really appreciate the 3D spiral-ness of the design.

The stunning floral arrangement in the vase of the tower was artistically crafted by Larry from Floral Expressions.  It’s always a pleasure to see another creative mind at work, and when Larry saw that the vase was slightly bigger than he had expected, he instantly thought of filling in the space with branches that perfectly matched the custom stained wood “steps” of the tower!

And lastly, here’s a close up of the cupcakes themselves.  There was a combination of red velvet, devil’s food and vanilla cupcakes, all filled with dark chocolate ganache and frosted with vanilla moussaline buttercream colored to compliment the birds of paradise.

Congrats Daniel & Erik!

Happy 1st Anniversary Chris & Aet!

I know I’m a few days late, but I wanted to wish a very sweet couple, Chris & Aet a very happy 1st anniversary!  I had the pleasure of working with them on their wedding cake last year – a modern buttercream cake wrapped in cherry blossom branches and decorated with love birds.

As many in the wedding industry can attest – even the nicest person can turn a little bridezilla with the stress on their wedding day.  So you can imagine my surprise when I received a personal call from the bride – on the morning of her wedding day, just to confirm that I knew that there was free parking for vendors in the garage across the street from the venue and telling me how to get a voucher, etc.  I don’t know if Aet knows how much it meant that on her big day she took a few minutes to personally reach out to her vendors – but I was extremely touched.  How sweet is that?!  Aet, all of us in the wedding industry wish all of our brides were a little more like you!

A few weeks later, in this day of all things digital, it was a welcome surprise to receive a handwritten thank you card from the happy newlyweds along with a few photos, including the one above, of them cutting the cake.

Here’s to many, many more sweet years together!

New Logo for Sweet Element Cakes!

After a two week design process, 139 entries by 28 designers, and a lot of back and forth on design concepts, I’m very happy to reveal the new logo for Sweet Element Cakes!

One of my fellow friends in the wedding industry, a fabulous wedding & portrait photographer, Meridith Desmond, recommended the site 99designs.com to me over lunch last month.  After researching a number of other options for logo design with independent design firms, I thought that the crowd sourcing idea behind 99designs was a perfect fit for me.  As a creative person, it’s tricky to know if you’ll gel with a specific designer, and I loved the opportunity to interact with so many designers concurrently.  I have to say, it was an fun twist to be the one writing the design brief after working for so many years in the ad industry on the agency side where I’d be reading the brief written by others!

So why the change in logo design?  Well, truth be told, I’ve never explored professional logo design for the entirety of Sweet Element, as Mr. Sweet Element and I came up with the initial concept of the theobromine molecule way back in 2004 when Sweet Element was born.  We thought theobromine was fitting at the time, as it is found in chocolate, and most of the sweets I was making at the time were chocolate based.

However, like many businesses, Sweet Element has evolved over the past eight years.  Initially, I thought that I’d be creating cookies, chocolates, cakes, and catering full dessert bars with many of the french pastries I learned how to make at The French Culinary Institute.  However, as the years flew by, and I eventually left my dual life behind me, saying adieu to my corporate desk job, and hello to full time entrepreneurship, I started really honing in on what I enjoyed most in pastry – cakes!  I found that creating custom cakes allowed me to be the most creative and artistic, whereas creating chocolate, cookies, and other pastries made me feel like I was working in a factory.  And while I excel at production and assembly – it just didn’t seem to fill the creative void that I longed to fill after so many years behind a desk.

So, after a few years in my studio, working almost solely* on cakes, I thought it would be fitting to do a little bit of re-branding to really showcase that Sweet Element is primarily a custom cake company!  I absolutely adore the new logo, and think that it’s a perfect blend of elegance, whimsy and modern design, which lines up perfectly with the overall style of a Sweet Element cake!

Also, to satiate the ever present kid in me, I also had the winning designer come up with various “toppers” to this design that can easily be interchanged for the holidays and other special occasions.

Here’s a sneak peak at the summer version:

*Full disclaimer: Sweet Element still makes cookies and chocolates for select clients that remember the sweets of the early years as well as corporate gifts during the winter holidays!

Modern Marie Antoinette Wedding Cakes

It’s always a pleasure to work with clients that have a fun & interesting theme for their wedding.  And when I received an email from a bride planning a modern Marie Antoinette themed event (think of Sofia Coppola’s rendition) at the historical Loews theater in Jersey City, I just knew we’d get along smashingly!

I ♥ ‘The Love Story” marque.

As the bride was also in the industry (she is a fab makeup artist, and you can find out all about her work here), she was very wise to the fact that the more advance notice you can provide to a boutique vendor like me – the better everything seems to work out!

During our initial design consultation, the bride mentioned that she was interested in the possibility of multiple wedding cakes, as the table the venue provided was 14′ long, and she was afraid that just one small wedding cake would get completely lost.  However, with the wedding being on the more intimate side, I knew that breaking down the number of servings needed into multiple cakes would result in some pretty miniscule cakes that would definitely get lost on such a giant table.

So what to do?

Create rental cakes!

I’ve been toying with the idea of rental wedding cakes for a while, and with this particular client being incredibly nice (yes, listen up … it does pay to be nice to your vendors people … we’ll go above and beyond for grateful clients!), I knew that rental cakes would work beautifully to fill the table on a budget.  So, in the end, I created one real wedding cake (center) and two faux cakes (left and right) for display on the giant dessert table.

The real wedding cake below was comprised of devil’s food cake, filled with Nutella and raspberry preserves, and frosted in Nutella buttercream.  This was the first cake I had made with macarons as decoration & ombre ruffles, and I have to say, I was quite pleased with the end result!

Here’s a closer shot of one of the rental cakes that incorporated pink macarons, a fondant fan and a few gum paste feathers with a black bow on top.

The other faux cake was a one tier cake, in a rough hand painted “polka dot” treatment with a large outline of a flower in the front, accented by a macaron center.

I was so happy to see the following review a few days later from the bride about these cakes on WeddingWire:

“I can’t thank Jen at Sweet Element enough for sharing her amazing talents with us!

I fell in love with a wedding cake design and had come across a bunch of ideas and was searching for someone to bring it all together in one original cake…and not charge us a million dollars for it! I found Sweet Element online and was excited when I read that she will make your design fit within your budget! Its one thing for someone to rip your wedding cake dreams into little parts that you can afford but she really took everything I wanted and gave me a bunch of designs that were all amazing! It was so hard to choose just one!

Jen also made the suggestion of using 2 false cakes to take up space on the huge(14ft long) table we would use as our cake table. Everyone LOVED the 3 cakes and people kept asking when we were going to cut the other two!

I would highly recommend working with Sweet Element for any occasion! Jen was always easy to reach, willing to work with our ideas, worked everything into our budget and her cake was DELICIOUS!“

And lastly … a bit of advice for how to transport a cake on a cake plate!

As the bride wanted to use specific cake plates of her own for presentation, and the real cake had a delicate ruffled base, we came up with an ingenious idea for transport – with the foam support in the photo below.  Essentially, I took a cake tier the height of the cake plate, cut out a hole in the center to put the foot of the plate through, cut a piece of no-skid to place atop the foam, and voila!

Rami Kashou Bridal Line Launch at bebe

I was thrilled when Sweet Element was offered the opportunity to participate in the Vow to Wow launch party for Rami Kashou‘s new bridal line for bebe last month at bebe’s SoHo location in NYC,  as I have been a fan of Rami’s work ever since his first stint on Project Runway.

The cake above was inspired by this layered silk tafetta wedding gown.

So why the delay in posting you may be asking?  Well … it’s taken me a little while to get over the unexpected drama that completely threw me for a loop! (There’s a hint in bottom of the photo above of me & Rami.)

Everything started out well, and I set up my table above with chocolates, a few display cakes inspired by Rami’s new gowns, my portfolio and some business cards.  Initially I thought that this would be an invitation only event, but I was surprised to see that bebe kept it’s doors open to all shoppers.  As you might imagine, when you’re giving out free chocolate – it goes quickly!  Within twenty minutes, all 100 pieces of chocolate were gone and I had one of the corporate marketing folks from bebe come over and ask if I had any more chocolate or any other food, as I couldn’t have an empty table.  I explained that her staff had specifically ordered just 100 bon bons, but I did bring two sheet cakes that were supposed to be cut and served by their catering staff.  After grumbling that she was going to have words with her staff, she then disappeared to find the sheet cakes that I had left in the kitchen for the catering staff.

Half an hour later, the corporate marketing person was still missing, and I was left wondering what was happening with these two sheet cakes, as I didn’t see any catering staff.  At that point, one of the security people from bebe came over, and seeing my quizzical expression, explained that there were no plates or utensils for the sheet cakes, and they were sending someone to Duane Reade (a local pharmacy) to get something to serve the cake with.  With the event nearly half over, as it was only two hours in duration, I was seriously wondering if these cakes would even get served.

Oh, but then *I* got served.  I was mortified when the staff brought up both sheet cakes, which were supposed to be cut and plated in a back kitchen and NEVER meant to be placed on my white linen table!  If that wasn’t bad enough, the staff thought it was helpful to precut the cakes in a very odd fashion, and not supply me with anything to serve it with … so I ended up using two forks (or spoons!) to serve up the odd shaped pieces of cake, while suppressing tears.  Where was the catering staff I was promised?!  If I had known there was no catering staff I never would have made sheet cakes (which by the way, the corporate staff specifically asked for), and would definitely have opted for mini cupcakes as I usually do for these types of events.

Here’s a photo of the cake horror that I took with my cell phone.  That’s devil’s food cake with nutella buttercream on the left and red velvet with cream cheese frosting on the right.  And yes, those are paper BOWLS that the staff ran out to get.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough … the staff only ran to get 30 or so bowls and 48 forks, so within ten minutes, I was offering people cake on napkins sans utensils as that’s all I had.

I honestly think I might have just packed up if Mr. Sweet Element hadn’t shown up as moral support during this disaster.  It was a small consolation to see the corporate marketing person felt terrible and came over to apologize for the mix up, as she saw how mortified I looked when they dropped those two very NOT for presentation cakes on my table for me to serve.

So … lesson learned … I will now ALWAYS quadruple check with any event planners to ensure that everything promised – like a catering staff with PLATES & FORKS will actually be there!

Here’s a shot of Rami with the bebe staff.  And yes, that’s me at my table in the back right corner, posting the cake horror on twitter.

Sweet Element’s 2nd Anniversary Open House!

When I found out that the other artists in my building complex were having their annual open house in early May, I thought it would be a great opportunity to open the doors to the Sweet Element studio too to celebrate our 2nd anniversary with friends and neighbors.  It feels like just yesterday that we were celebrating at our grand opening – ah … how time flies when life is sweet!

While I never made it upstairs to do the full studio tour, I did manage to run to the gallery set up on ground level to see some of the artists’ work.  I just adore the little pig heads!

What’s a party without a little S.W.A.G.?

Two piece chocolate boxes with caramel & peanut butter bon bons for the chocoholics.

Individually boxed cupcakes in a variety of flavors were packaged in sweet little boxes with built-in handles for the perfect sweet take-away!

Aerial shot of the cupcake favors (from left to right): red velvet, confetti, pistachio, double chocolate, chocolate peanut butter, and almond!

A few thermal cups with some postcards.

A view from the back of the shop of the S.W.A.G. table and main tasting table!

A glimpse from behind the main tasting table.

We opened up the space by moving this display rack to “hide” a rack of tools and fondant behind.  Putting that backboard on the rack to conceal what’s behind was definitely worthwhile.  From this picture it almost looks like the cakes are just in front of a purple wall!

Pop of purple from a small potted orchid brightened up the main tasting table.

A close up of some peanut butter bon bons.

I thought that the open house would be a great opportunity to have a variety of sweets & art lovers vote on the final logo options.  I was thrilled to see that my favorite was also the crowd favorite by an overwhelming majority – it got over 51% of the votes!  I’ll be debuting the winner soon, right here on the blog – so stay tuned!

This is what happens when Mr. Sweet Element & I plan events. ;D
Here’s a close up of the logo voting box that everyone fed their votes!  No hanging chads with this system …

And lastly, one last photo of me chatting with a few of our visitors (thanks to Susan from Naturally Susan’s for this shot!).  I’ll have to remember to ask one of my many photographer friends to come and document our next event, as I never seem to have shots of me – I’m either behind the mixer or behind the camera apparently!

In Bliss Launch Party at Montclair Art Museum!

Sweet Element was thrilled to be able to be a part of the In Bliss launch party this week at the Montclair Art Museum.  Despite the gloomy weather and rain, we had a great turnout and met many new friends, neighbors and cake fans.

Given his new job’s insane schedule, I was *super* excited to have Mr. Sweet Element as my assistant for the show.

This Lichtenstein inspired cake felt right at home in the museum!  One of my favorite moments of the evening came when I got a sweet compliment on this cake from an art teacher who stopped by our table.

This white on white wedding dress inspired wedding cake contrasted beautifully with the piece of art behind our table.

Mini cupcake samples … (from left to right) chocolate almond, pistachio, chocolate lover, strawberry almond, and peanut butter chocolate.  Crowd favorites were definitely the strawberry almond and peanut butter chocolate!

For the kid in everyone, I always like to have a little confetti cake on hand. Somehow sprinkles just make everything more fun!

Oh, hello there blogosphere!

Before the entire month of April goes by … I wanted to sneak in at least one post!  Like many months as a solopreneur, the month of April was one of ups and downs, unexpected opportunities, and a lot of lessons learned.

I’ll be posting in more detail about all of the below soon … but here’s a quick recap of all the goings on at Sweet Element this past month!

To start things off, here are a few of this month’s cakes!

This first cake was a vanilla cake, filled with dark chocolate ganache, and frosted in vanilla buttercream for a shabby chic birthday party for a very sweet one year old in Edgewater, NJ.

This sweet little red velvet birthday cake, filled with cream cheese frosting, and iced in vanilla buttercream was ordered as a surprise by a very sweet son.

These three wedding cakes were designed for a super fun modern Marie Antoinette themed wedding. I’ll be posting a lot more detail on these in another post next month!

Lastly, this fashion forward wedding cake was one of the two wedding cakes that were specially designed for the launch of Rami Kashou’s bridal line at Bebe.  I’ll be posting more on this event soon too!

There were a few more really fun cakes that I had the opportunity to make and would love to share, but I’m awaiting publication … so, as soon as I find out more, I’ll be updating everyone here too!

I was also extremely fortunate to get to know a number of fabulous folks in the wedding & event industry this month, including fellow cake designers, photographers, event planners, florists and make up artists.  I even got to make wedding cakes (yes, you read that right – cakeS!) for a super sweet make up artist ~ who had an awesome wedding at the Loew’s theater in Jersey City, NJ!

I was so excited to finally have a few professional headshots taken by the lovely Mikkel Paige in SoHo, which is one of my favorite neighborhoods in NYC.  The most amazing thing to me about these shots was that they were taken after I had only gotten four hours of sleep, having stayed up to the wee hours to finish cakes for a last minute shoot (more on that shoot coming soon too!).

And last but not least, here’s a glimpse of some of the much needed *fun* that Mr. Sweet Element & I got to enjoy this month!

Clockwise from top left: Mr. Sweet Element & I on the beach in Asbury Park – my first time there!; Traditional ice cream cake from Parm in SoHo, NYC – worth every calorie!  The sandwiches were so good (& I was so hungry), that I never got a photo.; My first Yankees game of the season in the Bronx.; Nagle’s ice cream parlor in Ocean Grove, NJ … can you see a theme here?

March Madness!

It’s been a flurry of activity at Sweet Element this March, but I’ve finally been able to catch a little bit of computer time to share what we’ve been up to here in the land of sweets!

We started the month off with a very tall, very chocolate wedding cake for a wonderful couple who had their wedding at Battery Gardens in lower Manhattan.  Ilona & Allen were having a black & white NYC themed wedding, and loved the concept of having a unique chocolate buttercream cake decorated with a stunning silver NYC skyline, some graphic red fondant hearts and the iconic “I ♥ NY” logo in the center of the cake.  This cake was all red velvet, filled with cream cheese filling, and stood around 27″ tall!

Keeping in the NYC theme, we created this fun Jets jersey groom’s cake for another wedding at ‘Cesca, on the upper west side of Manhattan the following weekend.  The jersey was customized with the groom’s name and the couple’s wedding date in place of the player’s number.  The cake was a rich vanilla cake, filled with dark chocolate ganache, frosted in vanilla buttercream and decorated in a combination of fondant and gum paste decor.

We also created a fun Baby Einstein themed cake for a 1st birthday party in NJ.  This cake was a devil’s food cake, filled and frosted in vanilla buttercream.  The baby blocks on top were decorated rice cereal treats made with white chocolate in lieu of marshmallows in order to get nice edges.  All decor was made of fondant & gum paste.

Next up was prep for the 19th GLBT Expo at the Javits Center in NYC – which involved a LOT of baking: 6000+ mini cupcakes!  I am happy to say that I definitely had help this year in the baking department: BIG thanks to Mr. Sweet Element, fellow pastry chef LP & Remo – our newest intern!  I don’t know how I would have gotten through it all without you!

The GLBT Expo took place on St. Patrick’s Day weekend … which meant that Mr. Sweet Element and I celebrated our 1st date anniversary working the booth!  After last year, we realized that we definitely couldn’t do it alone, so this year we enlisted the help of some fabulous family and friends.  I don’t think I could give a big enough *THANK YOU* to Kim & Susan for all their help!  We were also very happy to share our booth with Nancy Swiezy Events, who created a gorgeous floral display for the table.  If you are ever looking for a fabulous florist or wedding planner – definitely give Nancy a call!

Here are a few snapshots from the show (last two courtesy of my cousin Kim, as most of my photos were STOLEN!***)

Kim, me & Susan all set up and waiting for the crowd to head in on Saturday.  Pistachio, Almond, Red Velvet, Confetti, Coconut & Vegan Chocolate mini cupcake samples, a few display cakes, a gorgeous floral display and little moo cards filled up our table!

Mr. Sweet Element, me & Kim ready to take on the onslaught of tasters!
Mini cupcake closeups and a shot of our back rack filled with boxes of cupcakes and display cakes.

***The weekend was fabulous … until I realized that someone swiped my phone!!! Definitely a downer to a great weekend, but luckily I was able to get a new phone late on Sunday at the AT&T Times Square store, who had reps at the Expo and were extremely helpful.  I’ll definitely be going back there for any phone needs in the future, as I’ve never received better service at any other store.  I thought it was incredibly sweet that the rep who I talked to at the Expo personally called me later that night just to check in to see if I was ok and had everything squared away.

So, new iPhone acquired, but many contacts and photos lost as I hadn’t synced it in a small eternity.  Needless to say I’ve already set up my new one and all my other devices on iCloud with “Find my iPhone/iPad/etc.” installed!

A Steampunk Valentine

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!  I’ve been wanting to create a steampunk cake for quite some time now, and I finally got a chance to with this mini heart steampunk Valentine’s day cake.  The cake is a chocoholic’s dream: devil’s food cake, filled and frosted with chocolate buttercream.  The board is covered in a distressed wood finish fondant and the cake is decorated with fondant & gum paste decor.

This was a very mini-project, as you can see in the in-progress and detail shots below.

Here are a few detail shots of the gears, screws, and other metallic accessories.

This might have been my favorite part of this cake – the heart in the keyhole.  The mini heart is a little less than  1/4 the size of a penny.

Detail shot of the gum paste skeleton key & feather.

Just to give you an idea of scale, here’s the base cake with my favorite Sharpie marker.  Very miniature in comparison to most Sweet Element cakes!

And lastly, just because I think buttercream frosted cakes are simply pretty on their own, here’s the cake simply frosted in chocolate buttercream, before it got steampunked.