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 4th!

Hope everyone enjoys a very happy July 4th!

Here’s a few Sweet Element treats made for the holiday festivities:

Mini red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting & local NJ blueberries.

Smore cupcake

Best lunch tray ever: Homemade "oreos", double chocolate oreo cupcake, mini red velvet cupcake & smore cupcake

Winnie the Pooh Bear Baby Shower Cake & Bee Cupcakes

Here’s one of the latest SweetElement creations I made for my cousin’s wife’s baby shower.  Growing up my cousin Greg’s favorite character was Winnie the Pooh, so I thought it might be a cute idea to replicate a pooh cookie jar I had seen with him digging into his favorite treat – Hunny!  In addition to the cake, I also made some cupcakes decorated with hunny bees and blue buttercream since they know they are having a baby boy!

Winnie the Pooh Cake and bee cupcakes

Close-up of the cupcakes which were all devil’s food cake with blue buttercream and handmade fondant bees.

Winnie the Pooh was made of alternating layers of devil’s food cake and yellow cake filled with cookies and cream buttercream and frosted in vanilla buttercream and fondant.

Smile :)

It’s been a happy cupcake time at SweetElement lately, can ya tell?  These were ordered by one of my co-workers to celebrate one of her team member’s birthdays.  The cupcakes were a mix of devil’s food cake and yellow cake topped with assorted colos of buttercream and decorated in chocolate.

Jungle Baby Shower Cake II & Cupcakes

Yet another SweetElement creation!  A friend of my co-worker’s who planned the baby shower that I made my first jungle baby shower cake for wanted to order a similar cake with cupcakes for one of her co-workers, and here’s the result!  I was fairly happy with the cupcake stand as well ~ even though it was made out of styrofoam, it was really easy to assemble and didn’t “shed” like a lot of other styrofoam products I’ve seen in the past.

The cake was a devil’s food cake filled and frosted with chocolate buttercream and decorated in chocolate and topped with fondant animals.  The cupcakes were an assortment of devil’s food cake and yellow cake topped with multi-colored buttercreams.

Handmade fondant animals … too cute!

The client requested chocolate “dot” decorations that would work with the jungle theme on the cupcakes, which I think tied them together with the cake very nicely 🙂