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DEL.ICIO.USBirthday Bash
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
These gum paste flowers are lovingly made for wedding cakes at Sweet Dreams Bakery in downtown Norcross.
Photo: Vino Wong/AJC staff
My weekend was a complete blur — I took the day off Friday to finish my daughter’s 11th birthday cake: a “fairy” cake with a flower fairy enameled in chocolate with gum paste flowers, covered in rolled fondant, surrounded by white chocolate petals. For someone who used to make cakes for a living (blast, I even made my own wedding cake the first time around…) this is the only professional style cake I do anymore. It’s just too stressful and time consuming (though it’s worth it to see her smile).
There are lots of bakeries in town that specialize in this sort of cake, but I’d say the style that best exudes my own as a pastry chef is Highland Bakery, though their stuff is a little funkier than mine. Sugar Cakes on the Square in Marietta has a refined European style that I admire a lot, too.
Even though I’m exhausted today, I still would never let anyone make her cake but me. But my sore feet got me wondering: if I did want to buy a high-end birthday cake, where would I go? What bakeries are the best at specializing in pastillage, fondant, and other sugar arts?
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By jr
April 21, 2008 1:25 PM | Link to this
Sugar craft and pastillage is an art and only as good as the person that makes it I like to patronize places that i know the owner does this work because you lose the decorater and you stuck with a shody job some of the chinese bakeries up here in gwinett do a good job and i like the fact they use plum or fruit cake verses sponge for their cakes
By Theresa
April 21, 2008 2:37 PM | Link to this
Hey Meredith — it’s THeresa Giarrusso of the MOMania blog writing —- I am love to make my children’s birthday cakes — I started doing it because I couldn’t find a bakery that would do the very time intensive characters faces made out of icing stars (you know the bust of Cinderella, Elmo) — I’m sure a professional could do much better than I do but the kids love them and I love making it exactly how they want —- My baby daughter loves this little piggy went to market, this little piggy had roast beef, etc… so I made her piggy cakes for her first birthday — I had a cake pan for the big piggy (animal crakers pan from Wilton does like five animals from one pan) and then I made little piggy cupcakes — I used pink marshmallows sliced in half for their piggy noses - the ears looked a little funny but the noses were cute!! This weekend I made a skate cake for my now 7 year old — I used Oreos for the wheels, and pick stars for the skate and then made a beautiful orange pom-pom on the toe of the cake — I like the pom-pom so much i made a pink and orange mum on the other cake for the adults — they weren’t terribly professional but they were made wiht love —
By Natalia
April 21, 2008 5:11 PM | Link to this
Im from Argentina, actually living in Buckhead, you can check my website www.decotortas.com.ar (photos and minicakes)is in spanish but you can take a look and see if you like the styles. Send me an email if you want to know more information. I would be glad to prepare the cake and the decoration you want(with fondant, pastillage, and glase)look forward to hearing from you.
By Penguinmom
April 21, 2008 7:44 PM | Link to this
I enjoy watching Ace of Cakes on Food Network but I really can’t imagine actually eating any cake with that much fondant. :-( Pretty awful tasting any time I’ve had it. Looks great though. But to me the point of a cake is to eat it. So, I’d rather have a sloppy cake that’s yummy than an incredible-looking cake that is not.
I have done my kids cakes using cake mixes, Wilton pans and piped stars. (best if you have a friend to help pipe. Otherwise you hand is dead at the end.) Occasionally we just wing it on our own. Most recently made a treasure chest from two loaf pans, piped slats for the wood and thin piped details. Put it on a platter with brown sugar sand and added some Mardi Gras beads as decoration.
We did use a German bakery in Norcross on occasion for specialty cakes but they have since closed down or moved. I think they were called Cloudt’s?
By Kat
April 22, 2008 8:52 AM | Link to this
I once made a cake that looked like a hamburger but was all cake from one of those “Silly Cake” recipes in a women’s magazine. I made that when in middle school or high school. Since then, I have relied only on Rhodes Bakery (originally in the Northlake area) now in Snellville (too far, sadly) to make those outstanding cakes.
By DYJ
April 22, 2008 9:14 AM | Link to this
Seriously people, Publix and Costco whip out the best cakes (taste and budget wise). Why put yourself in mental and physical pain when someone else can do it cheaper and better. And, fondant is disgusting. It’s like eating colored play-dough.
By Kat
April 22, 2008 9:36 AM | Link to this
DYJ: I completely agree with you regarding Publix. My wedding cake was from Publix and it was amazing!
By kvp
April 22, 2008 11:10 AM | Link to this
We just got some exciting cakes from Highland Bakery for a party — one was made to look like a beehive and the other a stack of books with funny titles for the birthday girl. (More fun than fancy, but they required a lot of skill all the same.) They were gorgeous! Not only that, but tasty, too. The cakes were the hit of the party. Karen at Highland Bakery did a great job. I definitely recommend them.
By meridith ford
April 22, 2008 12:40 PM | Link to this
It’s so funny the comments you guys are making about rolled fondant — it IS beautiful, but most people hate it: My boy friend tasted it for the first time several months back when I styled a cake for the cover of the AJC’s Valetine’s day food section and it looked like the scene out of “Big” when Tom Hanks spit out the caviar at the Christmas party… my daughter, however, loves it.