Designing Cakes based on Inspiration

Inspiration is found everywhere; let it be an invitation, a wedding gown, flower bouquet or tablecloth, such things can give your imagination endless possibilities for a cake design. A simple google search can give you hundreds of images that can offer myriads of ideas. These are the designs that you create just because you want to, the ones you design for pleasure; it's those cakes that you've had in your head for awhile, only wishing that a client would order such design.

I have been obsessed with Nate Berkus and his whole concept and approach to interior design, so I decided to base this cake design on rooms! I recently created a Pinterest account and I love looking through pictures and "pinning" them. I have always enjoyed seeing other ways in which the color combination of red, white and black are used, since its such a popular melange.... See where I'm going?? I collected images of rooms, from Pinterest with a color palette of red, white and black.

Here are the rooms that I found, and loved:

ROOM 1: The one thing that stood out most in this room was the rug. There is a sort of quilted scallop pattern in black and white that makes the bedroom pop!

ROOM 2: I love this bathroom! There are three things in this room that I noted. Me being a lover of sugar flowers, I immediately noticed the red anemones in the tub. Also, take a look at the black scribbled pattern on the bathroom rug, it will come to good use once we start designing the cake. The last thing that caught my attention was that tall, architectural mirror on the wall.

ROOM 3: This is the last piece of inspiration for my cake design. Once again, flowers; take a look at those white hydrangeas on top of books that look as if there was wind blowing on them from an opened window. There is plenty of texture in this room, along with a few touches of brown and gold.

Taking into consideration all of the elements I've just pointed out, I begin one of the most crucial parts of cake designing, the sketching. I sketch all of my cakes, let it be a simple 2 tier cake with piped Swiss dots, or a 5 tier wedding cake covered in lace and sugar roses. It's the one thing that I base everything on: the diameters and heights of my tiers, what sugar decorations I need to make, what special supplies I need to order to bring my idea to life, etc...

Finally, here is the cake! Its a massive 5 tier cake with black separators, streaked and splattered black food coloring, red sugar roses and rice paper feathers. I used all of the inspiration above in many ways, some more obvious than others. From the first room, the texture on the floor inspired me to go into my box of flower cutter and disassemble a cutter to get a scallop look to it. I imprinted the cutter to the sides of the tiers after covering them in rolled fondant. From the bathroom, the tall mirror inspired me to make a tall cake! In my opinion, the anemones seemed too dark with the black centers, so I opted for red roses, which are always a beautiful alternative. Lastly, the room on the 3rd picture inspired the wafer paper feathers, which offer movement like the frilly hydrangeas. The feathers were streaked with gold paint as an extra accent (this was my awesome mom's idea). The spherical shape to the lamp inspired the base; my handy man father, made the base using round wooden spheres. He rocks!

Tips on Designing Cakes

1. Look beyond the focal point of your inspiration. If you are looking at a dress for inspiration, which I often do, don't just look at the bow that sits in the middle of the waist, look around it. Look at the lace and embroidery surrounding the bow, look at the pearls that the model is wearing and take a close look at the shoes too! The shoes can always offer a pop of color to a traditional cake design.

2. Look at textures and graphics. Texture is an awesome thing. Seriously! Let it be embossing fondant, adding buttons, or piping embroidery, adding texture to a cake design makes it much more editorial. Graphics and textures don't always have to be 3 dimensional. I have a friend who often uses stamps to give her cakes dimension along with her hand painted designs.

3. Ambiance. The "feeling" one gets from a cake is very important. If I am designing a wedding cake for a very traditional couple, in which the bride is wearing all white and the decor will be in hues between white and ivory, and a guest count of 40, and the only color making an appearance at the wedding is the red cheeks the bride gets after kissing her groom, no matter how much I'd like to, I will not propose a tall, detailed cake. I will look through an inspiration folder (which is something that every bride should give to their baker), and pick out the simplest details. The inspiration is there to make us, the bakers, feel as if we were to be at the wedding. Our goal is to make the cake look as fabulous as possible and as fitting as can be.

4. Add your style! Many times, one is limited to the imagination of a client. It's true! You should always fulfill, if not, surpass your clients expectations, but don't loose you essence and your special touch! Your clients come to you because they like your style and they believe you can bring their visions and dreams to life!

5. SKETCH. Let it be on a sticky pad, graph paper, on a computer software or in your school notebook (which I was VERY known for doing), you must sketch. As I said above, I sketch all of my cakes. Sketches make me feel like I am in control. It's an organization tool as well. From my sketches, I figure out: the sizes of my cakes, what sugar decorations I should make and supplies I need to order to bring my cake to life.

WOW, this was one big blog post! Hope you read it all through and that it was helpful to you!

Until later,

Rafael :)