January news from Zillycakes: What a couple of weeks we are having, and it's only January!
I'm here to say that I'm grateful for employees, as we move into our 3rd week of creative madness here in Buffalo, New York. We are still working out of my house and Dolci bakery as we wait on building permits from City Hall (now 3 months and still waiting!). We are making custom cakes, preparing for the Smithsonian American Art musuem project on Feb. 14th, and working on product development for our retail line. I am hopping with all of the wedding tastings that are being scheduled...proof that these days a virtual presence is more important than an actual storefront!
Still, I will be so happy to begin construction on the studio in February. We are tripping over each other here trying to get everything done! We started out with a cupcake tower for Jayson and Paul's Union Ceremony at St. Paul's Cathedral, which was lovely. They transformed the room with hundreds of floating lanterns and gorgeous flowers that they flew in from Hawaii (where they now reside. Yes, I'm jealous!)
Take a look at some other projects we have been working on (all of which we finished this weekend):
Ever heard of "Skelanimals?" We hadn't either, until we made this cake for a 13 year old's special birthday. They are kind of like "The Littlest Petshop" meets Goth. Their motto is: "Dead Animals Need Love Too." Each animal has it's skeleton showing and a little red heart showing it is loved. They are strangely cute, in a dark sort of way. Lindsay really sculpted her heart out on these little beauties! And Mo took the purple sculpted cake stump by storm!
Aren't they so cute and creepy?
Below are some "in process" pictures of a sculpted Po cake, from Kung Fu Panda:
Below are some "in process" pictures of a sculpted Po cake, from Kung Fu Panda:
Voila, PO!
Contrary to popular opinion, sculpted cakes do not need to be covered in fondant if you don't like it. While we do make our own fondant at Zillycakes, and it actually tastes like food, which is a good thing, still some people opt away from it. Here Po is made with good old-fashioned "kid" buttercream (mostly powdered sugar and butter), with gumpaste elements for the ears, eyes, nose, lips, and tongue. Fun!
Then there were a few special orders from California and Pennsylvania for parties here in Buffalo, one for a woman who loves animal print and another for a guy whose nickname is "spider":
Finally, we've been working on a top secret project...shhhh, don't tell a soul! Last week we finished a full scale mock-up of Biff Henderson for the Late Show with David Letterman! For those of you who don't know Biff, he is the stage manager who has been with Dave for as long as anyone. They have a fun segment where people come on the show and create Biff out of interesting materials such as cheese, post-its, bubble gum, ketchup, etc. Late last November they asked me to submit a "real time" video of me creating Biff out of cupcakes. Since nobody was going to eat those 1500 cupcakes, my staff cast them out of plaster for me, so now we have 1500 props for our windows once we open! The final image turned out amazing, but I can't show you yet. I'll be sending out the video at the end of this week to the Late Show, and with any luck they'll book me for a firm date. Then you can see Biff in cupcakes! In the meantime, here is the audition video and the show segments of the bubblegum artist for you to enjoy, plus another segment from an etch-a-sketch artist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy57Nx7PfFE Ben Harben's partipation for Letterman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9jBiNZd6Og Biff done with an etch-a-sketch
Hopefully someday soon you'll get to see some of my videos posted to YouTube as well! Check back next month and you might be able to see my 5600 cupcake installation of Obama and Lincoln in time-lapse photography! Now that would get some hits!
Pipe on!
Zilly
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