Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Cakelava Cake Designs

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a 3-day "Discover your Inner Artist" class with the amazing and uber-talented cake designer Rick Reichart of cakelava.  Rick and his wife Sasha traveled all the way from Hawaii to the amazing cake studio and classroom of Icing Inspirations in Waterloo, Ontario.

Rick was a fabulous teacher as he guided us through two of his amazing designs;  the very popular 3-tier tall hibiscus cake and a Clownfish sculpted cake.  He generously shared with us his design style, techniques, thoughts and created this wonderful atmosphere for all of us to get lost in our cakes.

Here is the wonderful line-up of hibiscus cake designs.  Each one has its little personalization to the floral pattern as they are freehand cut (no cutters).  My cake sits on the far right and the photo below.
 Here I am with the amazing and so genuinely nice cakelava duo Rick and Sasha Reichart.
I must also mention all other the wonderful people that I met.  The owners, Chrissie and Justin, of Icing Inspirations and Too Nice to Slice who held these classes - very kind and accomodating to us.  I also met my longtime blog-friends, Brandy, of Cakes-a-nonymous and Angela from The Sugar Cove.

I met so many new cake friends - it was such a wonderful experience to be in a room with so many people with the same passion.  One minute we are all laughing and chatting it up - the next minute, there is complete silence as we are all concentrating on painting the fine details of our cakes.  I loved that - I was in my element!

Here's a photo of Brandy (who kept me laughing all 3 days) and I with our finished clownfish cakes.  Also a top-view of all the sugar details we made during class.
I took so many photos, here are some of my additional favorite ones.  Imagine 17 people airbrushing 2.5 feet tall cakes.... that was a funny moment.
I had the pleasure of meeting the sweet Carrie Biggers of the famous Carrie's Cakes in Utah.  I have been following her beautiful work for many years.
Rick with the clownfish cake all iced with buttercream and ready for fondant - yes, it is cake!

12 comments:

Brandy L said...

Juanita it was such a pleasure to finally meet you! I'm glad we got the chance to work together as a team, i definietly learned a lot from you! :-D Thank you for being so helpful during those 3 days.

Jenniffer said...

Wow! It looks like a great class - I wish I could have been there too!

Cupcakes and Sundry said...

OMG those cakes look fab! Too good!

cakelava said...

Juanita!! We were thrilled to meet you after all those years! Being able to put a name (and a winning personality!) to a face and to get to know the students in person was one of the highlights of our experience here! This is an amazing review and so well written! You even included the "green fog" which we will never forget, ha ha! Glad you had a chance to meet Chrissie and Justin (aren't they awesome!) and other cake artists. You did a fantastic job on your cakes and hope we'll have a chance to see you again for a future class. Take good care! Sasha and Rick

VerĂ³nica Guardia said...

Guau! todo es precioso!.

Un besito

Wyny
http://corazonyazucar.blogspot.com/

Sgt.Pepper said...

che meraviglia.....semplicemente perfetto....siete artisti!!!!
complimenti di cuore!!!!
a presto,
ciaooooooooooo

Margie said...

Just love these tropical cakes. How did you do the hibiscus flower cut-outs? Would love to try this.mo

SweetThingsTO said...

Thank you everyone for your comments!

@Margie - All the flowers and designs are freehand cut - no cutters used at all.

julie desmeules said...

Love the clown fish! Now I am trying to figure out how that cake was standing up...

CookieMonster said...

AMAZING! How did you do the borders for the hibiscus cake? And what about parts that look like little indentations?

SweetThingsTO said...

@CookieMonster I can't reveal Rick's secrets, but everything is essentially freehand designs.

Anonymous said...

If you are interested learning Ricks methods sign up for this class for September 2012 at www.motherofackes.net

I know Chrissy is also hosting part 2 of this class in 2012 as well!

Check out cakelava on Facebook and follow Rick on his travels :)