Piece of Cake

There are many reasons to celebrate, but birthdays are always an extra special reason. There’s nothing better than celebrating all the wonderful memories you have made with friend over the past year and of course, eating cake.

To give you a little baking history, my first internship in college was at a small wedding cake shop in St. Louis called The Cakery Bakery. I was in desperate need that summer for an internship for school and was willing to take just about anything. When I heard about the opening at the shop, I jumped on the opportunity and interviewed immediately. They knew I was looking for an internship that tied in with my marketing degree, but unfortunately at the time only had a production internship available. I love baking more than anything so I was willing to sacrifice the marketing part to learn more about baking and get an internship on my resume. They were even nice enough to call it a Marketing/Production internship and let me shadow the marketing department and shop owner to get business experience.

The Cakery Bakery gave me amazing experience and a summer I’ll never forget! That summer I learned everything and anything I wanted to know about baking, cake assembling, decorating, running a bakery and making your dreams a reality! Although my internship wasn’t the marketing experience I probably should have had, it was even better. Erika, the owner, taught me that with hard work, dedication and respect for your employees and customers you can achieve even your wildest dreams! She went from making small cakes in her home to owning one of the best wedding cake shops in St. Louis and three cupcake shops in MO and IL.

Everyone there is so sweet and a pleasure to work with that I was fortunate enough to work over holiday breaks my senior year! If you’re ever in St. Louis you have to try their cake in a cup or their sister store, Crave the Cup. They make the best buttercream in town!

Although I do not own nearly as many gadgets as the bakery, I have enough that I am able to make family and friends cakes for their special occasions! This past weekend, I celebrated a highschool friend’s 23rd birthday. I made her a small funfetti cake and iced it with a watercolor buttercream, topped with a fun and summery flower topping, that you can learn how to make below.

Cake Topper

Materials:

3 different color sheets of tissue paper, 2 sheets of each color
1 shiny sheet of clear tissue paper
3 sticks or straws for the stems
hot glue
string/thread

Instructions:

Step 1: Cut tissue paper sheets in half and line them evenly on top of each other

Step 2: Accordion fold the tissue paper all the way to end of the paper, will look like the picture below once folded

Step 3: Fold the strip of folded paper in half, creating a fan look like below

Step 4: Use your thread and tie the center together, as shown below

Step 5: Using scissors, cut the ends into a rounded point shape to give a petal affect

Step 6: Starting on one side of the thread, gently pull each layer apart from the others.

Step 7: Repeat on the other side. After all the paper is pulled apart your flower should look like the one below (I scrunched the whole thing in my hands to give it a little messy look)

Step 8: Cut a small strip of the white shiny tissue paper to create the center of the flower.

Step 9: Scrunch the small strip into a ball. Using a hot glue gun, glue the ball into the center of the flower to cover up the strings.

Step 10: Flip the flower over and glue your straw or stick to the back. Try to arrange how high you want them on your cake before gluing the stick. I knew I wanted the green one closest to the cake so I glued the straw a litter higher creating a shorter stick at the bottom.