Calabash and Kolanut Traditional Wedding Cake

This past summer (and I say 'past' because the warmth of summer feels like AGES ago) we made a few traditional wedding cakes.

 

I love making traditional wedding cakes (OK I confess I love all things cake) but I especially love when clients ask for something I've never done before. It gets the creative juices flowing in my head. This type of cake is pretty common in Nigeria but a first for me.

In Traditional Nigerian igbo weddings, the bride gets a cup/glass of palm wine from her father, and presents it to her husband as a way of showing her family that this is the man she has agreed to marry.

                       This traditional wedding cake depicts palm wine flowing from a calabash/gourd. Next to it   are kolanuts on a saucer and traditional bracelets.

The main cake is french vanilla with fresh strawberries and cream filling and a white chocolate frosting. The gourd is fresh strawberry cake filled with fresh strawberry buttercream.

Our handmade fondant kolanuts make their debut again :)

To learn more about traditional weddings, click here. You can also click here for pictures of nigerian traditional weddings.

Congratulations to all our 2013 brides!

Orange and gold Traditional Engagement cake

We've done some engagement cakes in the past and we always have fun doing them!

This past weekend we had the pleasure of creating a suitcase cake for Saidat and Habeeb's traditional engagement celebration.

We worked with Yetunde of The Upper Room Events on this event. Yetunde and I have missed several  opportunities to work together in the past until this past weekend and I must say that she [and her team] know how to put together an event like no other! I look forward to working with her on more events, both professionally and personally!

Ofcourse it helps trememndously when the bride you're working with knows what she wants. For some reason or another I never physically met Saidat (the wonders of technology) but from speaking with her numerous times, one could tell that she is just such a sweet person. She knew exactly what she wanted BUT was also open to suggestions!

She sent us ideas for inspiration and then we went through an initial sketch and added and removed a few things. One of the added items was the gold rings that adorn the bottom tier of the cake.

Special thanks to Joanne for working with us on this gorgeous topper!

Saidat sent us a picture of their outfits to match this beautiful topper. The bride and groom are seen here sitting on a draped stool.

                                                Both cakes were vanilla with caramel filling!

Last night, I got a text from Saidat that warmed my heart. She said "Hey Oby! Loved my cake...you captured us to the T....even down to my necklace...Job well done!!!"

I also got one from Yetunde saying: "Hey Oby...Thank you sooooo much... The cake was delish.. And it looked wonderful!"

Thank you ladies!

Congratulations to Saidat and Habeeb! 

Suitcase cake

I'm always amazed at how wedding celebrations vary across cultures. A few weeks ago we had the honor of designing and creating a traditional engagement suitcase cake for a Nigerian couple.

We started off by sketching a stack of 2 suitcases with a couple dressed in Nigerian traditional attire (made out of fondant and gumpaste) sitting on the top tier.

The colors of the day were lavender and champagne/ivory.

The flavors of the cake consisted of vanilla pound cake with vanilla buttercream filling and a traditional Nigerian fruit cake. This cake flavor is very unique because it is made with raisins and 'aged' in brandy over time to give it a distinct flavor.

As we learned here, sometimes your eyes play tricks on you and sketching and the real life turnout are 2 totally separate things (lesson learned- sketching is only used as a guide lol).

As you can see, the iniital sketch called for only 2 tiers. When we stacked the cakes, it didn't quite create the 'pizazz' effect we were going for- so we decided to add a 3rd tier/suitcase for a better effect!

We finished the cake with a gold-ish/tan-ish sheen to give the 'worn suitcase' look

Congratulations Kemi and Samson!

Red, White & Bling: Tales of a cross country wedding cake

Over Easter weekend, we had the opportunity to create a wedding cake for my cousin Juliet's wedding.

I was really honored that she trusted us with such a momentous occasion in her life but I was a bit nervous for two reasons. First, her wedding was on the other side of the country- Texas, far away from our base in New Jersey. Baking away from my lab* is always challenging because you never know what you’re going to need and you pretty much have to uproot your entire bakery and ship things across the country.. I often wonder how competitors on Cupcake Wars do it. I truly respect them.

Notwithstanding that fear, at Bims', we're always up for a challenge (thanks for teaching me to be fearless mom!)- Sooooo Texas? BRING IT ON! :o)

My second fear was…I knew if I messed up, she knew how and where to find me...lol

So....six months in advance, I started sketching.

Sketch #1....(Thank you EverNote/Penultimate!)

She's not a 'cake person' per se...so she had no clue what she wanted. She only had 3 requirements:

(1) "RED VELVET CAKE PLEASE!"

(2) Stick to the color scheme (red, black and white)  and ....

(3) A LOT of bling! She just wanted 'bling'. 

The rest was up to us.

 

We sent her a few ideas and some were 'yes', 'sure', 'ok', 'no', etc.....So back to the drawing board we went....

Randomly, in the car, on the train, everywhere, I'd look around for inspiration...I thought about her personality…

If you know my cousin Jules, you'll know that she's a fun loving person who never fails to make me laugh everytime we hang out. I also know she's not so traditional. She's somewhere at the corner of traditional and contemporary.....now how was I going to translate that to a cake?.....*insert confused face*

The beauty of ordering your cakes in advance is that you give yourself and your baker/cake designer (like how I just gave myself that new title? J) time to change the design. You can sleep on it and wake up and decide you don't like this.

Now, side bar: adding crystals a.k.a 'bling' to a wedding cake is pretty BUT I also thought about the wedding pictures….you don't want to blind your photographer…right?

 

After we went through a few sketches, I came up with what I thought was okay- though it wasn't so 'Jules'...It was pretty much the sketch above- just different colored tiers (I just want to add that this is why I did not major in arts in college...creativity is clearly not my strongest point).

I showed this to my partner and he suggested that I made tier #3 smaller. My reaction was a very thoughtful, “hmmm”.

  

So I sketched again using his suggestions......and VOILA! That was it! This was more "Jules" to me.... I was so excited........(if you can't already tell, cakes excite me but that's a story for another day :o) )

 

Smaller "tier #3"



I transferred the sketch to our handy cake design software (WeddingCakeDesignPro).

Later on, my partner said "why don't we make the top tier red and the flowers on top white?" (seriously, where was this man all my life?)

  Here are a few pictures of the process:


Top 3 tiers

Tier 1 and 2

 And there you have it! The final product! Numerous sketches later:

Juliet's cake!

Flavors included:

• Red velvet cake with Vanilla swiss meringue buttercream
• French vanilla cake with Vanilla swiss meringue buttercream and 
• Red velvet cake with white chocolate swiss meringue buttercream. 



The personalized cake topper had the couple's initials.

Of course, we had to add some bling to it :o)



"Backstage"

 

                             Jules and her husband Uche loved the cake! :o)

 

Congrats to my dear cousin Jules and my new brother-in-law Uche!

There you have it...........Tales of a cross country wedding cake :o)

Lots of 'sweet' hugs from our "lab" to yours J

PS. *our cake lab = our kitchen