Costumes, and cupcakes, & shots, oh my!

I’m not usually a huge Halloween lover, I must admit. While I love seeing the kids all dressed up, the whole notion of  dressing crazy and then knocking on stranger’s doors and begging for food is lost on me. However, I have to say, our Halloween event last weekend was a lot of fun. Yes, I realize I'm a week behind in my blog -I'm a slacker!  I fully admit that  I thoroughly enjoyed wearing my long, red wig...  I think I see hair extensions and red hair dye in my future. Who knew?  

We planned many Halloween inspired games and treats for the party.  Fun stuff like a chocolate "blood" dipping station where kids could dip their favorite treat, a make your own goulish cupcake bar, and a decorate your own spooky Halloween frosting shot area.  In addition, we had goodie bags, a Halloween costume contest, and multiple other Halloween inspired contests.  I took a few funny pics of both the kids at the event, as well as the goofy cake bar staff.

Marissa Palladini helped decorate for our big night below. She had her costume picked out weeks for in anticipation of our big night, then ditched us at the last minute for Disney....  How exciting is Disney anyway?  Isn't it overdone at this point?  Just joshin Disney workers:)

Santa came early too! Or at least Arianne dressed as Santa came early.  And Jack and Evan fought about who was going to be ketchup and who was going to be mustard... for weeks... the entire time they were at work.  Kyle dressed as a bruins player.... minus a hockey helmut, stick, safety guards, or any other hockey paraphernalia. In other words, he had a Bruins shirt on.:) And Angie was dressed perfectly as a gypsy. Very cute! PS, I cut myself out of this picture cause I hated how I looked, and it was the only pic we had of many on the team.  That's what happens when your the blogger of the bakery. You get to only post flattering pictures of yourself. Oh, the power of photoshop is a wonderful thing....

A few trick-or-treaters making their own cupcakes at the cupcake station. I think we have some future cake bar artists in the mix!

 Kid's got to go behind the counters to our prep areas for the frosting shot and chocolate dipping station.

My business partner Angie, and Josie (Aubrey the cake designer's daughter). I told Aubrey that Josie looked sooo cute, and disturbing, all at the same time. This adorable little girl with pig tails, dressed in zombie make up and blood stained clothes. Creepy... but she's ohhh so cute!

Here's the treats each child  made.  The bloody eyeball is my favorite:) 

Lots of great costumes, and LOTS of black frosting smeared all over the cake bar floor, bathroom, counters, etc..  All in the name of fun.  Look for a similar holiday party in early December - complete with Santa!

I'm Writing this at 3 AM, as I'm having trouble sleeping. I think I'm just excited that tomorrow marks the beginning of our days without political pre-recorded calls, commercials, etc.  I always wonder, if nobody likes the calls, why waste the money??  I'm plagued with the same question about telemarketers. WHO DOES IT WORK ON???? All questions for another time I suppose.  Have a great day everyone! Tracie

50 Shades Of Somethin….

I must admit, I may potentially be the only woman left in America  that hasn’t read the book dubbed in the media as “mommy porn”.  Although, I’ve read enough pages to know that it won't be winning a Pulitzer Prize anytime soon.  However, if you're raking in royalties from the sale of 50 million books, I suppose you can live without a Pulitzer.

Well, it was long overdue given the hype, but we were finally asked to  create our first “Fifty Shades of Grey”  themed cake recently.  It makes me laugh that discussing S & M is now part of people’s daily conversation and everyday birthday cakes! A husband had requested this cake for his wife's birthday,  and we wished we could have been there to see her face when she saw it!  It was a toss up…. Was she going to be horrified to serve it to her family, or think it was hysterical and love it?  I’m hoping for the latter! We’ll never know, unless she chooses to comment on this blog :)

When we got the cake order,  we had lots of fun talking about the possibilities of what we could have included in the final design.  After all, these days anything to do with Christian Grey commands a certain level of authenticity! My business partner Angie and I  agreed a long time ago that we wouldn't take on any “adult” themed cake requests.  However, our cake designer Aubrey did a great job making sure this cake was definitely 50 Shades of Grey related, but yet, not totally over the top with unsavory innuendo.  Although, I suppose hand cuffs may potentially tip the scale towards unsavory, unless you’re a police officer:)  I hope you like it as much as we did! Tracie

“but I just need a simple cake”…

We hear these words a lot at the bakery.  I wish we never had to turn ANY cake orders away, as its just as frustrating for us as it is for the poor customers trying to order it. I thought it may be interesting to our customers to see the steps we take to create the cakes that you purchase from us. Also, it may help explain why we're not always able to make a cake with a short turn around time. When we’re asked on a Wednesday to make a cake for Thursday and we regretfully say no, this is why….

1^st, we bake the cake, which I know sounds fairly rudimentary. It just happens to be the first step in getting the cake on your dessert table. Each cake needs to be worked into the overall weekly bakery production schedule to ensure its as fresh as possible when you pick up your final cake.  We have a fairly small kitchen and its extremely important that things be scheduled well, in order to ensure production goes smoothly and according to each cake's pick up/delivery date. We have a great group of bakers that make sure our cakes are fresh, flavorful, and just plain delicious!

2^nd, we stack and layer the cake with buttercream and fillings in preparation for the actual cake decorating.  Caroline is one of our primary cake stackers,  and is photographed below. So when you pick up a cake and its perfectly straight and symmetrical, you can usually thank Caroline or Angie for its symmetry.

3^rd, we let the cake set in the refrigerator for at a couple of hours to ensure its firm enough for one of our designers to begin decorating the cake. This is an important step, as it creates a smooth background for the designers to start with.

4^th, each cake is assigned to a primary cake designer, and a design plan is created.  Using buttercream, fondant, gum paste, and a variety of other edible mediums, the cake designers create a mini piece of art that will hopefully provide you with lasting memories for years to come.  Aubrey, one of the cake designers,  has eluded my blog action pictures thus far. Therefore, I'm forced to post a picture of her from our 1 year anniversary celebration last week, dressed as a cupcake for the day:). She was a very good sport about it, and agreed to wear the costume after NOBODY else would! My VERY favorite part about the outfit is the green cherry stem on her head- Adorable!!! 

At certain times, we’ve tried to shorten some of these steps in order to be able to accommodate last minute orders. However, in the end, we found that people usually want something really unique when they come to our bakery.  And really “unique” cakes require time and preparation. So, in the event you may ask us to turn a cake around in 1 day and we’re not able to do so,  we ask that you be patient and give us some time to ensure your cake is truly a piece of art, and something that you’ll be proud to show to your family and friends!

For those times that you need something immediately, we have lots and lots of cupcakes and pull apart cakes to choose from!  Cupcakes are prepared fresh by our team members.  Below, you’ll see Caitlin Sacco preparing some of our delicious sticky toffee cupcakes to be covered in rich, creamy buttercream.  Sticky Toffee is ABSOLUTELY  a fan favorite. If you’re a patron of the bakery, and you haven’t tried it,  you should do so… quickly.  Its good stuff. 

Jack Buccella and Evan Dean are also part of our prep staff.  You can see them below high fiving, as the last of the cupcakes were made for the day.  I particularly enjoy this picture given they both have matching, hot pink,  polka dot aprons on. :)  We’re nothing, if not color coordinated, at the cake bar! 

So, I’ve rambled enough for one night. I need to get some sleep so I can jump out of the bed tomorrow and say, “its time to make the cupcakes!!!”, just like Michael Vale did in 1983 -a little 80’s New England pop culture reference for you all:).  Props to anyone who actually knew Michael Vale’s name too – I had to look it up!  Tracie

And ps, the cake bar staff will be laughing at the thought of me jumping out of bed to make cupcakes. The visual is funny though, and that’s all that matters really :)

Random Thoughts by Tracie….

Here’s my synopsis of my blog posts thus far…a collection of potentially useless information that I’m fairly certain most people don’t care about at all. However, I write them anyway, hoping that its not all in vain and that someone, somewhere, gets something useful out of my completely random thoughts.  So here’s some thoughts for this week.

I refuse to read one more heated facebook post on the debates, election, current president, Joe Biden, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and fill in the blank with any other person/topic related to the upcoming election.  Please don’t mis-understand my intent here either – I’m not saying that to represent  a lack of interest on my part, nor am I saying its not healthy and American to have discussions about differing points of view. I’m simply stating that I’ve had my fill of reading ridiculously slanted commentaries on the upcoming election that are not meant to foster joint conversations, but rather spew one sided points of view AT you, not WITH you.  Its annoying, and just bugs me all around.  That’s about the most political statement you’ll get out of me …. ever.   So instead of posting such thought provoking blogs about who’s winning the foreign policy debate, I’ll talk about something that’s far less thought provoking, political, and well, less useful… although far more fun...cake! 

This past week, one of our customers asked us to do a trio of smaller cakes for her daughter’s 1^st birthday.  Each cake within the trio was to be a different shade of pink, with differing overall designs. I love when we get requests for unique groupings of cake and/or styles of cakes.  In particular, I liked the  “ribbon” style of the cakes that were requested.  I chose this combination of cakes to blog about this week simply because they were pretty, classic cakes.  The cake design didn’t include Elmo standing on his head, or have a 3D horse sugar sculpture on it, or anything else crazy elaborate.  It was just simply fluffy ribbons of pink buttercream, piped on round cakes, accented by 1 simply adorable baby elephant cake – and I loved them all. As most of my cake designs show, I’m also a huge fan of mixing various shades of the same color within 1 cake design.  And this cake trio did exactly that…. perfectly. So Stella, happy first birthday from all your friends at the cake bar! I hope you enjoyed all your birthday cakes, and we hope to be able to share in your 2^nd bday celebration as well!  Tracie

Photos of Stella Taglienti courtesy of her mom, Grisha:)

4 wedding cakes and a Harvest Festival

....And I DO realize nobody under 30 years of age will get the movie reference in that title, but I thought it was catchy:)

We had a VERY busy past weekend at the bakery... so much going on that it was all hands on deck both days.  To start, we had multiple large weddings.  Obviously, I'm partial to ALL our cakes, but certainly I still have my favorite designs. This past week, all 4 of our wedding cakes topped my list.  First, I love anything related to fall, so to combine apples and fall leaves on a cake/cupcake design and I'm immediately in love.  On the other hand, I loved the sleek lines of the all white cake, adorned only with 1 big, beautiful flower.  Add just a tiny bit of sophisticated bling, and it made me want to walk down the aisle myself (not really:))

While Aubrey, one of our lead cake designers, and I were running around designing and delivering the cakes, we had a whole team preparing cupcakes for the Downtown Franklin Harvest Festival that occurred on Sunday.  Marissa Palladini and Jack Buccella team up below to make some last minute fondant decorations. Don't mind the MOUNTAIN of corn starch surrounding Jack.  There may, or may not have been a little accident with the corn starch shaker:)

It was was full family affair. My partner Angie's son Connor helped make boxes to try to keep up with demand.  He was a good sport about it,  and didn't stop until he had a mountain of pink boxes ready and waiting!

While the weather didn't TOTALLY cooperate, it didn't stop our loyal customers from dropping by. We were able to meet many first time customers, as well as bakery regulars, throughout the day. Thank you to the Downtown Franklin Partnership for coordinating another successful community event!

Its fall at the cake bar!!!!

Fall is undoubtedly my favorite time of the year. The chill in the air, the smell of fireplaces, the fall decorations - love all of it! I ESPECIALLY love the fall inspired flavors that start popping up all over the place. I literally wait all year to have a pumpkin spice latte.  This year, I'm lucky enough to be able to partake in the spicy deliciousness in our very own bakery!

For those of you that come to the bakery in the morning regularly, you know we have our very own coffee mix master, Joey. The big, tall, lovable guy that everyone seems to know by name - he's hard to miss:) He's been practicing recipe

s for the fall pumpkin spice latte for weeks, and has finally concocted the PERFECT recipe. I must say, its freaking delicious. And i'm not just talking about squirting pumpkin syrup into a cup either like other coffee houses. I'm talking about the creamiest pumpkin beverage I've ever had, made with similar ingredients to pumpkin pie, minus bad things like egg:). Insanely good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If it were possible, and socially acceptable, to be in love with a hot beverage, this would be the one for me:)  Its that good!

We're also getting ready to roll out our "Cupcake of the Month" flavor for October - Pumpkin Cheesecake!!!  Equally as delicious as its latte counterpart! We've taken our moist vanilla cake, stuffed it with our homemade pumpkin cheesecake filling, smothered it in cream cheese icing, and sprinkled with a touch of pumpkin pie spice.  Decadent! And guess what's coming up in November.... caramel apple cupcake! More to come about that later in October.  

This week we're busy preparing like 8 million cupcakes for Sunday's harvest festival. If your around Franklin, you should come downtown and see us. There's a ton of street vendors, and kids activities - fun for the whole family!!!!! I hope to see you there - and if you try our new latte or cupcake, let me know what you think. Have a great night - Tracie 

Happy New Year!

I've not blogged in months - i'm horrible at it, and literally run out of witty things to write.  However, I'm making it my goal to be a better blogger in 2012!  So, I thought I'd write about some of the new and exciting things we're cooking up.  My partner Angie and I have been actively working on innovative products and flavors for 2012, starting with inspirations from the most noteworthy events in February.  Super bowl Sunday seems to be top of most americans list. I, of course, can't relate at all, as my eyes start to glaze over the moment I start to watch Monday night football.  However, I appreciate that everyone doesn't share that same opinion.  In honor of the sacred Sunday on February 5th, we're currently testing a new concept, "the cupcake pizza".  Packaged in a traditional pizza box, the cupcake pizza is a collection of individual cupcakes, decorated as one, complete with white chocolate "cheese", buttercream "crust", icing "sauce", and various other edible toppings. The pizza will be available on a pre-order basis for the month of January through play offs and super bowl.   We can also make a more traditional event platter, in your favorite team colors, for your play off and super bowl parties.  Another concept we're working on - chocolate covered cupcake "kabobs"!  More to come on those in future blogs :)

 I hope you all had a wonderful New Year's Eve & day.  As for Angie and I, we can't wait to see what 2012 brings to the Cake Bar!