One of the best parts of this business is being included in so many important celebrations in our customers' lives. Often, when we are taking a cake order or working with a customer to design a cake, we get to hear the great story behind the cake.  Other celebrations are obviously special, no story required, as was this case with this cake.  Our first 100th birthday!!  Lucky for us the birthday girl enjoys gardening so we got to make a cake full of fun and pretty details.

Enjoy a treat only employees have had!

One of the perks of working at the cake bar is taking home yummy treats made from some of the "extras" that we have.  We've decided it's time to share one of our most popular employee treats with our customers!

When it comes time to decorate a cake, we cut off the domed top of that cake so that we have a nice level surface to work with. These cake tops are used to make all kinds other products. Some, like cake truffles, we already sell in the bakery, but others, only employees have enjoyed so far. 

Well, it's time for us  to stop being so selfish - starting today you can purchase your own yummy "cake top" at the bakery.  They are available each day while they last and flavors are limited to the cakes we are baking for orders each week.  Right now we have chocolate and vanilla available and you can choose the flavor of buttercream you want on the cake.  Cake tops are only $3.99 - a great deal since you get as much cake and buttercream as you would buying at least two cupcakes. Be the first to come in and get this previously "employee only" goody!

This cake is about to have the top removed.

And here is the yummy result.

That moist vanilla cake topped with our delicious vanilla buttercream. 

The finished product!

Cakes for our Families!

Creating cakes for cake bar employees and their families is always fun.  This cake for Joey's daughter was one of our first Dr. Who cakes.  His idea was to create the illusion of the TARDIS flying through space.  I think Aubrey really pulled it off!

When Marissa's sister Bethy turned 16, we created a cake to be served at her party at Toby Keith's restaurant where the highlight of the evening (after the presentation of the cake of course!) was the mechanical bull riding!

Abby turned 18 last year and she is a huge fan of everything Great Gatsby!  She asked that I mention Leonardo DiCaprio in this post on the off chance that that might get his attention and lead to him visiting the cake bar!!! LOL 

My son, Connor, turned 13 this year and I really felt pressure to deliver a great cake!  Another Dr. Who fan, I included the TARDIS and many of his other favorite things.  I had to steal them from his room and bring them to the bakery where Lexi helped me replicate them in modeling chocolate, fondant, cake, and rice krispy treats.  He was really surprised! 

Aubrey made this cake for her Uncle. He is an avid off-road enthusiast!  Coming up with unique designs for men can be challenging, so this cake is often requested now that we have it posted on our website.

-Angie

Minecraft - Where did it come from and why is it so popular?

Am I the only adult that doesn't know what Minecraft is?  I feel like i've now turned into my parents and don't know anything about current trends, music, games, etc.  It's a very sad, sad thing!  I say this because we're literally asked to design minecraft cakes weekly at this point, and I have no clue what it is. It's our biggest trending cake theme right now.  First of all, I kept referring it to it as Mindcraft until one of the "kids" that works at the bakery finally corrected me and informed me it was minecraft today.  That made me feel like my mother, lol.  She would have absolutely been referring to it incorrectly, and 20 years ago I would have absolutely mocked her VERY similarly to the way the bakery teenagers mocked me today.  I also made reference to the cakes reminding me of tetris, and they all looked at me with blank stares.... Just another reminder of my increasing age!

In any case, I've been set straight now. If you call, I will know it's minecraft and not mindcraft.  And, I now know its not similar to tetris, lol.  Hope you enjoy these latest pics!  Tracie

The World Traveler Cake!

I really loved how this cake turned out. Its not overly extravagant at all, but its clean and fun and makes me want to travel!  This cake is a particularly good example of the utilization of  edible images.  Making a 3D eiffel tower out can be extremely labor intensive, and therefore often associated with a fairly expensive cake.  However, for customers with smaller budgets, an upright, flat, edible image can sometimes provide a good substitute, with a smaller price tag.  This cake is a great example of that:) I hope you enjoy! Tracie

Cranberry Sauce Cake!

What do you get someone who loves cranberry sauce so much, she carries it in her purse at all times, accompanied by a  can opener?  Of course, a Ocean Spray birthday cake!!!!!!  One of our most unique cake requests so far!!!!!

Recently we were asked to make a with cake for a movie themed birthday party, but not with the traditional black, white and red color scheme....something a little more girlie.  After some brainstorming, this is what we came  up with!  We used edible images from Despicable Me and different princess movies in the film on the top tier.  Every kernel of popcorn was made by hand using fondant that was airbrushed to give it the right color and dimension and we think putting the Happy Birthday on the sync slate (did you know that is what that black and white thing is called? I didn't, I had to look it up so I could refer to it in this post!!) added the perfect finishing touch.

Sweet & Simple - The Rocket!

So often we highlight the more elaborate cakes on our website and on facebook.  However, more often than not, the majority of our customers are looking for a beautiful and cool cake, but don't necessarily have the event budget needed for a fully 3D sculpted cake.  This rocket cake was just adorable.  Its simple, but yet has some 3D elements, to make the design pop.  Its a great example of a really cool kids cake with an affordable price tag! I hope you like! Tracie 

A Day In The Life Of A Teenage Cake Bar Employee!

Marissa decorating the bakery at Christmas

By Marissa Palladini

     First of all, I couldn't ask for a better job as a teenager than decorating cupcakes/cakes on a daily basis. Who wouldn't want that? Plus, there are all the extra cupcakes that fall over that we pig out on during our shifts.  All the employees have built such close friendships with one another that it's like going to work with your best friends everyday. However,  when one of us makes a silly mistake, no one lets us forget about  it. And sometimes our friendship causes us to get slightly off-task :)

     A typical day at work mainly revolves around frosting cupcakes. I'm sure the first thing you've seen when you walk into our bakery is us bent over a tray of cupcakes, with a huge bag of buttercream and tons of sprinkles, fillings, drizzles, etc. When all of the cupcakes are finished, we move on to filling orders. Most of them extend anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour to complete depending on the customer's wishes. Then,  there might be some fondant decorations to make, cleaning to do, or some dreaded dishes to wash. I can't even begin to tell all of the fights we have had over who does the dishes. I have personally gotten sprayed with our "power-washer of a sink faucet thing" out of anger multiple times!  Next to getting sprayed with the sink faucet, we've developed a humorous little prank where we grab a handful of flour and blow it on one of our beloved co-workers. They get coated with beautiful white spots of flour or powdered sugar.... I think we might have gotten Tracie a time or two too :) 

     Whatever happens at the bakery really all depends on who we are working with. If Aubrey and I are opening on a Saturday morning, we are bound to get stuck dealing with some type of natural disaster that swept through the bakery the night before. Jack and Abby will go on talking about what's currently going on at Bishop Feehan for hours on end. But Lexi and I will do the same thing about the happenings at FHS. On Saturdays there is a mad race to see who will be the lucky few to get to make fillings all day in the kitchen. Jack and Evan together will cause some type of mischief at the bakery on Friday night and end up getting yelled at by Tracie, but even she can't hold back her laughter sometimes. Poor little Kelcey just gets stuck in the middle of it all... but she's a trooper! In the end, we're all just a bunch of goofballs trying to bring the town of Franklin joy with cupcakes :) 

     At 7:00pm, it is time to close. The closing festivities usually begin around 530-6 depending on whose working, orders, etc. There's a system to our closing list, that mostly everyone has mastered, in order to get closing done quickly and efficiently. We might look like turtles all day during work, but when it's time to close we kick it into high gear so we can go home as close to 7 as possible. There's a big, collective sigh of relief when the closing list is finally done! However, there is still always boxes to make! Yep, you know those pretty pink boxes that all of your cupcakes go home in? Well, behind every pink box is a complaining cake bar employee covered in paper-cuts. But, we love our job and our customers, so I guess it's worth it :)

     A day at The Cake Bar is a day full of helping customers, laughs, friendship, and of course, cupcakes! I wouldn't consider working at The Cake Bar a "job" exactly because most people don't usually enjoy their jobs as much as we do. We're all so privileged to have a job where we have fun while we're working at the same time. I couldn't ask for a better job :) 

Livy's Hope! A community comes together to celebrate Hope!

As  many of you know, this past weekend we had the Livy's Hope fundraising event, and it was a HUGE hit!  It was such a great weekend, on so many levels.  Not only were the sheer number of people that attended staggering, but the excitement level at the bakery was just so fun - fun not only for the customers, but the cake bar staff as well. 

I'll be honest, we started this whole thing thinking that we were going to make a couple hundred Livy's Hope cupcakes over the span of a weekend.  Because of that, I didn't really put a ton of thought into the amount of effort each butterfly would require, or the materials needed to make the butterfly. So, you know how the Livy's Hope cupcake was 3D with pink dots all over it?  Well, that was my brilliant idea. Which , if I do say so myself , made all the difference in the cupcake cuteness factor:)   Initially we were only planning to make 200 cupcakes, so what was the big deal, I thought?  Piping polka dots on 200 butterflies is nothing - we do it all the time. Well, fast forward to a week before the event when we realized over 1200 people had been invited to the event through social media outreach, and that over 300 were planning on attending, with the potential for purchasing  6+ cupcakes each. Then, the polka dots and 3d wings didn't seem quite so cute.... or easy:).  The rest of the cake bar staff was not feeling the love for me when they were making  600+ butterflies and trying to find things to prop the butterfly wings against to let them dry.  Or, when they were piping small pink dots all over 1,200 wings.  That's when it started getting ugly, and name calling began between the staff after hours:)   However, I still maintain, how could I have possibly known the fund raiser would go viral!  And in the end, all the effort was worth it to see Livy and Hailey's face when they got their very own Livy's Hope cupcake, complete with 3D wings, pink polka dots and all:)   

 The response was just nutty right from the beginning! The very first day we announced the event, we had people calling about pre orders, which was two and half weeks before the fundraiser weekend. By the beginning of the week of the event, we had 300 pre-orders for Livy's Hope cupcakes.  That means that before we had started making the increased number of  600 cupcakes, we were already in the hole because of 300 pre-orders.  So you can see, our original math of making 200 Livy's Hope butterflies spread out over Fri, Sat, and Sun wasn't going to cut it.  Nor was the planned increase to 600 cupcakes that we had started planning a few days earlier.  Now, it appeared we were going to need to make over 2,000:) 

So, Angie and I sat down again to figure out what we were going to do.  First, we called Jonathon and Allison hyperventilating - it was ALL such good news and we were so excited, however we also didn't want to let anyone down by not having the needed product to support the number of people!  Angie, Jonathon, Allison and I came up with a new plan, where we included ALL cupcakes in the fundraiser, instead of just the Livy's Hope cupcakes.  This idea seemed to not only benefit the Scheinman family more from a proceeds perspective, but also allowed more customers the chance to donate to Livy's Hope, without the fear of running out. 

Once the cupcake volume hurdle was overcome, we were able to breathe a bit easier.  I think our neighbor's Dean Bank must have heard about our anxiety, as they called and offered to help us in any way t hey could.  The HR Director himself came down to help us fold boxes in preparation of the event! 

Then we had to staff the event.  Which again, at the initial thought of selling 200 cupcakes was not a big deal at all.  However, selling 2,400 cupcakes in three days requires more staff than we have available in one day... ever:) So we started calling people that Jonathon, Allison, and I grew up with trying to find folks to donate their time.  I also started calling previous employees that I was hoping would have time to come  help us make as many quality cupcakes as we possibly could within 3 days.   Which they did... and we were so grateful!   

So, that brings us to the first day of the event.  Angie and I kept guessing about what the traffic patterns would be like daily for planning purposes.  I kept   insisting  that Friday morning and afternoon wouldn't be crazy busy because people were working. I assumed that everyone would come either after work, or on Sat/Sun,  so we could breathe easy during Friday morning.  Well, apparently, my thought process wasn't all that unique because everybody showed up  on Friday morning to MISS out on the evening and weekend rush, lol.  So, again, my planning hat seemed to have a big hole in it:) 

Once we got over ALLL that, it was a breeze:)  Most people were so gracious if they came and the Livy's Hope cupcakes ran out, or if their favorite  flavor was sold out, and we were so thankful for that. I wrote on facebook that morning that I had watched the "young Heros" video about Hailey and Livy from the Livy's Hope blog and was reminded, once again, why were doing all of it.  Its a wonderful story, about 4 amazing people that deserved celebration!!! Once i remembered why were we doing all of it, the rest my anxiety passed and we had a blast.  I'm so thankful that we were able to participate in such an event!  It was an amazing experience that I know we will not soon forget.  Thank you Livy, Hailey, Jonathon, and Allison for your inspirational message and lifestyle! Allison's friend came down and took some amazing photos of the weekend that are all posted on facebook, but I'll repost some here for those that are not facebook users:) And ps, if you fall into the catageory of non facebook user you need to accept that facebook is a part of your life and join! Its just a guess, but I think its here to stay;)  Have a wonderful weekend everyone! 

 Tracie 



For those of you that came out and supported this wonderful family and cause, we genuinely appreciate it!  Please know, you've participated in an event that will make a difference.  For those that weren't able to make it down, please consider donating directly to Livy's Hope at www.livyshope.com, and while your there, read up on how you can make a difference with your own story of hope!!!!!!!

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!

Thanks to everyone for supporting me last night on the show!

It was such a great experience, and a great day as far as accomplishments go.  Please remember, its a TV show, and is edited as such.  I've had a ton of questions about my back and forth comments with Tida.  Tida was awesome, and her cake was fantastic. Editing and directing can do wonders to effect TV appearances! I hope I compete and see Tida again in the future. She's an awesome artist!

I can't wait to go back again. The rush you get throughout the day is totally addicting.  You get there at approx 5 in the morning and leave probably at 11 at night, and the whole time your running solely on adrenaline! Then afterwards, your body needs about a week to recoup from the tension and lack of sleep!  But, as I've said before, totally worth it.  Can't wait until next season!!!!  I hope you all enjoyed it, and keep checking back to see info about future shows!  Tracie

Food Network Challenge Episode Airing this Sunday, Sept 4th!

Set your DVR's because my next food network challenge airs this Sunday, Sept. 4th, at 8:00 PM on the food network.  Its a good one - you won't want to miss it!  After you watch it, let me know what you think of the outcome!!!! Tracie

Grand Opening

Stay tuned for more details on our grand opening, October 8!