The Upper Crust | Penfield, NY

About every six months we take the time to upload the latest collection of cake photos. (It takes some amount of time, which is why we don’t share them more often! Not to mention that we somehow end up with less office-time in the summer!)

So, we’ve just finished adding everything into the Albums, so feel free to browse through and see some of our newest projects! Here are a few of my personal favorites, but there are dozens more to inspire you for your next occasion. If you’re a regular client, you’ll might see some of your latest orders!

This one was to celebrate Karis’ senior recital. Since the recital programs had red roses, the client requested those plus incorporating music into the cake. I think it’s one of my new favorite designs!

We also did some cupcakes for added servings, sticking with the music theme.

This one was created for one of our favorite families- the mom, “Cyndi” was turning 50! Her daughter left up the decorating to us, after suggesting something hippy-related! We were happy with that! After some internet browsing (that was before our time, you see!) we found some different elements to use- such as the phrases, bright rainbow colors, peace signs, and Flower Power. We even tried to give the inscription a 60s vibe, with the fat balloon-ish font.

This cake was done just yesterday! The client wanted to go with a red, black, and white theme celebrating two best friends turning 50. They both are involved at the Eastman School of Music, and frequently must don their tuxes. The client also suggested giving the figures a cartoonish-feel, which was very fun! After finishing this cake, I just stood and grinned at those two birthday boys! This is one of my all-time favorites now, and I have a feeling we’ll be getting more requests keying off this design!

Two best buds, “Brody” & “Peter” were celebrating their birthdays together, and mom requested a medivial-knight themed creation. We decided to go with the shield and dragon enblem. There are little banners piped on the sides of the cake, too. We hope it inspired them in their manhood!

I just love this cake. It was for a square dance birthday party celebrating a number of folks! So we did a redand black paisley hankerchief border, piped fringe on the sides of the cake, and finished the edges off with a “rope” border. We added a few green cacti, and the inscription in a fun Western font, to finish things off!

This cake is also one of my all-time favorites. We have been inspired by the works of Debbie Brown, cake decorater and author from the UK. She has a number of cake decorating books which contain astounding, amazing designs. One of them features a teapot home for a family of fairies. We decided to take some of her creativity and infuse our own to come up with this tea-party birthday cake. The tea pot is cake, covered in fondant and decorated with a brush-embroidery technique for the flowers.

Lately we’ve been exploring new designs in the world of cupcakes. Here are some of our latest creations:

These confetti cake cupcakes are iced in vanilla buttercream, decorated with a birthday inscription, and edged with rainbow “jimmy” sprinkles.

We created these sleeping beauties for a sleep-over party. They are vanilla cake iced in vanilla buttercream, then decorated with a variety of cookies and candies. We used marshmallows for pillows, mini Nilla wafers for heads, Teddy Graham bears, Jelly Belly “feet”, and rolled out Starbursts & AirHeads for the blankets. They were a huge hit at the party! Here are few more shots closer up.

We did these vanilla cupcakes (iced in chocolate fudge buttercream) with a colorfulfashion theme. Half of them had a pair of pink fondant stilettos studded with pastel sprinkle flowers. We edged the rest of the cupcakes with matching pastel sprinkles and personalized them with the birthday girl’s initial.

We were inspired by some of our (many!) idea books, for several of these designs. (See, we can’t take all the credit!) Here are some of our favorite books, if you’re up for a challenge! Don’t forget, you can always eat any of your “mistakes”.

The Confetti Cakes Cookbook by Elisa Strauss of New York City’s Confetti Cakes

Hello, Cupcake! by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson

(Hello, Cupcake! is one of our top-favorites, a recently released book for the amateur or professional baker. Highly recommended.)

Cupcake Fun! by Wilton Industries

A while back we created a 3-D sculpted penguin cake (below) for a young man’s 20-something birthday celebration. It was vanilla cake iced in vanilla buttercream, covered in black and white fondant. (We stacked it on a single-layer round for extra servings.) We heard later that he absolutely loved it, along with the rest of his family! That was our first penguin-theme cake, and we’ve had many comments about it, not to mention that it won first prize in a recent cake contest.

The penguin seems to be a popular bird among others too, and as a result we have been able to add several other fun designs to our cake collection:

Last weekend we did a cake for a teenage girl who loves shoes and fashion. We decided on a simple shoebox cake, filled to the brim with shimmery pink tissue paper, and a sugar stiletto. It was made out of gum paste (a sugar dough that hardens when dried) and hand painted with edible food coloring in a funky zebra pattern. We used gum paste for the tissue paper as well. The shoebox was sculpted out of several layers of vanilla butter cake, filled with a raspberry buttercream and covered in our homemade vanilla fondant. The shoebox lid was cake also, with “the Upper Crust” painted on top with edible food coloring. The birthday girl was quite surprised and loved her cake.

Here is a close up shot of the stiletto.

This is the cake in the center of the party table, coordinating with the black, white, and pink decorations selected by the birthday girl.

We’d like to credit Elissa Strauss, of Confetti Cakes of NYC, for giving us inspiration for this project, through her wonderful book The Confetti Cakes Cookbook.

A few weekends back we did a fun cake for a very special little boy turning 2. His mom informed us of his deep love for tractors, especially his “papa’s”! Here’s what we came up with:

O my gosh!  Everyone loved, loved, loved the cake!  I’m serious, everyone raved about it.  They all said it was the most delicious cake they ever had.

Now, there were some debates..were the yellow and green jelly things like zucchini and yellow squash?  There were some arguments, some thought they were cucumbers, some thought yellow and green peppers, so we need you to settle this! O and the little tractor was the perfect size for Owen to share with all of his friends! Thanks again!  I cant wait for another cake event!