Sugar Mama NYC's Giveaway: Wilton baking and decorating supplies

Every one loves getting free stuff and giving it away is even more fun! Sugar Mama NYC will host giveaways as often as possible featuring the coolest stuff we can find.
It's easy to enter: Just click on one of the links below. Enter your info, the name of the giveaway featured in the title above and your give away entry. Best of luck in Sugar Mama NYC's Giveaway!

Coming soon, Sugar Mama NYC will have an online store on our website selling Wilton baking and decorating products! To kickoff our upcoming store, we will be giving away an assortment of Wilton baking and decorating products.

Today's Giveaway:

Giveaway Name: Wilton baking and decorating supplies


Giveaway Entry: What baking/decorating tool can you NOT live without and why?

Giveaway Prize: Cake and pie server, Baker's blade, Decorating tip cover set, and 12 icing bag ties.
Retail Price: Over $25.00
Giveaway ends April 22, 2010!

Wilton Enterprises, based in Woodridge, Illinois, and founded in 1929, is the leading food crafting company in the industry, with the number one position in cake decorating, bakeware and tea kettles. Today, Wilton Enterprises offers the industry´s most comprehensive and innovative selection of baking, cake decorating, candy making, cookie making, wedding, baby, party, seasonal, kitchen and hydration products. These products are designed to make it easy for anyone to enjoy the thrill of serving something special and utilizing unique style and design while doing it. Consumers trust Wilton brands such as Performance Pans™, Candy Melts® brand confectionery coating, Cupcakes ´N More® dessert stands and Copco® Housewares to help make celebrations more exciting. Along with great products, Wilton classes and publications have helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world create impressive party desserts, served with flair. Celebrating its 80th year, The Wilton School of Cake Decorating and Confectionery Art still educates 1,400 students a year who have come from 88 countries and all 50 states while Educational Marketing with its almost 4,000 teachers across the US taught 262,000 people the art of cake decorating in 2008.

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Cake of the Week: Back to the 80s

This week's beauty is a huge cake for a very nostalgic 16 year old. When I met with Kimberly and her mom, Kimberly was very clear that she wanted an amazing cake to compliment her 80's themed party. It just so happened that I had a sketch for an 80's themed wedding cake that never happened. Bad news for the couple, but good news for Kimberly. We modified the design to include Mr. & Mrs. Pac Man, finished off with a glittery microphone and 16 topper both in pink; the birthday girl's favorite color.

The cake is composed of 3 square tiers of cake. The bottom tier is chocolate with chocolate butter cream. The middle and top tiers are white cake with yummy strawberry fruit filling.
The bottom tier was a graffiti'd brick wall composed of fondant cut into panels pressed with a brick patterned impression mat, airbrushed with a combination of yellow, red, orange, then
finally brown, and "spray painted" with tags.

The middle tier is something I'm sure the birthday girl has no experience with, but everybody remembers... the cassette boom box! As I was putting this cake together I became flooded with memories of me taping songs from the radio and winding a cassette with a pencil. And the best was when your Walkman ( your what?!) would run out of batteries and your music would play sloower and sloooower. Those were the days...

The top tier is adorned with a name buckle and decorated with the theme of every child of the 80's pixelated partners, Pac Man & Ms. Pac Man complete with pellets and the ever coveted power pellets. I noticed as I was decorating the top tier that Ms. Pac Man had to have one crazy morning routine. She wears lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, a fake mole and even takes the time to put a bow in her hair! Pac Man however, just rolls out of bed and starts chasing ghosts. I guess it's another example of art imitating life.


The cake was topped with a rice krispy treat microphone and gumpaste 16. After a quick coat of pearlescent shimmer for some extra zazz it was ready to go! This deceptively heavy cake, about 50 -60 lbs, was loaded up, delivered and once set up fit in perfectly with the old school hip hop decor.



Happy Birthday Kimberly! I hope it was funky fresh! :o)
Well, it's bake to work for me!
Thanks for tuning in!

Cake of the Week: Downhill skier

This week's mountain of a cake was actually a hold over from last week. Ironically,we experience a nor'easter (that’s a big *ss snow storm for you warmer climate dwellers) this snow capped master piece had to wait for better weather to make it's debut. This Alpine beauty was cooked up, at the last minute; which seems to be the rule rather than the exception with Cake of the Weeks, by a friend of the birthday girl. The theme of the party was that after 25 it all goes downhill. This hasn't been my experience, thank you very much, but it did make for an awesome cake idea!

The mountain is actually 3 tiers of cake: Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Butter Cream, Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Buttercream and Butter Cake with Vanilla Butter Cream. Once the tiers were stacked and before it was crumb coated, they were sculpted into a rugged mountain shape and S curved ski trail was carved into the face.

The cake was covered in white fondant and airbrushed with an icy blue shimmer to give the look of a snowy peak. The trees were made from gumpaste and frosted with royal icing. The flags were made from gumpaste and secured with toothpicks (or cocktail stick, if you prefer).

Our guest of honor was made of white modeling chocolate and is sculpted wearing a green, her favorite color, ski suit and unfortunately headed towards a tree.

A special birthday message was added with an edible marker and the downhill skier was delivered to her final destination. Let's hope all of her downhill battles are limited to the ski slope.

Well it's bake to work for me!
Thanks for tuning in! Until Next Time...

Sugar Mama NYC News: There's...Something...on....SNL!!

Yes! And it's our cake!! The prop department at SNL rocks and evidently they feel the same about us, because they called us again to do a couple of cakes for last week's episode hosted by Jude Law.

There are a couple of things that make this SNL job awesome.

The first, of course, is being called to have a cake appear on SNL. Also, instead of having to make 3 or 4 gigantic actual cakes, which would mean 3 days of no sleep, around the clock baking and schlepping cakes that weigh 60-80 lbs., they asked for 2 large dummy cakes colorfully decorated in any way I saw fit! Yay! And because the skit would be shot in black and white, the colors themselves weren't an issue. No caring about mixing cool and warm colors, wondering if it's too bright or too muted or any of that mess. Just easy to carry and colorful. Sure, I can do that, I thought as the tears of joy rolled down my cheeks.

Surely what has to be my favorite part of this experience was the skit itself. "Terror at 20,000 Feet" has to be one of the all time best classic Twilight Zone episodes, and definitely one of my faves. The original starred the incomparable Willie Shatz as a passenger that sees a gremlin, who I always thought looked like weird stuffed animal, on wing of the plane he's a passenger in. In this take, Capt. Kirk is replaced by Jude Law and the gremlin who is played to perfection by Bobby Moynahan, is engaging in different activity every time Jude Law sneaks a glance out of the window; from exercising, smoking, hanging out with the members of Pearl Jam & my favorite; moving his cake to the judges table, he truly made this skit hilarious. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself!



Well it's bake to work for me!
Thanks for tuning in...until next time!

Sugar Mama explains why you should just pay for delivery

This is a photo from getmarried.com
This is a photo of an actual cake transport mishap!

How do I transport my cake safely?
don't skip to the bottom for the answer!

Here are three things you can say to your cake designer to scare the frosting out of them when you come to pick up your cake.

1. I can just hold the cake on my lap.
2. We can just stick it in the backseat.
3. Where's the nearest subway/bus stop?

Why, you wonder, would these seemingly innocuous statements scare a cake designer. It's because we know, which the average specialty cake consumer doesn't, that these are the top three worst ways to transport a cake. Let's examine...

Your lap is not a good place to hang out if you're a cake during a car ride because whether you feel it or not, you are always in motion. Your knees move up and down. Your stomach and chest move in and out. In your noble try to keep your confectionary treasure safe, you may clutch the box with every turn or stop. You may shift the box to make yourself more comfortable and put the box in a better position. All this motion and shifting isn't good for a moist spongy food, with a soft creamy filling covered with a solid frosting susceptible to cracking.

The backseat sounds safe, right? Wrong. You may have never noticed this before but the backseat of your car is on an angle. When you place some thing meant to be stored flat on an incline for and extended period of time and things start to shift and or slide. If you add in a the bumps and turns of an average car ride then you have a recipe for disaster. This is also assuming your cake won't slide from one side of the seat to the other; which happens time to time.

Mass Transit is the absolutely worst place to take your cake for a ride because it's so unpredictable. You can't control the climate, speed or the amount of people. Is it the middle of Summer and the subway car you're in has no A/C and your going from the Brooklyn Bridge to Yankee Stadium (that's an over an hour train ride for you non NYers)? Oh well. Has the bus driver stopped short unexpectedly and a kid's book bag swings off of his shoulder and onto your cake box? Oh well. Did you get on the bus/subway and there are no seats, so you have to stand and hold the cake? Oh well. And even if you get lucky an get and air conditioned vehicle that's mostly empty, you're still holding the cake on your lap!

So now you're saying, "Ok, brainiac, you made your point. So what's the best way to transport a cake?

Let me do it!

The number one, fool proof method to transport your cake is to pay your cake designer to deliver it. "But I just paid four hundred dollars for this cake," you say. "Why would I pay another 75 bucks for delivery?" The answer is: because you paid hundreds of dollars for your cake! Consider these factors when deciding whether to pay your designer to deliver your cake:

• They made it! They know what's in it and what's on it. So, if anything falls off, cracks or who knows what else; they can fix it. Most cake designers travel with a delivery kit filled with royal icing, extra fondant, skewers, extra flowers and etc. and pray they don't have to use it.
  
• They've probably delivered so many cakes that transporting a cake safely is second nature. Sometimes if I'm driving and I have to brake suddenly, my heart will stop for a few seconds before I realize that there isn't even a cake in the car!
  
• Delivery is assumed until the client tells us otherwise. It's part of job. We'd rather deliver and get it there safely than risk something happening.
• Delivery gives you more time on the day of the event. Have you ever been planning a party for weeks, but on the day of your party your to do list is three pages long and you're running around like a chicken without a head? I've packed more cakes than I care to think about into a car crammed with balloons, gifts, napkins, streamers, people, dogs, kitchen sinks... kidding about the sinks, but not the dogs. Or how about having to ask your less than reliable cousin to pick up the cake because you realized you won't have enough time? Stress much?!
• Possession is nine tenths of the law and cake disasters can happen to us too! But the difference is while we possess the cake were responsible. If that means repairing, remaking or refunding... if we break it, we bought it. It's like buying an insurance policy for your cake. Having a cake damaged beyond repair is not a fun thought, but imagine having no cake, no money and no one to blame...
• 
  
• 
• This cake (right) was made for a really great client. I spent hours working on this cake and was very proud of the results. Instead of paying for delivery, he had a friend pick it up and transport it over an hour to it's destination. This (left) was the result. While I have absolutely no idea why this happened, because I wasn't certain of the cake's traveling conditions, I provided him with a partial refund because I felt bad but if I had delivered the cake and this happened, I might have been able to fix it or at the very least provided a full refund.
  

Picking up the cake yourself
did you skip straight to the bottom after I asked you not to? Back to the top, you!

Now after I've made this long winded explanation on why delivery is the best option, I still get many client who'll reply, "Yeah, but we'll still pick it up." For that reason, I've put this guide together for picking up and transporting your cake effectively for the novice cake courier.

• Communicate with your designer. Ask him/her the best way to remove the cake from the box and the best place to store your cake when you get to your destination. Also, check to make sure the cake doesn't slide around in the box. The cake board will either be the same size as the box or secured to the bottom.
  

• The cake is best kept cool. For fondant cakes 65- 75 f. is fine. Buttercream cakes should be kept cooler. Please reduce the heat in your car or for best results: no heat in winter & a/c on high in the summer

• Always hold the cake from the bottom, not the sides and close to your body.

• The best vehicles for transporting cake are station wagons, vans, hatchbacks or SUV's. Any vehicle with a large flat surface. If you do not have access to one of these (depending on the size of your cake) the trunk or the floor can be used as long as they are clean and cool , but only as last resorts. DO NOT attempt to hold the cake on your lap, and you know why!
• 
  
• Please drive carefully. Sharp turns & short stops are your cakes arch nemeses. Ask your designer if they can provide a non slip mat to keep your cake from doing even more traveling than it already has to. If not, you can find it at any housewares store. It's the stuff you put under rugs to keep them from sliding.

• Depending on your design, you may be required to do some assembly when you reach your destination. Again, communicate with your designer and the best part is you won't be lying if you decide to tell your friends that you decorated the cake yourself.
  

Don't let this happen to you...

This is a youtube.com video about a woman with the worst wedding cake disaster I've ever seen. Also, be sure to check out the way she's transporting the cake and see if you can spot any mistakes.

Well it's bake to work for me.

Thanks for tuning in. Until next time....

Cake of the Week: Disney & Pixar's Wall-E Cake

I've notice a trend with rush cakes. They usually end up being the coolest ones. This is in no way and encouragement for clients to wait until the last minute to order thinking they'll get better cakes. This is just an observation & rush fees do apply.

This weeks last minute beauty is everyone's favorite trash collecting robot, Wall-E.

Wall-E's body is two tiers of lemon cake with lemon buttercream. His head, arms and wheels are rice krispy treats and his hands are modeling chocolate.

To create the effect the Wall-E was being supported by his wheels. I build a wooden platform added the wheels which took forever to decorate and airbrushed the entire structure black. I next stacked the tiers of cake, covered them with fondant and airbrushed it and orange/yellow. I subsequently sculpted the arms, eyes with RKTs and covered/painted them as well.

The hands were a little trickier as the more you handle the modeling chocolate the softer it becomes. Once the pieces of the hand were set I "glued" the hands together with melting modeling chocolate which kept hardening when I didn't want it to.

Once the pieces were completed and dried; I assembled Wall-E and added the final details, such as the buttons, "hard ware" and writing.

When the cake was picked up, the client, who was initially skeptical about the price was very pleased with the result and so was I.


Well, it's bake to work for me.
Thanks for tuning in.
Until next time...

Cake of the Week: Winter Snowflake Cake

This week's beauty was created for very lucky 16 year old celebrating her sweetest birthday in Queens. The theme of the cake was so appropriate because we just had a major snow storm and it was still piled high wherever you went.

This cake marked the tail end of my busiest weeks to date: 11 orders! This may not sound like much but I have just these two hands and sometimes my office manager jumps in to make royal icing or help paint. It was also one of my biggest, not counting the behemoths I'm sometimes called upon to make for SNL. She was 12" around the bottom tier and about 20" high, not including the 16 and the snowflakes.

This cake could also be the most delicious. The bottom tier was Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Buttercream, the middle was Butter Cake with Vanilla Buttercream and the top was Chocolate with Chocolate Buttercream; all Swiss Meringue, of course.

The construction and design was fairly straight forward. The hardest part was keeping the cake white while covering and stacking. Once the cake was covered and stacked, I finally got bust out my shiny new snowflake cutters that I ordered from Lindy Smith.

After the fondant design was complete, I finished the look by airbrushing a pearlescent shimmer on every snowflake, stripe and snowball. I then followed up with a mixture of pearlescent shimmer and a hint of blue to match the party decor.

After discovering to my delight that my new boxes fit this giant cake perfectly. We packed her into the car and took off. After passing the venue twice, clearing a huge snowbank and navigating some tricky stairs we delivered the cake safe and sound to a very excited and beautiful 16 year old.






Well it's bake to work for me!
Thanks for tuning in. Until next time!

Cake of the Week: Sleeping Baby Bassinet Cake

This week was apparently baby shower week at Sugar Mama NYC! Clearly, the leader of the bunch was this adorable baby shower cake starring Peaches, the sleeping baby. Yes, I named the rice krispy treat and fondant baby. Thank goodness, I wasn't there when they ate her!
The client that ordered this beauty was very adamant about the cake being very cute, making a statement and incorporating all of the baby shower colors...pink, yellow, blue and brown. Pro-ject!!!

I started by making the cake, with two flavors I know would work together; moist butter cake with a creamy chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream.


I decide to make the bottom tier a pale pastel yellow and the top tier I sculpted into the oval bassinet shape; topped it with a layer of white fondant and covered the sides with soft pastel pink ruffles.So far so good. You can't see the clock in the background but at this time it was 6:27 in the morning. The cakes need to be fresh; the baker doesn't.


Then in was time to make Peaches! Her head and body are made from rice krispy treats and her arms and legs are fondant. I finished her look with a pink hair bow, pink and yellow binky and fondant diaper with pink flower.It's what all the fondant babies in Paris are wearing.


I then set to work make millions and millions of tiny pink accent flowers. Okay, it was like 50, but still. After I attached the hood of the bassinet with royal icing and the brown, pink and yellow polka dots with water, I attached the flowers around the edges of the hood around the base of the cake and any where else I thought could use a spring touch.

Well, it was 9:30 and the cake was finished. I was pleasantly surprised with the way the colors looked. I took tons of photos and place Peaches in a nice sturdy box where she would be safe. Then at about 10:00 a nice gentleman came and took her away. I have yet to find out what became of her, but I hope she was happy... and delicious.

Well, it's bake to work for me.

Thanks for tuning in. Until next time...

The Glenn Beck Show 1st Anniversary

Last Tuesday, The Glenn Beck Show on the Fox News Channel celebrated it's 1st anniversary on the air and called me to make a cake commemorating the occasion.

I didn't know much about Glenn Beck other than what I've seen on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report but the producer that ordered the cake provided me plenty of photos and details to create the perfect cake for the occasion.

The cake was to be a simple blue cake with a sugar figure of Glenn Beck holding a piece of chalk and standing in front of chalk board with the logo of his 9-12 project.

The chalkboard was a piece of food safe corrugated
cardboard covered with wood grained fondant and painted with food coloring. The logo was printed on an edible frosting sheet and affixed with royal icing. The chalk and eraser were gumpaste and was supported by two wooden food safe dowels.


The Glenn Beck figurine was sculpted entirely of gum paste. The suit jacket with the jeans and converse were specifically requested. I used a photo to sculpt his face and I was quite happy with the results. My office manager said it was one of the best sugar people she'd seen.

The cake was a big hit, with his staff at least; I never actually met Glenn Beck. Every one I did meet loved the cake and remarked on its authenticity. His staff was a pleasure to work with and the cake was a lot of fun to make.

see how excited I was to be delivering a cake to The Glenn Beck Show on the Fox News Channel

Celebrity: Idris Elba & Pete Rock

Ah, celebrities and their last minute cakes...

This cake was ordered on Monday for a Wednesday night party for the amazingly handsome and talented Idris Elba. And I firmly stand by that statement. Mr. Elba has starred in countless movies, including Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls and Guy Ritchie's Rock N Rolla. He also took the helm of Dunder Mifflin when NBC's The Office's top dog left to start The Michael Scott Paper Company. Only a man with superb talent would attempt to fill Michael's shoes. And for the handsome part, well I'll let you judge for your self. Google "Idris Elba" and click images. Go ahead, we'll wait...

See! What did I tell you!!!

Any way, in addition to being a hot actor and hot,well, person, Idris Elba is also an extremely talented musician and DJ who goes by the name of Driis. To celebrate his new album and birthday I was commissioned to make a cake shaped like a DJ's turntable. We were also invited to attend the event taking place at a super secret location in lower Manhattan. Seriously, it has no name, just a building number and from the outside it looks like old book store.

I finished the cake with just enough time to get dressed and throw my make up in a bag to deliver the cake and party like it's Wednesday.

The event was fabulous and the music was even better since it was DJ'd by the guest of honor. When the cake was presented, Pete Rock gave Sugar Mama NYC a shout out and Idris loved the cake, which

you can "kind of" tell by the photos taken by my friend Lauren who is a model and clearly knows which side of the

camera she belongs on.

I spoke to Idris personally and he thanked me for the cake and told me how much he loved it! He also said the next time he was in the area, he would visit my studio...

I hope he wasn't kidding...

Well, it's bake to work for me!

Thanks for tuning in! Until next time!

I Enjoy Being A Girl...

Very recently, Sugar Mama NYC was asked to participate in a fabulous cocktail event at the legendary lingerie mainstay Town Shop on The Upper West Side hosted by a fabulous new lingerie company called Dirty Dolls.


I was contacted by Mel Gorski of GoGoMedia to add a wedding cake and delicious cupcakes to the lingerie party which focused on soon to be brides. I was joined by make up artists, provided by The Glam Fairy and Jo Weldon from The New York School of Burlesque, whom provided saucy striptease lessons. Top it off with vino-a-plenty and a fabulous swag bag filled with goodies from Bust Magazine and Booty Parlor and this was definitely not your mama's panty party!

* photo courtesy of Raquel Lauren www.raquellauren.com*
Sugar Mama Cupcakes decked out with The Sugar Mama and Dirty Dolls logo. Flavors included Pink Champagne (gone in 15 minutes!) , Red Velvet, Chocolate and Butter Cake all topped off with Vanilla Rum Buttercream... yes, you can eat the logos!

* photo courtesy of Raquel Lauren www.raquellauren.com*
Courtney Leigh(left)and Erica Rosalind of Dirty Dolls Lingerie making a Sugar Mama sandwich and showing off the goodies... and the cupcakes! Check out my gorgeous make over courtesy of The Glam Fairy!

* photo courtesy of Raquel Lauren www.raquellauren.com*
My burlesque inspired topsy turvy creation topped with The Dirty Dolls silouette, provided by the dolls. On the right, you can see The Glam Fairy herself, Alexa Prisco working her make up magic!

So, I'm pretty sure this photo was also taken by Raquel but since she used my functional but by no means professional quality camera, I'm sure she wouldn't mind not being credited here.
Here we three glamorous ladies are made four by Mel Gorski of Go Go Media Inc. Mel and Erica met while working for Playboy! I was the lady walking around in "the boots."



This photo was lovingly borrowed from the Dirty Dolls Society page, thanks ladies!
This is the fabulous Jo Weldon modeling the same lingerie set I snagged from Dirty Dolls. Click here to snag your own! Bra & Panty. You can definitely see the Playboy influence in the style, but it's infused with class, couture and best of all COMFORT! It's sexy lingerie that you actually want to wear because it fits so well! I love, love, love my Dirty Dolls lingerie!

My boyfriend is also a fan.

Bella + Edward

With all the hype of Twilight, the book and the movie....there of course needs to be a cake!

Twilight Cake

Edward <3s align="center">

John Legend celebrates his 30th Birthday with a Grand Piano Shaped Cake

* Mood: Tired!
* Music: John Legend

Recently, I was asked to make a grand piano shaped cake for fellow Capricorn, John Legend, who celebrated his 30th birthday last Sunday at Lucky Strike Lanes in Manhattan.

Model & his beloved, Chrissy Teigen, ordered the cake personally and, after learning my birthday was the day before, invited two guests and myself to join the festivities at Lucky Strike and an afterparty which continued at a club downtown.

John requested a cake made with peanut butter, chocolate & love. I created a peanut butter cake with dark chocolate swirl filled with milk chocolate ganache and peanut butter buttercream between each layer of cake. YUMMY!

Everyone I spoke to, including Chrissy herself, loved the cake and I even had my piece stolen from me, which is just a well because I have a huge bowl of chocolate and peanut butter cake scraps in the fridge. I figure if I eat them all by midnight they won't count as 2009 calories. :0)

Happy New Year's Every one!