Trick or Treat

By now, the pumpkins have withered away and Halloween has come and gone. The  Turkey commercials have started and the Christmas sales have begun.
Mendy LOVES Halloween-me not so much. Maybe I dont like it because it always has to do with me wearing some kind of tights or very long socks or something. 
Mendy loves Halloween because she loves making costumes like the one she made last year-a nice box of Dunkin Donuts, she got me a fat suit because we were on MPT (Mendy Pound Time) AKA down to the wire and had no time to make mine...lol or this years costumes-a pair of Nerd Candy Boxes.
Mendy loves making costumes because she gets to paint on something other than cakes. These are not edible but Mendy did implement some of her skills in making them. The foundation is a U-Haul box.  Mendy painted the boxes with the necessary colors to match each of our nerd boxes. Then she cut all of the lettering as well as the nerd characters out of foam. 
My contribution-the idea, and the suggestion on how to paint the nerd candy-big deal.
Thanks for looking and try not to laugh too hard at me.
Gabriel 

Danger Will Robinson, Danger!!

Ok many of you dont know what or who this is, but those of you who are a little bit more pronounce in the world of the nerds, its a Robbie the Robot from the classic Lost in Space tv series. 
Robbie is the old school version. They had 2 versions, the upgraded black Robot and the cool retro one, pictured below. 
The bride and groom wanted something to show there love for sci-fi genre with this grooms cake.  Mendy's and as well as my favorite part of the cake was the head, since the original head is clear glass we made it out of "pulled" sugar. It was one of my first times messing with the stuff-I thought it was pretty cool.
Thank you for reading-
Gabriel 

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?!?!

Everybody loves football right? Well even if you don't like the sport, you will like this cake from Cakes by the Pound. Its a Dallas Cowboys football helmet cake-just in case you don't like football.
The Dallas Cowboy cake was ordered for a rehearsal dinner. Do you think they are Cowboy fans? Oh yeah they are.
What is underneath? It is an Old fashion red velvet cake with Godiva white chocolate cream cheese butter cream. The cake as well as the jersey are completely edible.
Thanks for reading-
Gabriel

Fantasy books

What does Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Maximum Ride and Eragon all have in common? Well yes, they are all books, and yes they have all been made into movies, and yes they are all fantasy books-I guess the trivia wasn't to hard-but the real answer is Mendy from Cakes by the Pound has brought them all together to create this super cool kids birthday cake.(Yes I am biased)
What we have here is a cake made to look like 4 books, each book representing a series from the characters, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Maximum Ride and Eragon. The cake was for a young bookworm's birthday. These books are his favorite, so Mendy came up with this design for his birthday cake.
The characters on the books were sculpted from modeling chocolate.
Thank you for reading
Gabriel Vidauri
A small fact about Mendy, she is a music fanatic, one of her favorite artist is Tucson based Tracy Shedd-well now you know and Mendy will probably give me the the evil eye for posting this. 
Any way back to the awesome grooms cake pictured here.  I am sure you all guessed it was a guitar. The cake is a chocolate blackout with Valhrona chocolate ganache, fresh rasberries and Valhrona crunchy pearls sprinkled through out each layer, covered with her white chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream.
I don't think anybody got on stage and tried to smash this guitar.
Yes, I did have to deliver this one but I made it with out any new gray hairs.
Thanks for reading.
Gabriel 

Double Trouble

Twins! A boy and a girl, wrapped around a pea pod is what we have here.
This is a baby shower cake and what better way to represent two babies!  I wish I had more of a back story to the cake but Mendy wasn't around for me to pick her brain. All I know it was made for an expectant mother of two.
The flavor is a Valrhona chocolate Turtle Cake-chocolate black out cake with Valrhona Ganache, our in house caramel cream as well as our in house pecan brittle with Frangelico.
All of the decorations are edible and yes, my skills were used on the painting of the crate. Mendy was overseeing to make sure I didnt try to carve my initials on it.
Thanks for reading.
Gabriel

PS.
Be ready for a post from Mendy, she always gives me a funny look after she reads my post.

Zoom Zoom

These next two cakes are from the world of AWESOME! I have to admit when Mendy told me of the cake design I thought she was from the planet CRAZY! I seriously thought we were in trouble-ssccrrr boy was I wrong. 
The bride and groom wanted something different than just a traditional cake, something that identified both of them-how about a replica of the happy couples his and hers Vespa scooters. The groom sported a sea foam green Buddy Vespa and the bride had a candy apple red Vespa. 

Both of them are made of sugar and edible. Her Vespa was Old fashion red velvet cake with Godiva white chocolate cream cheese buttercream with a splash of Amaretto. His Vespa was a vanilla butter-cake with Valhrona chocolate ganache and Grand Mariner infused Swiss buttercream.
Well not only do they sound tasty but they look great!
My contribution? I put the sugar "rocks' around the tires and drove really slow on the freeway.

Gabriel


Style Me Pretty

Cal-tech is known for the mega geniuses that come rolling out of there but they also have a mega awesome members only club-The Athenaeum! The food there is 5 stars, the staff is 5 starts and the grounds, 5 stars!
Any hoot, Cakes by the "Pound" by Mendy K. Pound was lucky enough to provide a cake for a wedding that was held there.
Mendy made a 4 tiered cake with a hand made sugar chalice filled with sugar peonies, decorated with pipped on beads made to resemble a French style beaded border that was hand painted.
The cake flavors were a citrus butter cake, with Swiss lemon curd, fresh raspberries and chocolate blackout with Valrhona chocolate ganache with white chocolate Swiss butter cream and Valrhona crunchy pearls for a little extra something something.
The cake went perfect with the brides decor.
The wedding was featured in Style Me Pretty 78865.gif(http://www.stylemepretty.com/gallery/photo/78865) online magazine. You can also see how beautiful the Athenaeum really is.




Thanks for reading
Gabriel

Mendy in the city

     Yes, I know the title is cheesy, but if you know me you will know that I am too. Well it has been some time since my last post, but I have finally had some time to locate some of these fantastic pictures of Mendy's NYC cake/trip.
Cakes by the Pound got commissioned to make a cake for Sin. Who is Sin? He is Destin Pfaffs and Rachel Federoff's baby boy. Who is Rachel and Destin? They are two of the stars of The Millionaire Matchmaker on Bravo. Mendy had a cake tasting for Patty Stanger, who no longer is getting married-hhmmm I wonder if she is gonna still need that cake? Probably NOT!
Back to Sins cake. Destin asked Mendy if she could fly out to NYC and make a cake for their sons first birthday. Which would also be featured in an article in Life and Style Magazine (I think that is pretty cool).
Yep off to NYC for a quick trip.
The event was held at Dylans Candy Bar in NYC, what a fantastic location. The place was colorful and boy full of candy but talk about sugar overload! ! I know all those kids are going to have a sugar high that will last until Christmas.
After an INSANE delivery ride (uh yeah we jumped in a cab to deliver the cake). Boy was I a wreck, Mendy on the other hand cool as a cumber, so was the damn cab driver. I think I aged about 5 years on that ride. Well the best part was dropping off the cake and seeing everybody expression
So after all the who ha and red eyes back and forth.  Our trip to NYC was all thumbs up!
On her way home, Mendy ran into one of her fellow cake designers, Kate Sullivan.
Lets see, happy parents, a very happy 1 year old, a chat with Kate Sullivan,  a spot in Life and Style magazine, and maybe just maybe a small cameo on the Millionaire Matchmaker. I think we got very lucky to have been commissioned to do the cake. Oh right the cake..................
This is what Mendy came up with-----
Thanks for looking and reading!
Gabriel





My Fair Wedding with David Tutera

Please forgive me for the long long laps of time between posts. But I have a really fun one here. Everybody knows how much Mendy loves David Tutera, well she had the opportunity to work with him on WeTV's My Fair Wedding!
It was a great and memorable experience. Mendy was able to collaborate with David on a cake design. After some ideas were tossed around, she came up with this AWESOME design that matched the decor to a tee-I know I was there...lol
The wedding theme was Grecian/Mediterranean, you can watch the episode here. It is called Greek Goddess Bride http://www.wetv.com/my-fair-wedding/episodes/greek-goddess-bride
You can see how the cake design is cohesive with the decor. It stood 7 tiers tall, with an 18 inch square base. The cake was capped with a hand made sugar dome, topped with a hand painted gold sugar piece.  The cake was a chocolate blackout cake with pistachio French buttercream and chocolate praline ganache covered with white chocolate fondant. The decorations are all made of sugar and hand painted including the sugar bouganvilla.
Well I hope you all enjoy the cake and the show.
Yes, I am VERY PARTIAL to Mendy's skills, but that is why I write this blog, if she new what I wrote she would never let me write anything!   ssshhhhhh
Gabriel

Pit Boss

Sitting in the shop discussing a cake design, we received a phone call from Kacie and Sebastian for a birthday cake order. This cake had to be a unique, it was going to be a dual birthday party for some real special people. The cake had to look cool and implement some kind of dog theme. It had to shout we love dogs! 
Little did we know the cake was for Miss Ashley Brooks and Ronald Lee, stars from Animal Planet's hit show Pit Boss. 
We made a stack of crooked "dog food bowls" with "dog food" spilling out. The flavors of the cake were chocolate blackout cake with Valrhona ganache and Valrhona crunchy pearls,  and old fashioned red velvet cake with Godiva white chocolate cream cheese buttercream. 
Unknown to us it was the real deal-in comes Mendy with cameras all pointed at her, and there was Mr. Shorty Rossi, in the middle of planning a surprise birthday party for Ashley and Ronald. Not until the airing of the show did we get to see the result. We were just as happy as they were. 
Thank you very much Kacie, Sebastian and Shorty for giving us the opportunity to be part of your show!
Happy Birthday Ashley and Ronald from Cakes by the Pound!!

iphone

     In honor of the new iphone. Posted is a picture of an iphone cake Mendy did. This one has no reception problems, as a matter of a fact everybody at the reception loved it..lol
Yes the cake is for an iphone fanatic, of course. Sorry the picture is not one of our more current ones.
Enjoy
Gabriel
Cakes by the Pound

Your Wedding Day Magazine

Mendy has worked very hard to make Cakes by the "Pound" a success. Her cakes taste great, look great and she looks great (Of course I am partial to all of this). Her persistence and attention to detail to her ingredients as well as design have been very stringent but it all shows in the taste of the cakes.
We have been very lucky to have a small article written about Cakes by the "Pound" by Mendy K. Pound, in Your Wedding Day Magazine.
Mendy insisted on the author (Allison Scott) come and visit for an actual cake tasting so she could experience the taste as well as the atmosphere of our shop. The result was this article.
http://www.yourweddingday.com/ywd/Details/Cakes-by-the-Pound.html
Thank you for reading..
Gabriel

Every Day with Rachael Ray

How Lucky are we? Thanks to a referral from our friend, Kelley from Picture Perfect Events, we had the opportunity to speak to one of the fabulous writers from Rachael Rays magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray. She wanted more information about our Old Fashion Red Velvet Cake and what made our cake different than everybody's else's-I can say read the article-http://www.rachaelraymag-digital.com/rachaelraymag/201005?pg=154#pg154, or I can just tell you..the beets, I should know because Mendy makes me juice them-fun fun fun.
Those of you who know Mendy are well aware of how modest she is and she would probably be a bit embarrassed about me writing this stuff, but those of you who know me, know how proud I am of her and will brag about her skills any chance I can.

Thanks for reading!
Gabriel

Alice in Wonderland

Phew, sorry for not updating the blog in a bit but all is good I am ready to pick up my duties once again.
The Millionaire Matchmaker episode aired a few days ago- Mendy had the pleasure of working with Patty Stanger on her cake design as well as cake flavors for her upcoming wedding (she did get engaged this season). We both had a blast working on the show. Hopefully Patty doesnt try to fix Mendy up with a millionaire! You can follow the link below and see Mendy and Patty

http://www.bravotv.com/the-millionaire-matchmaker/videos/wedding-cake-tasting

The production company, Intuitive Entertainment, as well as the folks from Bravo were awesome!

Now I know the movie just came out but I thought I might share with you an Alice in Wonderland theme cake we did last year. It is based off of the original, not the new one with Johnny Depp, but I do know if Mendy had the opportunity to create a cake based off of the new show, she would LOVE IT! Well here it is-like always Mendy loves to make sure everything is edible and taste great!
Thanks again!
Gabe


Millionaire Matchmaker

Well, we were very fortunate to be asked to be involved in an episode of Bravo's hit show Millionaire Matchmaker! I agreed, but failed to clear it with Mendy first. O'well good thing she is a good sport-lol.
If you have been following the show, Patty got engaged to her fiancee, Andy, this season.  I feel that we are limited to what we can say about the show but I am sure you all can figure out what it may pertain to since we do do wedding cakes-lol
Make sure to watch the show and see Mendy on it with Patty-I wonder if Patty gave Mendy any insights on love?
Enjoy the show, I know Mendy and I had a blast with Miss Patty Stanger.

Wedding Cake Season

Every year we have the pleasure of being part of some wedding shows such as the Festival of Brides. They give us an opportunity to meet with new vendors and brides, but  it also means cake! LOTS AND LOTS OF CAKE, for me any how. Mendy gets her creative juices flowing for her new designs for each show and I just have to get a haircut (sometimes). In reference to the picture above-its just a small sample of the samples Mendy makes for the shows.
The shows allow brides to taste our wedding cake and also see the fantastic designs Mendy is capable of. Brides will come from all over with there list of vendors to target so they can ease the stress of preparing for there wedding day. I think it also gets the grooms off the hook since most of the people attending are the brides, but they show up with there friends and not there fiance'.
In preparation for the show is very hard work but we are paid back in ten fold with all the new people we meet.
There are stands to build and dishes to wash.
Thank you for visiting
Gabriel Vidauri

That Morning Show

Now a days there are so many "cake" shows-everybody has some kind of idea, but they want to see some kind of drama-the only drama we have is me driving the car when I have to deliver a cake. 
Well we got a call from a production company about doing a segment on their show, "That Morning Show". At first we were somewhat hesitant but I convinced Mendy it would be fun, especially since I had no plans of taking part. lol 
After speaking to them we realized the episode was just a story about kids cake trends.
We know trends, at least what our clients are asking for-custom one of a kind cakes. After going through our orders we found one we thought would be good for their show. A mother (Beatriz Amano) wanted to surprise her 8 year old daughter (Olivia Amano) for her birthday. Her surprise was to have Mendy recreate a cake her daughter drew/designed. We decided that we would surprise her here at the shop with her cake and a camera crew! We thought she might be a little camera shy, but boy we were wrong-total ham! 

The plan: Mrs. Amano and Olivia would come to our shop to pick up a cake for their "friend", Mendy would surprise her with a edible recreation of her very special birthday cake. The crew would capture all of this on video and then interview her. 
Olivia was surprised and we were happy to be part of her wonderful birthday surprise that was captured on video. I hope the segment came out great!


Gabriel Vidauri
Operations Manager
Cakes by the "Pound"