The rabbit hole

As some of you may know and some may not Mendy and I got married this last December. Well for our honeymoon Mendy wanted to revisit the place that had a huge influence on her career-Austria and Germany, the lands of AWESOME desserts! Well I agreed to go because it was also the land of AWESOME beer, but this blog isnt about beer now is it?

Well we visited every single place that Mendy wanted to "sample" desserts or places she passed on her way to work when she was learning her skills. We visited almost every dessert place in Germany and Austria.

One place Demel, which is well known throughout Europe founded in 1786, was a place we frequented often while in Vienna-well about 10 lbs later and at the end of our honeymoon, we went for a last visit.

We had our usual dinner which consisted of 3 pastries each and 3 beers for me, however this time instead of rolling away stuffed with a bunch of yummy stuff that I could not even begin to pronounce the names we decided to explore the facilities. With a little bit of liquid courage I decided to venture into an off limits area, pop the door open and bam, a secret room closed to the general public but not today! It was open for me and my new bride!

It was a small wooden door with a spiral metal stairway leading down to a secret room, just like Alice in Wonderland. It was a room filled with a blue haired woman, an oversize bunny rabbit, a big egg, some upside down cakes or person of some sort and all made of sugar! My apology for not being able to describe what each was made of-Mendy knows-but hey I just eat the cake.
Yeah sounds pretty amazing-I thought so and so did Mendy!
As soon as Mendy took a peek she just went full bore down the stairwell ignoring the do not enter sign, just like Alice down the ole rabbit hole!

Steamed Punked

Ok, yes I KNOW I KNOW, long time and opening up with a repeat? Well not really, this is an update. Mendy made this cake for Tori and Dean's Story Book Weddings. The show aired last night on Oxygen, I am glad I did not do my hair because they didnt show us delivering the cake-but I am ok with that-Mendy has the looks.
Well here is a screen grab of Tori and Dean with Mendy's AWESOME steam punk cake-I will post another recent cake soon.......I promise!
Thank you for reading!

Hello? cricket cricket? Anybody? Its been a while and my apologies for my long absence. But lets just get right into the good stuff, yes?
I what I am going to show you is a sneak peak of a cake Mendy made for Miss Tori Spelling. She has a new show out! Who would have figured? Mendy (Cakes by the Pound) was contacted by the production company of the show to come up with a steam punk design, and Mendy's favorite type of cake is one that she is given creative freedom.
Well then the madness began, the pencil sharpener was working on overload as Mendy started on one of many designs until she was happy with the final one.
Mendy even made the robotic bride and groom topper to match-I thought it was all pretty cool and I am sure Tori Spelling/couple and production company were happy.
Thank you for reading-
Gabriel Vidauri

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Cake

What does a parrot handled umbrella, floral print tapestry bag and a spinning carousel have in common?
Nothing except that Mendy implemented all of these elements to create a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious cake!
We got a call from our friend at Cal-tech's Atheneum inquiring about a last minute cake order for one of their members.  Their daughter was turning 4.
Well the birthday girl loves Mary Poppins and everything Mary Poppins. So a Mary Poppins Cake is what Mendy made for her.
Talk on the street is that Mary Poppins herself showed up at the party and even led a kite flying contest.
I was a bit shocked when I walked into the bakery and caught Mendy watching Mary Poppins-she said she was doing research-her research lasted the whole show!
After her research Mendy came up with this design..



The cake was to have Mary Poppins floral tapestry bag-edible, her fancy parrot handled umbrella (non-speaking-phew) penguins, spoonful of sugar, as well as other elements and oh yes a carousel-
I was even more shocked when she told me she promised the client that the carousel would spin-great, more time in the wood shop for me.

Well Mendy made a fantastic cake-I know I know some of you as we do often wonder, it looks good but how does it taste? Well I would bet money that her cakes are pretty Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I am sure those of you who have had her cakes can vouch for me. Ingredients are the key!
So now for the cake-the cake was our Old Fashion Natural Red Velvet Cake (why is it natural? Pureed Beets for the color) layered with  Godiva white chocolate cream cheese butter cream.
The other tiers were my favorite-Chocolate Blackout cake. Each tier has 4 layers of cake filled with dark chocolate ganache, white chocolate swiss buttercream sprinkled with Valrhona crunchy pearls.
All of this cake talk is making me crave some cake! I wonder if Mendy has any cupcakes left from her 2500 cupcake order from last week?
Thanks for reading
Gabriel

When Pound meets Vidauri

This past year we had a very special wedding to prepare for, it was probably Mendy's biggest and most important wedding. It was also a destination wedding, on a small farm in Northern Florida It was her wedding! TO ME!

Now, being in the wedding industry we know how these things can get crazy. We both didn't want to get caught up in the hype and both agreed we wanted to get married some place special, a place that had a special meaning to us-not a hall or a rented church, we chose her family farm-where I proposed. 

Now the guest list, so many people, who to invite? We sat down, each wrote down our list and realized it was longer than we both anticipated. Luckily we both remembered how frazzled some of our brides are in trying to please everybody and how the whole meaning of getting married gets blown out of porportion becoming more of a big party for everybody else-we tossed the list away and agreed-immediate family only. We both were torn by the decision but realized we wanted a small intimate wedding-it worked.
Well Mendy insisted on making the cake, her mother insisted on making the food, and her father insisted on me showing up. Well the food was great, the cake was awesome and yes I did show up. So here is a small taste of some of the pictures-These were taken by Amber, one of our photographers from Smitten Photos. The pictures I took have yet to be approved by Mendy- :0/ but here is a link from the fantastic photographers who documented our wedding-Amber Humphries and her crew from Smitten Photos you can see some pictures of the wedding and Mendy's AWESOME CAKE!
Thank you smitten!!
Gabriel

Big Red to the rescue!

Big red was smokin red hot from all the mixing and whipping in the shop today. She busted out 2000 plus cupcakes and is still kicking!

We did 2000 cupcakes for E Network's 10th anniversary a few years back and we were happy to be asked again. My best friend Tracy was visiting from Tuscon who also has a passion for baking....we will put that passion to the test, ha.

Nothing fixes a long day of baking like a Humbolt fog salad and a glass of vino! Thank you for dinner Gabriel!! :)
- Mendy

My Fair wedding with David Tutera

Well the show aired yesterday and I thought Mendy did great. We are both pleased on how much air time we got-LUCKY US! We loved the fact the show was able to air the tasting.

Mendy always puts a lot of effort into all of her tastings. I know because I always get to make the coffee. Whoopie! Unfortunately I do not make coffee very well, ask poor David Tutera-after I collected his cup I found a bunch of coffee grinds in it-I told him it was a special Russian blend-he didn't believe me :0/
I noticed one thing missing from the show...the big payoff!

For us anyway. They never showed the cake-well they did show the back of the cake but not the front and the front is where all the action is.

    

 They did not show the hand painted tier made to look like a clock, the talking flowers (they really dont talk but have faces on them-lol) or the drink me bottle. Fortunately Mendy had enough sense to take a picture of the cake-so here it is in all of its glory and a few of some of the smaller cakes too..

Thank you for reading-
Gabriel

Cakes by the Pound + David Tutera=My Fair Wedding this Saturday!

When we were asked to do "My Fair Wedding with David Tutera" we were very excited. Why not the last experience with them was so much fun and such a breeze, everybody involved was a hoot. The cake came out amazing and matched the setting perfectly. Thanks in part to Mendy and David's collaboration on the cake design.

This time it would be a little more involved-the production company wanted to film a segment of My Fair Wedding in our little pastry world-our shop. David and the whole crew were going to be in our shop, lighting, setting up and directing. 

Luckily I was not pretty enough to be on camera, they only wanted Mendy-who wouldn't? Many of you who know Mendy know that she HATES to be on camera, unfortunately for her she looks good on camera! HA! (yes my opinion)

The cake design was pretty frickin cool, the theme  (Alice in Wonderland) was pretty frickin cool, the whole event was pretty frickin cool. Mendy only had a limited amount of time make the cake, not only one but....Oh I dont think I can say-you will have to watch this weekend on the WE network. 

It airs Sunday the 16th at 9:00 p.m.

All and all the experience was fantastic and like always David Tutera and his team were amazing and made Mendy feel 100% comfortable. A huge thank you to David and his team from me! For a sneak peek you can follow the link. http://www.wetv.com/my-fair-wedding/episodes/alice-in-wonderland

Thank you for reading-

Gabriel