IMI Design Open House Cake

Winning Auction Cake, a photo by Elegant Cake Creations AZ on Flickr.

Here is the cake for the winning bidder at the Southwest HIV/Aids fundraiser. IMI Design Studio of Scottsdale needed a cake for their new studio open house.

The inspiration was the Andy Warhol flower and A. Calder shapes. Each side of the cake is a different color - pink, lime green, yellow and orange. It's not too visible in this photo but the cake is not straight stacked, it's more geometric.

I completely LOVE the background which is their mascot/logo. Great photo by Luke, the IMI Office Manager.

HIV Awareness Cake

HIV Awareness Cake, a photo by Elegant Cake Creations AZ on Flickr.

A couple of months ago I was contacted by the Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS. Their annual "Night for Life" is one of the largest fundraising events in the Phoenix area each year. They wondered if I would like to donate a cake to the silent auction, of course I said yes to such a worthy cause.

It's a little tricky to market a custom cake at an event like this. Like all art, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the event planner! What type of cake to provide to maximize interest and $$$? I struggled for weeks to decide...do I provide a wedding cake a baby shower cake, what to do?!?

I decided to start with the red awareness ribbon and design around it and this was the final result. My only objective was to grab attention.

The winning bidder was IMI Design of Scottsdale. They will have a fabulous cake at their upcoming open house! I don't know what the winning bid was but if the center received even a few dollars because of my donation then it was a success. It brings me great pleasure to do something for such a great organization!

My New Years Resolution

OK, so about 6 months ago I set up this blog space and then proceeded to completely ignore it...not even one single post. Now I have resolved to make it a priority!

I won't bore you with my thoughts on what I want from this blog, or even what I want to write about - since I'm not completely sure what that will be.  This will be a journey for me and I'll be chatting about whatever I think is interesting...most certainly there will be cakes!  Now on to my thoughts for today.

My first cake of the year was a birthday cake for a customer who's daughter is turning 18.  She asked for a colorful cake and her daughter loves cats.  Upon further investigation I discovered that our birthday girl received two grey kittens as a gift. That was the entirety of the instructions from the customer... of course, I also had to know how many guests it needed to serve as well as flavors but you know what I mean.

I love it when the customer gives me a short briefing about the recipient and a few ideas and lets me run with the design.  All of my most popular cakes have been cakes that I designed this way.  When working with a cake designer let us know what is important to you - what must be incorporated into the design and then let us do our job...design the cake!

One word of warning - there are many cake decorators out there who are not cake designers, so make sure you know who you're working with!  


Until the next time, be kind to each other and have the sweetest of days :)