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At our New Jersey bakery we are obsessed with following, if not exceeding, our local health codes especially when it comes to sanitation. Everything used for our cakes is either edible or food safe items (e.g. dowels to support cake tiers, etc....). I tend to cringe when a client wants to put fresh or silk flowers on a cake. Many fresh flowers are covered in pesticides, some being quite toxic,
We were pleased to have received the Bride's Choice award for our NJ Wedding Cakes from Wedding Wire. A big thank you to all our clients who selected us to be in the top 5% of wedding cake providers in the Northern New Jersey area!
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com We were honored to have our winter-themed cake featured in 201 Bride magazine for their Winter Wonderland special. As always, its a pleasure to work with the professionals at The Finishing Touch Events. ?
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com? This vintage baby shower dessert table was designed for an intimate gathering of the expecting mother’s family and friends. We created a custom-designed gift box cake, sugar cookies, chocolate bon-bons, a chocolate box filled with sugared almonds, cake truffles, mint cream filled chocolate eggs, and hand-dipped madeleine cookies.
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com Some of the cakes that come out of our bakery are a 'labor of love.' This cake, made for an ASPCA fundraiser, was one of those. The event was held at a dance studio in NYC, hence, the dancing theme! The dogs, cats, and dancer silhouettes were created using digitized images and an electronic cutter to to cut the gumpaste. ?
33% of engagements occur between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. Congratulations if you are one of the happy new couples and we wish you all the best in planning your wedding. We've compiled a video of some of our custom wedding cakes. I hope you enjoy the video and find inspiration for your wedding cake! ? Confectionary Designs - Custom NJ Bakery
Confectionary Designs - NJ Custom Cake Bakery ?Here is a fun little topsy turvy cake we made for a candy-themed bridal shower. The lollipops were made from rolling fondant.
Calls and emails come into the bakery almost everyday requesting information on cakes. One of the most frequently asked questions is "what flavors do you offer?". I've thought about putting together a menu of our more popular flavors but have decided against this. Reason being, I don't want to limit the imagination of myself or my clients when it comes to flavors. We do offer the traditio
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com Bergen County, New Jersey One of the most important decisions a bride will make in planning her wedding will be the design of her wedding cake. It is not the most important design decision, but it should be made together with the other decisions that will make your wedding the special event you want it to be. Here's a guide to help.Eight Mont
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com Earlier this week I shared a post for homemade marshmallows. Of course the next logical step is to share a recipe for homemade graham crackers so you can create the widely-loved S'mores! One fun aspect of making your own crackers is the endless possibilities for shapes. How about heart shaped crackers with strawberr
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com Homemade marshmallows are an often requested item for our dessert bars. These clouds of yumminess stand on their own or can be incorporated into a traditional dessert, such as the good-old S'more. The following recipe is what I consider my 'no fail' marshmallow recipe as it works perfect everytime! I've added pistachios t
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com Baby shower cakes are such a joy to design and make! This cake was designed by collaborating with the mother-to-be and using her invitation as inspiration. Obviously lots of dots and elephants on the invitation! The expecting mother must have been having chocolate cravings as this is a chocolate cake with chocolate praline filling covered in cho
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com Our latest wedding cake design. We used styrofoam under the bottom tier to allow the addition of our signature 'sugar feet.'
Cake pops and cake truffles appeared on the bakery scene several years ago and, according to our customers, the 'fad' is still going strong. These yummy little confections can be decorated in countless ways and can be as elegant or as cute and playful as you want. The following photos are just a few of our creations:? The above cake pop bouquet serves nicely as a centerpiece to welcome a ne
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com We created this cake for a very special gal turning 16. Its always fun to design a cake when you have livid colors and a great theme to work with. Obviously, the theme was a masquerade ball and the colors were purple, jewel green, and gold. The three masks on the cake were fashioned from gumpaste and lots of edible glitter.?
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com We were honored last Fall to create a purse cake for the Nomi Network annual fund raiser in NYC. Since the inception of our company, Pam and I have donated to multiple chartiable causes, but Nomi Network holds a special place in our hearts due to the amazing work they are doing. Please take a moment to read the paragraph below and, if you are able, help support
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com The history of the Grooms' cake is not completely known, but many say it started in the southern states and has been quite popular all over the US for several years. Typically the groom's cake is chocolate, but when designing the cake flavors, one should focus on what the groom would like to eat! We really enjoy making grooms' cakes as they tend to be witty
Extension work, sometimes referred to as string work, in cake decorating is a delicate process that takes practice, time, and patience to perfect. Regardless of the effort the results are beautiful and it reminds me of floating lace! Many decorators shy away from extension work as their past attempts have failed. We find the most common cause of failed extension work is not the decorator's tale
At the bakery its time to put away the yellows, light blues, and other pastel colors to make space for the autumn line-up. Besides the fact that it was 45 degrees F when I got up this morning, I also know it is Fall based on the food color stains on my hands - burnt oranges and browns. I love the color scheme on the following cake for a Fall wedding as the dark and light browns, cream, and oran
Sometimes the simplest looking cakes can be the most difficult to make. Its so much easier to put random dots all over a cake than to calculate the exact distance for swags on a heart-shaped cake and make sure the swags are placed perfectly! Remember when your high school math teacher said "you'll use this math again"? Well, he/she was right as we often find ourselves thinking back to our math cla
We were so excited when our mini-wedding cake won first place in Wed's Great Cake-off in its category! This was especially an honor given the number of beautiful wedding cupcakes and small cakes submitted by some really talented decorators. Creating 'itty-bitty' cakes is more difficult than working on a monster five-tier cake since it is such a small canvas on which to place so many detai
At our New Jersey bakery we are obsessed with following, if not exceeding, our local health codes especially when it comes to sanitation. Everything used for our cakes is either edible or food safe items (e.g. dowels to support cake tiers, etc....). I tend to cringe when a client wants to put fresh or silk flowers on a cake. Many fresh flowers are covered in pesticides, some being quite t
Fashion items are certainly 'in vogue' for cakes given the number of requests we receive for these items. We've created a little show of our creations. I hope you enjoy our our Fashionista Runway video!
This was an interesting cake to make as we never actually spoke to the client. The design, order, and payment were all completed online as the client lives in Hong Kong. She found our site online and needed a birthday cake for one of the WonderGirls, a musical group, who was scheduled to be in New York City on her birthday. http://www.confectionarydesigns.com The hardest part about
One of the best parts of our job at Confectionary Designs is coming up with a design that fits the occasion perfectly! We look for inspiration everywhere by working closely with our clients to understand their needs. One of our clients brought along the invitation she had sent out when she came to us for a consultation and tasting session. All of us knew immediately the cake had to be designed fro
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/ We made this carved purse cake for a wonderful lady for a milestone birthday. We've gotten used to carving purses after doing so many of them, but this one was a bit of a challenge as the entire purse is hand-painted using luster dusts and Everclear. I think I was buzzed from breathing in the Everclear by the time I finished painting this one!?
http://www.zwarenstein.com OK, so maybe not the cake itself, but the painting above is definitely a masterpiece! We were lucky enough to have a 36" x 24" oil painting done by a world-renowned artist, Alex Zwarenstein. Alex holds a MFA from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, teaches at The National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York, has received numerous awards, an
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/ Decorated sugar cookies, such as the ones above, are a frequent order in our shop. I especially like the details on the bridal dress with over 30 plunger flowers and intricate royal icing piping. The pink heart cookie's swirl is done in glace icing which leaves the cookie with a beautiful sheen after a light application of edible pearl dust. Cookies s
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/ Often in my business there is a cake design and a customer that you really enjoy and this order was definately one of them! Our NJ client's son was married at City Hall in LA and she threw a small family party when the newlyweds came to visit. Her idea was to have the wedding cake look like city hall and I found this to be quite challenging. First, she wante
As much as I enjoy blogging sometimes I need to let posting go so we can work on bakery orders. We've been quite busy lately with an great selection of occasions to make cakes for! Spring and Summer are a big season for baby showers (hmmm....I wonder why!), graduations, and weddings. Following are a few of the cakes we've recently created: http://www.confectionarydesigns.com The above cake
A few weeks ago we had a blast putting together some cakes with lots of 'bling.' Some weekends it seems we have all baby shower cakes, or all birthday cakes, or all wedding cakes, but our 'bling' weekend was all about sparkle! The following cake was made for a client's milestone birthday party and is the epitome of bling - it sparkled like diamonds under the lights at her venue. Her flavors wer
Along with the customary fare of cakes and cupcakes usually served at parties and most special occasions, dessert tables have moved front and center and taken their rightful place alongside their traditional counterparts. We simply love creating the smaller confections and think the dessert table is a welcome addition to any celebration. We were fortunate enough to have connected with two gre
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/ Baby showers are one of the best events we like designing dessert bars for! The cake pops above are just one of the several items we created for a recent baby shower. We used a tiny First Impressions mold to create the fondant designs on the pops and applied the designs with chocolate. Cake pops and cake balls seem to be all the rage now (are these the 'new
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/ We loved making this sculpted purse cake for a very special client! ?The process of hand-painting with cocoa butter and petal dusts took quite some time, but we think the result was well worth it. I've practiced the cocoa painting method on small test plaques, so I was a little nervous when I needed to paint an entire cake!
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/ It's an old cliche that we are our own worst critics, but the saying holds so true when it comes to making custom cakes for our clients. There are not many cakes that leave the shop that I look at and think "we could have done something a little better on that cake." Then the client sees the cake and just loves it! The bowling bag cake pictured above is
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/Northern New Jersey Inspiration for a cake design can come from just about anywhere. I knew I'd turned into a real 'caker' when I starting seeing items such as a scarf and instead of thinking "wow, that's a perfect color for me" I now think "hmmm....how can I interpret that into a cake design.?" These thoughts seem to invade my mind with so many other ele
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/Bogota, NJ In every little girl's upbringing, there is a special moment to which she looks forward with excitement and pride. It could be a bat mitzvah for a young Jewish lady, a communion for a Catholic girl or she could be making her society debut. When a girl reaches her fifteenth birthday in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Central and South America, she celeb
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/ Some gals really love their shoes! Before I started wearing 'bakery shoes' I would have loved a pair of these with their signature red soles! This was a fun cake to make and the recipient was very pleased with it! The box is all cake and the shoes are hand molded from sugarpaste.
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/ This Playstation 3 cake was a real challenge to make! It was made for a great lady to surprise her boyfriend on his birthday. She only needed to feed 8 people but in order to make a big impact and look like a real Playstation we needed to make a much larger cake that serves about 35 people. We gave her our usual instructions to wrap the leftovers in plastic wr
Before I made the Regina Biscotti I don't think I ever owned a jar of cardamom. The recipe called for just a tiny bit and, of course, the supermarket only had a large jar for $12 and, silly me, I bought it. Since I can't just let an expensive jar of spices go to waste I've been searching for recipes that use cardamom (if you have one, please direct me to it as I'll never get through this jar!).
Whether it be Italian meringues, decorative sugarwork, or caramel, boiling sugar brings me back to my days in pastry school. I have this image in my head of 14 students leaning over induction units, pots filled with boiling sugar, staring at candy thermometers. Sometimes we'd be standing and staring for 10 minutes watching the color change and the temperature ever so slowly creep up. It seems like
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/Northern New Jersey We really enjoyed working with our client to design this cake. She threw a party for her parent's 40th wedding anniversary and asked us to help her with a cake that represented one of their greatest interests: traveling the world. We came up with two vintage suitcases covered in travel stickers and made sugarpaste figures of various items:
What is the most anxiety producing task for a pastry chef who owns a bakery? Designing a menu for her own party!! Five years ago when I was still working in the corporate arena I would just run down to the local bakery, pick out a bunch of nice looking desserts, plop 'em on some patters, and, voila!, we have dessert. Well, that part of my life has changed. since I quit my job. I'm quite
http://www.confectionarydesigns.comBergen County, New Jersey Statistics show that 50% of engagements occur over the holiday season. Congratulations if you are one of the lucky couples engaged over the 2011 season! In celebration we are republishing our "Wedding Cake Sweet Plan." One of the most important decisions a bride will make in planning her wedding will be the design of her wedding
Wishing everyone a happy and safe New Year's eve and a most wonderful 2011!!
Every holiday season my brother-in-law has given us the most wonderful Biscotti di Regina from his neighborhood Brooklyn bakery. These cookies, also known as Queen's Biscuits, are classic Italian cookies with a sweet, cake-like texture with a crispy coating of sesame seeds. They are a traditional Italian accompaniment to wine or coffee. This year, after finishing the entire box he gave us
I think the only thing that helps is: Try to breathe!! Why is it I can temper chocolate blindfolded, bang out the perfect puff pastry, pipe picture-perfect stringwork, but my nervous energy goes into overdrive every time I make macarons? I think its because 20% of the time they don't turn out as I'd like, and of the batches I do like I end up throwing out 10% of the finished product
Yesterday I posted that we are in the middle of the season of marriage engagements. I thought I would share the following video with you that has several of our wedding creations. Enjoy!? http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/Bogota, NJ ?
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/Bogota, NJ I came across a statistic a few days ago that states 40% of all marriage engagements occur over the holidays. The reason for this is that the holidays present an abundance of opportunities for memorable proposals to take place. I have to add myself to this statistic as I became engaged at midnight at the beginning of the new millennium. Ju
http://www.confectionarydesigns.com/Bogota, New Jersey Our client came to us requesting a 70th birthday party cake and wanted the following elements incorporated into the design: black and white films, family, sudoku, bowling and gardening!? At first, adding all these elements in a creative way was a bit intimidating, but once the creative juices started flowing it all came together in a cohesive
