Marina Sousa of Just Cake coming to Flour Confections April 2011!

photo courtesy of Marina Sousa

We are so excited to announce another fabulous celebrity guest class for 2011! You may have just seen her & her fabulous cake yesterday on the Oprah Winfrey Show!


If you are an avid Food Network Challenge viewer, you will be excited to hear that Marina Sousa of Just Cake will be coming to teach 2 AMAZING classes in April of 2011.

Marina Sousa is owner and designer of Just Cake, located in the Monterey Bay area of California.
Marina’s work has been featured in numerous national magazines including InStyle, Brides, Modern Bride, Wedding Style and Dessert Professional. Most recently, Marina was thrilled to be a guest on the “Oprah Winfrey Show”, acknowledged as one of the top cake designers in the country. Marina is often seen on the Food Network where she has served as a judge and most impressively clinched first place multiple times on "Food Network - Challenge". The Food Network has featured her work on several specials; She was chosen to create the wedding cake for the winners of "Food Network Caters your Las Vegas Wedding" as well as create a showpiece cake for the first ever “Food Network Awards” at the South Beach Food & Wine Festival. Marina’s favorite appearance was “Fantasy Weddings” where she had the honor of making the wedding cake for her friends, Keegan Gerhard & Lisa Baily, pastry chefs, owners of D Bar Desserts and host of the Food Network “Challenge” series. Additionally, she has had the privilege of designing cakes for high-profile celebrities and celebrity events including wedding cakes for Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston, Rachel Welch and a sweet 16 cake for Miley Cyrus.

Marina brings a unique perspective to the art of designing cakes. Her background in theatre and fashion allow her to envision designs through an uncommon lens. Experimenting with structure and defying gravity are equally as intriguing to her as replicating intricate lace. Sugar art has proved to be the perfect medium for exploring all facets of the arts – for Marina, the ideal merging of artistry and passion.

Marina will be teaching the following classes in 2011:

Structuring Sugar Beads Friday April 8th 2011

Fun & Funky Structures Saturday April 9th & Sunday April 10th 2011

To see more about Marina & the Oprah cake you can view a video HERE and HERE

It's going to be very hard to wait until next year......

Amore at Atlantis

Leigh & Jesse have been really great clients....starting from her coming into the shop well over a year ago to order custom cookies to present to her bridesmaids, she then ordered on the spot her wedding cake & Jesse's surprise 30th birthday cake (giant Tim Hortons' cup) - since that day they continue to come back for more!

Finally their wedding day arrived - this week we've experienced a heat wave with sunny skies every single day - fortunately their wedding day was a bit cooler, with a slight breeze, yet still gorgeous! Since they were getting married at Atlantis - an event centre on the water in downtown Toronto, they wanted to go along with that theme and include white starfish, tropical blue colours & silver.

Leigh & Jesse really wanted to also include a candy bar - so we created that for them as well. They chose candies to suit the theme including: 2 colours of rock candy on sticks, salt water taffy, tropical blue jellybeans & coconut jellybeans. The blues I choose for the candies matched the gorgeous signs created by Laura K Design PERFECTLY!

When doing a delivery such as this, it's always best to have help - fortunately my BFF cake friend Karey was there to save the day! As the venue is perched above the water, in order to get to it, you need to go up a steep hill and then unload all your gear onto a golf cart. They then drive you across a long bridge/walkway. Needless to say having a candy bar which consists of jars, candy, serving pieces, cupcake tower, 125 cupcakes and a top tier was A LOT to load into this cart! However, I must say the final result was fabulous! I only hope the photographer gets better shots than I did with my tiny camera as I didn't have room for my DSLR!

The cupcake tower consisted of 125 BananaRama w/chocolate chip cupcakes & white chocolate cream cheese buttercream. Each cupcake featured handmade pearlized gumpaste starfish from a mould I created using a real starfish. The 2 tier top tier was same flavour, super tall, finished in Swiss Meringue buttercream and encrusted with sanding sugar. It also has sugar starfish that I made from a mould I created.

Jesse had proposed to Leigh by placing the ring in a Kinder Surprise, so on the welcome table we did jars of Kinder Eggs - too cute!

Congratulations Leigh & Jesse! It was a great day & a fabulous display for a wonderful couple

3 days with James Rosselle

3 days of making sugar flowers with the talented, adorable & lovable James Rosselle was a fabulous way to spend the first long weekend of the summer! We Canadians are pretty dedicated to this weekend, lovingly called the May 2-4 - it's a time to get away to the cottage, spend time outside with friends & family enjoying the BBQ & drinking beer. However last year when we announced that James Rosselle would be making his first trip to Canada to teach a 3 day course entitled "To Have & To Hold", registrations came pouring in!

For someone as young as James, he has an impeccable resume - his journey began with an opportunity to work for the "king of sugar flowers" Ron Ben-Israel , he then moved on to Chicago where he worked in the pastry kitchen for Gale Gand at TRU restaurant, then an opportunity came along where he could get into teaching as an instructor at the famous Notter School in Orlando. And as if that was not enough, James has participated in numerous Food Network Challenges, winning Gold 4 times out of 4!

On our first day of class, students settled in to fresh coffee, tea & croissants while James showed us his techniques to a flawless fondant finish & how to create gorgeous sugarpaste roses & ranunculus. Our colour scheme for the weekend was purple, fuchsia, black & white - stunning!

Here is Susan stacking her 3 tier wedding cake

James demonstrating his sugar ranunculus

students hard at work making sugar flowers

On day 2, the sugar work continued with the finishing stages of the ranunculus and hydrangeas. We then started to decorate our cakes with textured sugar bands and a variety of Patchwork cutters. Taking from James' lead, students got creative and put their own touches to each cake - the variety of designs while still in the same colour scheme was amazing!

On day 3, we brought life to our flowers with dusting. James taught us all how to finish our cakes with a stunning crown of sugar flowers that would make any bride weep.

Lisa creating her sugar flower crown

James with his finished creation!

Thank you James for an amazingly sweet 3 days!

James Rosselle was here...

Flour Confections has just finished hosting 3 fabulous days of sugar flowers & a 3 tier wedding cake with the talented & radiant James Rosselle.

Stay tuned for more about our 3 day class.....

Lauren Kitchens is coming to Flour Confections!

As Canadians, we don't often get to see a Food Network Challenge on the same date as it airs in the US. We sometimes don't get to see it for quite some time -months or possibly never! Such a shame for Canadian cake enthusiasts!

Fortunately, as of late, we have not been kept waiting in the dark for too long. This past Sunday, the SpongeBob Challenge finally aired (it made it's debut back at the beginning of April in the US).

The competitors were fierce:

Bronwen Weber of Frosted Art Bakery

Kristen Davison

Lauren Kitchens of Fancy Cakes By Lauren

Rick Reichart of Cakelava

The competition was tough, and everyone brought their A game - but alas, like all Challenges, there can only be one winner.

Lauren Kitchens created a spot on flawless Mr. Crabs - it was perfect - even Kerry Vincent saluted her!

And we are proud to announce that the talented, award winning Lauren will be coming in February to Canada to teach her fabulous Character Cakes 101 & Character Cakes 201 classes! Everywhere Lauren has taught, the classes have sold out - so be sure to reserve your seat so you don't miss out!

We are working on the final details of some more amazing celebrity guest classes for 2011 - so stay tuned!

To read more about Lauren's experience, visit her blog here

To read about Rick's experience, visit his blog here

Demo with Nicholas Lodge

Wow I've been neglecting my blog lately - not intentionally, just so many different things on the go and only so many hours in the day!

So I'm taking a moment to keep you all up to date on what has been going on in my cake world lately!

First off - the amazing demo I attended on May 8th. Although the day was very cold (I mean there was snow!), I made the drive to Cambridge Ontario to attend a Nicholas Lodge (ooo he has a new website!) demonstration organized by our local ICES group and Klara Johnson. Nick was demonstrating a tropical flower display including birds of paradise, anthuriums and tropical leaves. I have said it before, and I will say it again - Nick is an amazing teacher - he is thorough, straight forward, calm, and funny! I can't wait to sit down and make some of these flowers!

If you ever have the opportunity to take any of his classes, I highly recommend it.

Happy Mother's Day!

To all the mother's - please have a sweet Mother's Day - we wouldn't be here without you!

And please take a moment to enjoy this song :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXgoJ0f5EsQ