2011 Fort St John Bridal Show Part A

This month I participated in Fort St John's 14th annual bridal show. The bridal show was well attended with over 50 brides accompanied by their bridesmaids, moms, sisters and occasional reluctant groom.
Over the years I have been working on achieving a certain look and feel to my booth and I think I am finally getting there. It's hard to believe that this was my 5th bridal show and when I look back, I cringe because I still remember my first booth - 4 cakes with red and white balloons in the background. UGH!!! I really loved how my booth turned out this year complete with black skirting, lavender tablecloths and lavender draping. I even got a new sign made this fall too.
Overall the show went very well, I was busy answering questions and handing out tons of cupcake samples. I made over 400 samples consisting of red velvet with white chocolate cream cheese, chocolate with traditional buttercream, and vanilla with raspberry buttercream. I went home at the end of the night with about 2 doz samples to the delight of my family who quickly devoured them.

Part of this years bridal show, I handed out these great coffee mugs designed by Imagine That to all the brides who stopped by my booth. Each mug had a few pictures of my cakes complete with logo and contact information. The words "Bride" were written on each mug for that personal touch.

White Victorian

Since I have a soft touch for anything old, vintage and Victorian, I designed quite a few of my cakes for the show around this theme. The cake below featured white drop strings, piping and borders traditional of the 80's. To contrast the white look, I topped the cake off with deep red roses with a spray of pearl beads.

2011 Fort St John Bridal Show Part B

Here are the rest of the cakes I created for the Fort St John Bridal show.

Vintage Suitcase Cake
I created this cake using an assortment of handmade gumpaste flowers overflowing the top. To create a vintage feel, I brushed a mixture of vodka and warm brown gel paste on numerous times in varying strengths. Adding to the charm, latches were created from molds from some of my treasured brooch collection.
Simply White
This simple cake was created just for the sake of simplicity. I wanted to show brides the option of having a simple, yet elegant cake. Flowers were silk and the cake was decorated with a simple ribbon and scroll work.

Redneck Wedding Cake

This cake was created with a very specific couple in mind: my niece and her boyfriend. We are always teasing them about "when they are going to tie the knot". I always have said that if they were to get married, I would do their wedding cake. So, I thought why not design it for fun for the bridal show and show brides how they can personalize their cake. Since my niece is into horses, I designed the middle tier for her going with a denim look complete with belt, buckle and gumpaste flowers for the added feminine touch. The bottom tier was created just for him. He is a total fan of John Deere machinery and loves working with dirt and rocks. The top tier was to combine their love of hunting and shooting. I topped the cake off with modeled figures of the couple holding guns in their arms.

Ivory Brooch
This cake I ABSOLUTELY love, it is my favorite to date. The whole world of molds opened up before me when I was designing this cake. First of all, I wanted the look and feel of ivory and gold. I just love how those two colors go together. I then got out my trusted brooch and button collection and started playing around making molds. After narrowing down my design, I got to work and put all the elements together. The overall design included quilting, gold swiss dots, gumpaste bow, gold painted scroll work and hand molded cameo brooch and buttons.

Black Victorian

I know it sounds weird, especially in today's cake world, BUT I still love the look of the traditional cakes from the 80's. You know the ones with all the piping and scroll work. So, I decided to go with the design but give it a modern twist and make the overall cake BLACK with contrasting piping. Out came the molds again, in which I added molded draping, cameos and buttons to the design. To add to the final look, I brushed pearl luster dust on all the adornments to give it a polished look.

Zebra Stripes & Black Diamonds

This past weekend we created these 2 cakes for two lucky ladies. The first cake was created for a little girl turning 7. Her favorite color was pink and even though she was into the whole "girly" thing, she also wanted something modern and trendy. I designed this cake with pink fondant with the bottom tier draped like a dress with zebra stripes. I added black hearts for the top tier, wrapped a bow around it with a "bling" center. Lastly, a touch of lime green was added for contrast. The other cake created this weekend was for a sweet 16 party. The birthday girl chose one of my previous designs. Since I really don't like replicating my past designs "to a T", I changed it up a bit my adding a "Queen of Hearts" topper, some fondant rolled roses and some whimsical fondant cut outs at the base of the cake. The birthday girl chose red velvet with white chocolate cream cheese filling and chocolate cake with cappuccino buttercream filling. The entire cake was iced in Italian Meringue Buttercream and covered in fondant.

A Wedding Cake Revisited

I love receiving customer feedback telling us how amazing their cake was. I created this beautiful scroll work cake for JD and Shelley for their wedding this past summer and Shelley sent me a wonderful letter expressing her gratitude. Fast forward 6 months later, and Shelly wrote on Facebook these kind words,

"The cake was perfect. I still dream about eating the delicious spice cake layers. Thank you Tara for exceeding my cake dreams!"

Resolutions: In with the New & Revisiting the Old

I know this is a bit late, but I sometimes say "Better late, than never", but I wanted to wish everyone a belated "Happy New Year!" I can't believe 2010 has come and gone. I mean, was it just me or did it fly by WAY TOO FAST? Maybe, it was just me, cause I was so darn busy cak'n. By far, 2010 was the busiest year for Just Like Gram's. The number of wedding cakes we created this year more than doubled from previous years. I also got the chance to fly to Toronto and learn the art of sugar flowers from Ron Ben-Israel. Once I got past the first day of recovering from air sickness, I really enjoyed the course. I loved meeting so many people who shared the same addiction to cakes as I did. Not only did I learn about sugar flowers, I also got the chance to learn so many little tips just from talking to other cake designers.

So, looking back at our 2010 resolutions, how did we fare?

Resolution 1) Marketing:

• This year we launched our new and updated website. I ABSOLUTELY love my new website. It so much more easier for me to maintain, plus the look is more sophisticated and elegant compared to my older more simpler version.


• We also participated in some on-line marketing on Fort St John's community website http://www.energeticcity.ca/


• plus we added a Facebook and Twitter page.


• participated in several community trade shows

Resolution 2) Delivery

• Well, I think this is going to be one of those issues that is going to be on-going for me and will never truly be resolved. Obtaining a store front is just not an option right now. Part of the reasons for this is my schedule is very eratic right now. My children moved to a new school which is in a rural area in the opposite direction from the school they used to attend. I am up at 5AM to get them ready for school and we leave at 6:45 to drive to catch their 1 1/2 hr bus ride. Combined with their after school activities, I sometimes have to pick them up at either 2:30 or 4:00 depending on the activity. So for now, I am just giving customers the option of picking up thier orders and if they want delivery, I charge a delivery fee. One exception is wedding cakes, delivery is included with all wedding cake orders within Fort St John and Taylor.

Resolution 3) Personal: Weight Loss

• This year it was my goal to try to lose some unwanted lbs. So far, I have gone down 1 size and lost 9 lbs since Sept 2010. My goal is to lose 6 more lbs. by the end of February.

So what about 2011? What plans do I have for this year?

1. Marketing still.... I plan to continue various forms of on-line advertising, plus participate in various trade shows. I recently purchased these cute sticky note pads to hand out to clients. I really loved how they turned out.

2. Blog MORE, MORE and MORE.... I am absolutely terrible for keeping up with this, so this is my resolution to attend to my blog on a regular basis.

3. Try new recipes. Last year I did so much cak'n, the last thing I wanted to do was bake for my family. Well, I got some new recipe magazines with neat cookie recipes, so I plan to try at least 1 new recipe a month.

4. Lose those last few lbs by February.

Fort St John Annual Ladies Day Out Show

This past weekend I attended the annual Ladies Day Out show in Fort St John. I have attended it for the past 4 years and every year it seems to get better and better with more people coming out to see local business' in the community. I prepared over 400 cake samples and they were all gone by the last hour of the show.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of my booth, because I forgot my camera. On this one occasion my husband was supposed to meet me and help me set up, so he was going to bring my camera. When I got to the venue, he phoned me to tell me that our son was sick with a 24hr flu, so I had to set up on my own. When I got home after the show I took some pictures of a few of the cakes that were on display.

Unlike bridal shows, I do an assortment of display cakes for people to see, because a lot of the people who come to these shows are moms, grandmas and aunts.

Baby Shower cake in pastel colors complete with modeled baby animals.

Now when I go to these shows I always ask my kids for ideas for cakes for boys and girls. My son who is in Taekwando asked me to make a taekwando cake. So I grabbed his uniform and used it for inspiration. Here is his Taekwando shirt complete with belt and tips.

I designed this cake over 3 years ago based on my own wedding dress design. My wedding dress was white cotton eyelet over baby blue satin. I have taken this cake to several trade shows over the years and I was about ready to retire it, but it seems every time the response is overwhelmingly positive. PEOPLE LOVE THIS CAKE! Hmmm, maybe I will keep it around for a while longer.

Sometimes when you come up with a design and you think it is SUPER, yet you get the oddest or more like, LACK of response from people, then you think hmm, maybe the design was so great after all. THEN, on the other hand, you do a design that you think is "way out there" and people love it. This was the story of the KISSING COUPLE design. I thought of this cute idea of putting red lips all over a cake with a heart and silhouette of a couple kissing on top. Neat idea, right? Let me tell you that cake was so frustrating. Working with red icing is totally non-negotiable when it comes to errors. THERE is no room for making a mistake. You screw up and it is very hard to remove that red stain. It was very frustrating and time consuming to stencil all those lips and then brush them to add some texture. I wasn't too sure on the final outcome, but at the show it was ONE of THE most popular cakes at my booth.

Lastly, for all you winter brides out there, I designed this Silver Snowflake wedding cake. The outer layer of each tier was embossed with a snowflake stamp and then I created gumpaste snowflakes which were dusted with silver too.

Christmas Baking Anyone?

Can you believe it's only 8 weeks until Christmas? Before you know it, the holidays will be here and you will be rushing around getting your Christmas shopping done. What about all your Christmas baking? Can't be bothered or don't have time? Just Like Gram's offers Christmas baking packages suited for a variety of budgets. So, beat the rush and book your Christmas baking today!

Each package contains the following:
Butter Tarts, Christmas Sugar Cookies, Gingerbread Men, Chocolate Tartlets, Shortbread Snowflakes, Chocolate Dipped Pretzel Rods, Raspberry Ribbon Cookies, Chocolate Truffles, Chocolate Dipped Brownie Bites, Christmas Butter Cookies, Chocolate Dipped Almond Logs, Almond Cranberry Bark, Homemade Marshmallow Whoopie Pies

Select a Package that is JUST right for YOU!
1) Just A Nibble $35.00 - a random assortment of 2 dozen treats
2) Family's Coming $85.00 - receive half-dozen of each treat
3) Tis' the Season to Celebrate $175.00 - one dozen of each goody

Also Available: Beautifully hand decorated Christmas Sugar Cookies & Christmas Chocolate Caramel Dipped Apples. We can even package them individually! Just the perfect Christmas party favour!

Dates Available for Pick up: Dec 3, Dec 11, Dec 18 and Dec 21.