With the advent of Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest, blogs almost seem quaint and old fashioned now.  I’m sure in 4 years there will be 3 new things that make instagram obsolete.  Facebook already seems like a dinosaur.  So I wonder if there’s any point in keeping up with these blog posts.  I know very few of my bakery colleagues (translation competitors) keep blogs and the small handful that do haven’t updated their blogs in over half a year in the best case scenario.  Still Emily and Lydia (especially) enjoy seeing their work highlighted on the blog and I can’t fault them for that.  Lydia has been hounding me to write a new blog post, so this post is to appease her.  I told her I thought the three of us were the only ones who actually read our blog anymore.  If you really want to keep up with what we’re doing on a more timely basis, start following our instagram account:  @twiggsbakerycafe.   In the mean time, here we go . . .

Both Emily and Lydia have really come into their own as decorators.  I use to think of myself as the best decorator at Twiggs and would impart my knowledge to Emily, Lydia and whoever else was around.  Emily and Lydia, however, long ago surpassed me and they’re both putting out work that I greatly admire and am very glad that I didn’t have to work on myself.  Bernie and I actually took two weeks off recently and we were just slammed with orders.  Thanks to me, we’d done a very poor job of controlling the number of orders we took to account for the fact that I wasn’t going to be around to help with decorating and deliveries.  I was a little worried about how things would turn out, but they along with Michelle did a fantastic job.  I was really blown away by some of the pictures they sent me when I was on vacation.  So let’s take a look.

First up is a beautiful loose ruffle cake Emily did that went to Breaker’s Beach at the North Island Naval Base on Coronado.  Breaker’s Beach is probably my least favorite venue to deliver to because it’s where cakes go to die in direct sunlight.  The venue is basically a large deck on the beach with zero shade.  The one building is essentially a greenhouse with no A/C.  You can see in the picture that Emily was quite resourceful in appropriating a sandwich board to provide shade for the cake.

Flowers can really make a cake.  First are some cakes with sugar flowers that give a slightly more formal look than fresh flowers.  The first with the gumpaste flower cascade went to Morgan Run Golf Club up in Rancho Santa Fe, the second with the bling tier separators went to Riverwalk Golf Club in Mission Valley while the final vines with pink flowers went to a private home.

Fresh flowers can really turn a plain jane cake into a stunner.   First up is a very dramatic stucco frosted cake that’s been highlighted with metallic gold around the top of each tier.  This went to a private home that had a dramatic view of the ocean from it’s perch above La Costa Resort in Carslbad.  The second has a gorgeous cascade of fresh dahlias that Lydia arranged at the Manchester Hyatt downtown.  Finally, there’s a quietly beautiful cake that went to a gorgeous old home in Mission Hills.

After praising Emily and Lydia while throwing myself under the bus above, I have to pull myself out and say I still can do a decent job in piping — which is almost a lost art with all the focus on fondant these days.  Here’s a couple of cakes I did that involved some old school piping work.

We did have a few unique wedding cakes in the past month or so.  First up is a rustic crate and vine cake that was delivered to a farm out in east county.  It’s great for a fall wedding.  Next is a rather dramatic cake with Cupid’s Arrow being shot through the cake.  Finally, there’s a rather masculine cake for two gay men who had their reception at the Museum of Natural History in Balboa Park.

I’ll close out the wedding section with a cupcake tree that was set up in Spanish Village in Balboa Park.  I think the setting contributed to a particularly pretty picture of a cupcake tree.  Next is a three tier cake with some mini-cupcakes that went to the Rancho Bernardo Inn this past Sunday.  Finally there’s a “semi-naked” cake that went up to Green Gables in Vista.

Okay, it hasn’t all been weddings in the last month or so.  We’ve done a ton of birthdays and baby showers along with a few corporate orders.  Here’s some highlights.  They’re all pretty self-explanatory.   You can click on any image to see a larger one.

Well that’s it for the Lydia and Emily Appeasement Post.  Hopefully this keeps them happy for another month!

In all seriousness, I’m very grateful to have both of them plus Michelle and Patrick working on cakes for Twiggs.  They all do a great job and are very conscientious.  And I shouldn’t stop with them.  I’m grateful for our manager, Mitch, who has about 50 balls in the air at all times.  Jose and Zach do a fantastic job with breakfast each day while Marcos and Zach are so consistent with the morning pastries that I never have to think about them.   The whole back of the house staff at Adams Avenue is a blessing.  And our front of the house staff is great at remembering customers and their regular orders such that 3/4’s of our customers don’t even have to order when they come up to the counter.

Meanwhile, Norma, Cassidy, Brandon and the rest of the staff at our Park Boulevard location is the stongest it’s been in years.  They’ve really cultivated a culture of friendly counter service that’s so essential to any customer service business.

I have a lot to be grateful for.  I’m a lucky guy.  Until next time . . .

We’re through July and August which means we’re in the middle of wedding season in San Diego.  We’ve got September and October to go before weddings tail off for a while.  This has been a bit of a different wedding season for us.   For the past several years, we’ve been pretty darn steady from weekend to weekend with weddings.  This year we’ve had some slower weekends with some weekends that are just slammed.  Talking to a few others in the “industry” (I hate that term for businesses that work weddings), our experience is not unique.  Several of our fellow vendors are having the slower to crazy business pattern this year.  Who knows why these things go the way they do.  You just enjoy the slower weekends and let yourself recharge for the slammed ones.

Since my last blog post, I’ve discovered the wonders of Instagram.  I know, welcome to 2013.  But I’ve started an Instagram account for Twiggs and post wedding cakes after I set them up on deliveries as well as birthday cakes we finish in the store.  So follow us on Instagram:  @twiggsbakerycafe

It’s been a while since my last blog post (been preoccupied with instagram!) so there’s quite a bit to cover.  So here’s a look at several of the wedding cakes we’ve done in the last month.  Each year there’s always a couple of trends that come through.  This year, it’s been the year of small wedding cakes with sheet cakes in the back for the majority of servings.  We’ve done weddings for 200+ people where there’s a small two tier cake for 30 on display and all the remaining servings are in the back.  I don’t know anyone who owns a bakery who’s a big fan of this trend because, being completely honest, you make less money than if you sell a larger display cake with no sheet cakes.  We’re fortunate in that we have multiple income streams;  in addition to our bakery, we have two cafes and a great breakfast business at our Adams Avenue location.  So the mini-display cake trend isn’t killing us as much as some other bakeries.  Fortunately, there are a number of couples who still want that statement cake.  So we’re going to feature their cakes first!

Ok, that last photo with the very dramatic black fondant cake is a little out of focus, but unfortunately, it’s the best picture we have.   Now after discussing small display cakes, I’ve got to show a couple which are quite nice.  And all small display cakes don’t go to large weddings with sheet cakes.  We do an awful lot of 30 person weddings and, obviously, you’re getting a small, though appropriately sized, cake for a small wedding.

As you might discern from a lot of the pictures above, another trend this year is simply decorated cakes, particularly rustic and “Shabby chic” looks.  I don’t get to do near as much detailed piping work as I use to and feel I’m getting a little rusty at times.  But the wedding below wanted a more elegant, finished look that had me get out the old piping bag.  I had fun working on this cake and was happy with how it turned out:

Cupcakes are still a trend for weddings, though they do seem to be waning a bit in favor of the dessert buffet.  But here are three cupcake weddings we’ve done in the last month.  The first picture shows a particularly fun and creative set up coordinated by Abbey Catering at the Darlington House.  The others are more common cupcake “trees” — the first with an Art Deco design for a wedding with a Great Gatsby theme at the Cuvier Club in La Jolla.

Before we leave weddings, here’s a couple of groom cakes we’ve done in the last month.  The first is a recreation of the couple’s bulldog and the second a dream sports car for the groom.

While we’ve been doing a lot of weddings lately, we’re still pumping out cakes for birthdays, baby showers and other special occasions.  Here’s some random pictures of different cakes we’ve done in the last month:

Well, that’s enough for this blog post.  I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at some of the work we’ve done in the last month.  We’re pretty darn booked up for the coming month, so if you want a cake from Twiggs, you should give us as much notice as possible.  We can always take an order for a retail 8″ cake with a simple inscription.  But if you want any special décor, it’s best to plan ahead — like many weeks ahead, not 3 days ahead.

If you don’t want to wait another month for a blog post, I can now say that you can Follow Us On Instagram!   (one more plug for our instagram feed).  We’re up to 138 followers!  Woo Hoo!  Thanks for reading the blog, but mostly, thanks for supporting us and making us so successful.  I’m extremely grateful for what our business has grown into.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Lydia’s one of our cake bakers and decorators (we’re a pretty small shop — you can’t do one or the other exclusively).  I love Lydia.  She’s a great worker and really does a wonderful job for us.  But Emily, our lead designer and decorator, often gets the lion’s share of cakes that are featured on this blog since I tend to feature unusual things or things we haven’t done before.  Meanwhile Lydia’s doing yeoman’s work turning out lots of wedding cakes and birthday cakes with designs we do often, so they tend not to get featured here.  Lydia was lamenting the fact that a recent blog post didn’t feature a single cake she’d done.  Rather than call the Wambulance, I decided to start off featuring some work she’s done recently.  It’s officially summer, so here’s a couple of cakes with a real summer theme — a Summer of Love beach themed cake and a Watermelon cake for a little kid.  There’s also a baby shower cake with a moustache theme.  Despite the fact that an infant boy won’t be able to grow a moustache for 13-14 years at least, moustaches are currently en vogue for baby showers and 1st birthday cakes for little boys.

Didn’t Lydia do a great job on all of the above cakes?   I’m impressed!   EXCELLENT JOB LYDIA!!!!

Lydia also did the next cake, but from a decorating perspective, it’s not overly impressive.  It’s just putting an edible image on top of a simply frosted cake.  But the story behind the cake is what’s impressive.

Ari was born in a female body but at 3 years old asked mom why he didn’t have a penis.  His mom replied he didn’t have one because he was a girl.  “NO!” Ari screamed, “I’m a boy!”  And that kicked off a long journey for Ari’s parents and Ari to come to terms with Ari’s gender identity issues.  In the end, Ari’s parents embraced his gender identity and he recently began hormone therapy at age 14.  Obviously, if your kid one day changes from dressing / identifying in public as a girl to a boy, your friends and acquaintances and Ari’s classmates are going to notice.  So Ari’s parents decided to throw a “Boythday Party” to announce to everyone that Arielle was now going to be Ari and that they not only supported but celebrated the transition.  Ari was born with a huge challenge, for sure.  But he’s unbelievably lucky to have parents who are so supportive.  So here’s Ari’s Boythday cake.  It’s an image from Dr. Who of a Regeneration.  I’ve never seen the show, but apparently there’s a race that can regenerate themselves into different bodies and ages.  Seems appropriate.  So Happy Boythday Ari!   Best of luck!

We’re getting into the thick of wedding season now, so the wedding cake production is going full blast.  Wedding cake buffets are very much on trend now which allows for multiple flavor options for the wedding guesgts.  Here’s two cake buffets we did recently — one at Mt. Woodson out in Ramona and the second at the chic Rancho Valencia in Rancho Santa Fe.  The flowers in the first picture from Mt. Woodson were done by Dawn Steel who owns Gaslamp Florals.  She really did a great job at turning some plain jane cakes into a beautiful display.

Here are some more wedding cakes we’ve done recently, including one with a pig bride and groom topper that we made and was super cute.  You can click on any image to see a larger version.

Here’s some more cakes we’ve done in the last couple of weeks that are worthy of a moment in the sun.  The first is a KISS guitar for a fan’s birthday — note the inscription in the KISS font.  This is followed by several cakes celebrating everything from baby showers to kid’s birthdays to a nurse’s retirement.  Click on any image to see a larger version.   All of these cakes except the rocking horse were done by our lead decorator, Emily.  I don’t want Emily to feel short changed after the attention Lydia got at the beginning of the post.  Emily does an amazing job and we’re lucky to have her.

Well that’s enough for this blog post.  I need to get back to the kitchen and see what great things Lydia is working on!   Until the next post, thanks so much for reading this and thanks for supporting Twiggs.  The bakery is busy and our breakfast business in particular is just booming these days.  I’m very grateful for the support we have and the large number of loyal daily customers that come to both Twiggs.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  Until next time, smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em!

Just had a nice article on Twiggs in Southern California Homes Magazine!

Read all about us!  Referring to Twiggs as a “southern bakery for the Southern Californian” was something I came up with when I was answering their questions.  I’d never really thought of us that way, but when I was describing us, that phrase came to mind.  I like it!  We may have to start using that in our ads and propaganda!

Pictures coming in the next post!   Thanks for reading!

Okay, I’m way overdue on writing a blog post but we’ve just been super busy.  I’m working on revamping our lunch menu to make it as enticing as our breakfast menu.  We have a very strong breakfast business and there’s no reason our lunch business can’t be as strong.  So changes are on the way.  Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, our bakery has continued to be as bustling as ever.  May was our strongest month ever for cake sales and that’s a good thing.  We’ve always done a few unique cakes here and there, but the last month or so has been a few more than usual.  So I decided to make unorthodox cakes the focus of this post.  But I won’t just feature unorthodox cakes because there’s a lot of great “normal” cakes we’ve done that deserve their little day in the sun.

Elaine and Andrew are both doctoral students at UCSD and got married at the lovely Martin Johnson House.  They wanted their cake to reflect their areas of study which meant they wanted a cake covered with bacteria and neurons.  I did simplified line pipings of these and threw in some crossed swords at their request.  Honestly, I’m not sure what the significance of the crossed swords is.  I have to say I didn’t have high expectations for how this cake would look, but I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t look ridiculous.  The main thing is that it reflected what Elaine and Andrew wanted and that’s what a wedding should do.  It’s a cake that’s uniquely theirs and I doubt will be replicated any time soon.

Gelareh was one of those brides who knew exactly what she wanted and communicated very clearly what she wanted and expected.  I appreciate brides like her as sometimes it can be like reading tea leaves to figure out what a couple wants.  With brides like Gelareh, there’s no guesswork needed — but you better make sure you deliver what was expected.  Her inspiration was a cake covered with blue dragees with some silver rope along the top edge of each tier.  I looked around for blue dragees and ordered some that were way bigger than I thought and weren’t going to work at all.  So we just took some smaller white dragees and colored them with blue lustre dust.  I thought the cake came out great and definitely made a statement.  This cake was delivered to The Abbey on 5th Avenue — a venue that definitely makes it’s own statement.

Before I leave wedding cakes, I’ll show three other cakes we’ve done that really aren’t that unique; but they are pretty cakes.

Joel’s wife was turning 50 and she’s apparently a huge fan of Prince.  Joel was throwing his wife a party at the House of Blues and wanted a cake with a Prince theme, preferably a Purple Rain theme.  Emily our lead designer and decorator worked with him to come up a design that he was happy with.  It looked fantastic.  She also worked with another woman who was turning 50 who was very into bling and skulls.   The invitation to her party had a skull and crossbones, but the cross bones were a fork and spoon.  Emily based her design on the invitation and came up with another cake that looked just great.

Gender Reveal cakes have almost become commonplace for us.  Two years ago I’d never heard of the concept.  Now we do one about every two weeks or so.  This first cake was for a couple who were having a barbeque in their back yard to celebrate the pregnancy and the revealing of the gender.  Their invitation had a pig wearing a diaper and sucking on a pacifier.  They wanted to incorporate the barbeque theme into the cake, so I suggested using the pig in the diaper.  The mom loved the idea.  It definitely made for an unusual gender reveal design.  We also did a gender reveal with a cowboy theme — note the blue / pink cowboy (cowgirl?) boots.

While not particularly unusual, the following are some great baby shower cakes we’ve done recently.

As we all know, San Diego’s a real vacation destination and we do quite a few cakes for visitors to America’s Finest City.  This couple was coming to celebrate his 30th birthday and they were staying at  . . . the Lawrence Welk Resort!  I don’t think of Lawrence Welk as a vacation destination, but apparently it’s part of a timeshare group.  If you own a timeshare with this group and want to go to San Diego then Lawrence Welk is where you end up.  I have to believe there have been more than a few surprised vacationers.  Hopefully, this Crown Royal recreation was a nice surprise in a good way.

Before I close out this post, here are a few more cakes we’ve done that stand out.

Well that’s enough for this post.  Thanks for taking time to read it.  And thanks for keeping us so busy.  We all enjoy being viably employed!   Until next time.

Spring is here, which means we’re back in the wedding cake business in a big way.  Growing up in the South, groom’s cakes were a standard part of any wedding reception.  I’ve found a lot of people outside the South aren’t that familiar with them, though the Red Velvet Armadillo in Steel Magnolias did clue a lot of the rest of the country onto the concept of a groom’s cake.  Let’s face it, the standard wedding is all about the bride; the groom is an honored guest at his bride’s big day.  So the groom’s cake was invented to throw the groom a bone and have at least something that’s about him at the wedding.  Traditionally, the wedding cake is a vanilla cake with all white icing while the groom’s cake is chocolate and features something specific to the groom — his alma mater, profession, hobby or something like that.  These days the flavors for wedding and groom’s cakes are far more varied, but the tradition of the personalized groom’s cake remains.  And they’re becoming increasingly popular here in San Diego, which is about as far away from the American South you can get and stay in the continental United States.  Here’s a groom’s cake we did last week for a guy whose hobby is deep sea diving.

While we’re on the subject of weddings, we’ve been knee deep in wedding cakes already.  Of course, we do a lot of weddings for couples who either one or both are in the Navy and they often want a nautical / Naval theme to their wedding cakes.  Here are two that went out this past weekend.  The second features a bobble head topper of the couple in their dress uniforms.

Here are a few more cakes we’ve done in the last couple of weeks.  The “Circle of Dots” cake made me bleary eyed doing all those tiny dots, but the end result was quite striking if I do say so myself.  Then there’s a “pretty in pink” cake that went up to the elegant La Valencia and a small cake with black swirls and triple swiss dot that went over to a restaurant in Pt Loma.  That bride was nice enough to write a glowing review on yelp just a couple of days ago, which we appreciate immensely.

Simple, rustic, “shabby chic” is still all the rage this year.  At the extreme of simple is the so called “naked” cake, where the cake isn’t even frosted, just set out au natural for all the world to see.  The first cake is a slight variation on the naked cake.  It actually has fresh raspberries and strawberries inside that are visible.  And the cake is frosted — but it’s a whisper thin layer of buttercream which still allows the cake to be seen, but puts a thin white haze over it.  I thought it looked surprisingly good when I set it up in the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park.  This is followed by more very simple cakes — a cake with “spatula pleats” (pleats made by running a spatula around the cake after it’s frosted with buttercream) that went to Scripps Seaside Forum, an extremely traditional triple swiss dot cake that went to the Coronado Community Center and a very rustic cake with rough swipes that the couple picked up from the bakery to take to the reception.

Our lead decorator Emily just seems to get more assured with each passing month.  I’m always impressed by her work, but I was pretty blown away by a cake she did last weekend with a recreation of a Spiderman comic book cover.  When we took the top off the box containing this cake for the woman who was picking it up, her jaw dropped.    Emily also worked on a very tedious recreation of a global map for a woman who’d traveled all over the world.  The red dots on the map indicate ports where she’d visited.

Of course, we continue to pump out kid’s cakes.  Kristen sent an e-mail saying that her 5 year old daughter Elsa wanted a birthday party with an Oscar Meyer Weinermobile theme.  I was amazed that a 5 year old in 2015 even knew what the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile was.  I thought that thing had been garaged back in the 1970’s, but it’s still going around.  When I was working on the cake it occurred to me that it would be funny to form Elsa’s name out of mini-hot dogs.  The fact that she had a short name like “Elsa” rather than Esmerelda made me decide to run with it.  Following this picture are a lot more kid’s cakes we’ve done the last 2 weeks.  You can click on any smaller image to see a larger version.

Finally, here’s cake we did for a golfer’s 70th Birthday and a baby shower cake for a woman having twins.

Well that about covers the last 2 weeks.  Orders have just kicked into another gear with the arrival of spring and the advent of wedding season.  So if you want a great cake from Twiggs, be sure to give us plenty of notice.  Thanks so much for keeping us so busy.  Bernie and I were having dinner a couple of nights ago and I started reflecting on how much busier our bakery is now than it was 5 years ago.  Sometimes you just get so caught up in the daily grind, you don’t take a minute to step back and see the forest, not the trees.  It’s really amazing how consistently slammed we are these days.  So thanks for keeping us so busy.  Being slammed is a good problem to have and I’m very grateful for all the orders and great reviews.

Ok, I generally like to start these blog posts off with one of our more impressive recent efforts.  But today is Opening Day for Major League Baseball and I’m a Padres fan.  The Padres organization is 70 years old this year as is Gigi, a die-hard fan her whole life.  We recently did a birthday cake for her reflecting both her love of the Padres and their joint birthdays.

Hand written thank you notes are going the way of the dinosaur.  I can’t lament that without admitting that I can’t recall the last time I hand wrote a thank you note and mailed it to someone (somewhere up there my mother is shaking her head).  Everything’s email these days or (even worse from an etiquette point of view in my opinion), texts.  But today we got a very refreshing thank you note from a bride who was thrilled with both her wedding cake and groom’s cake in the shape of a Batmobile.   Thanks Gina and Christian for the kind note.  Emily Post is smiling from above.

I’m not sure what’s going on with Unicorns these days, but they seem to be making a comeback.  I think we’ve gone years without doing a cake with unicorn-anything on it.  But we’ve done about three in the last month or so.  Here’s a 3D unicorn I delivered up to a company up off Mira Mesa Blvd.  Honestly, I’m not sure what the significance of the unicorn was.  But it was such a huge hit, they ordered another cake the next week in the shape of an energy drink that apparently their receptionist is addicted to.

While we’re in the 3D cake arena, I think at least 75% of Cheerio sales are to parents of toddlers.  Those things seem to be a staple of the American Toddler diet.  One set of parents decided to celebrate their son’s first birthday with a recreation of his favorite snack.

In doing research for this blog post — yes I actually researched this next fact;  it took me 15 seconds to find a Wikipedia entry — I discovered that 2015 is the 150th anniversary of the first printing of Alice in Wonderland.  I wonder if Lewis Carroll had any idea his nonsensical novel would endure so long, capturing people’s imaginations a century and a half after he wrote it.  There’s even a style of cake that takes it’s name from one of the book’s characters, the Mad Hatter.  Here’s Mad Hatter cake we did recently featuring the Cheshire Cat.

Recently a guy called and wanted to have an engagement ring inside a cake to propose to his girlfriend with.  His idea was to somehow be able to open the cake up like a box and have her find the ring.  I dissuaded him from this idea as I thought finding an engagement ring covered with cake crumbs and icing that needed to be washed off wouldn’t be the best idea.  So we came up with an alternate idea with the ring box on top of the cake.  We haven’t heard back, but I hope Becky said yes.  And Becky, keep in mind we do wedding cakes!

We continue to do lots of kids cakes.  Here’s a variety of things we’ve done recently.  Click on any image to see a larger one:

Well that’s it for another post.  We’re insanely busy for this coming weekend and have actually stopped taking orders for anything other than standard 8″ and 10″ retail cakes at this point.   So if you want a great cake from Twiggs, you really need to plan ahead!   We’re heading into wedding season, so we’re just going to keep getting more and more booked up.  So thanks for reading and thanks for helping make us so busy.  Bernie and I genuinely appreciate your support!

I’ve taken a bit of a sabbatical from writing blog posts, but it’s time to get back into the swing of things.  2015 is here whether we’re ready for it or not.  We’re doing a ton of wedding cake tastings now for weddings later in the year.  Right now is the slow time for actually doing wedding cakes, but we have done a few recently.   The first cake below went out this past weekend for Gilda and Andrew’s wedding reception at the Marriott Del Mar.  They were thrilled with the cake.

I’m not sure if it’s ever actually snowed in San Diego itself.  Despite this, some winter brides want a snow themed cake even though they they’re getting married in a desert.  Here’s a pretty snowflake themed wedding cake we did back in January.

Ombre wedding cakes were really popular towards the end of last year and it looks like the trend is going to continue into 2015.  When we first started doing ombre cakes, we’d frost the cake and then air brush in the color fade.  This was pretty problematic on deliveries because if you touched the airbrushed buttercream you lifted off the color sprayed on that location.  It was pretty impossible to touch this up on site.  To the rescue came Lydia, one of our decorators.  She figured out a system of tinting the buttercream itself rather than airbrushing.  Suddenly life was far, far easier doing ombre cakes.  And before we leave weddings, same-sex weddings have become a big part of our wedding business.  I’d say 15% of the weddings we do are same-sex couples.  It’s a good thing.  Following the ombre cake below is a pretty plain cake, but the topper was so clever I decided to include it in the blog.  It’s been a long climb for a lot of same sex couples to reach the point where they can legally wed.  This topper acknowledges that in a clever way.

As I’m typing this, our main breakfast cook Jose’s wife, Anita, is in labor with their first child.  Jose is beside himself with excitement, of course.  They just had their baby shower a couple of days ago.  Here’s the cake we did for little Mila, soon to be out of the womb and on her way.

Our bread and butter outside of wedding cakes are kid’s cakes.  Here are a few cakes we’ve done for the under 16 crowd recently, including a unicorn sitting on a rainbow cake which falls into the “so campy it’s fun” category.  You can click on any of these pictures to see a larger one.

Cupcakes continue to be popular.  Here are some we’ve personalized recently for a James Bond themed 30th birthday, a poker party, a Frozen party and a Superhero party.  Click on any image to see a larger version.

I was a reluctant convert to edible image printing.  But now I wonder how we lived without it.  You really can personalize cakes without being tacky about it if you do the edible images correctly.  Below are two tiered cakes featuring photos of people’s lives — the first for a couple and the second for a 60th birthday.  These make great anniversary, birthday or bridal shower cakes featuring photos of the couples or person’s life up to that point.

Finally, I’m not an Ohio State fan and I think the standard OSU alumni reference to their alma mater as “THE Ohio State University” is a little silly.  But when their wives are willing to pay us to replicate the OSU logo for their husband’s birthday, I’m very happy to oblige.

That’s it for this long delayed blog post.  As we enter 2015, Bernie and I are entering our 18th year of owning Twiggs.  That just blows my mind.  Where does the time go?  Thanks to yelp reviews and an improving economy, we’re getting more inquires about our cakes than ever these days.  I’m very grateful for the interest, the kind reviews and all the orders.  We’ve made it 18 years and hopefully we’ll be around for a lot more.   Thanks!

Wedding season is winding down and the holidays are about to gear up.  In this little lull between the two, we’ve been keeping ourselves busy with lots of baby shower cakes along with the usual production of kid’s cakes.  So I figured I’d start this post featuring a few of those cakes we’ve done recently.   First up are some very cute baby shower cakes.  First up is a cake featuring Peter Rabbit for a couple who didn’t know if they were having a boy or a girl and had decorated the new baby’s room with a Peter Rabbit and garden theme.  The husband wanted to surprise his wife with a Peter Rabbit cake when the baby arrived.  So we made the cake and had two scrolls — one if it was a boy and another for the girl.  I took a picture of the cake with the boy’s banner, but I really don’t know which they had.  So if you’re out there reading and know, give us a call!  After that are more baby shower cakes featuring  baby bottoms, teddy bears, whales, sailboats and wild animals.  Click on any of the smaller images to see an enlarged picture.

Now to our bread and butter — kid’s cakes!!   We’re getting pretty proficient at these 3D Minion cakes.  We seem to be doing one every 2-3 weeks.  Then there’s a super cute Owl cake for a one year old and a cake for a 5 year old obsessed with street signs.  The mom reported back that Vincent loved the cake so much he didn’t want anyone to cut into it.

Continuing with kid’s cakes, here’s some more single tier cakes we did.  Click on any image to see a larger one.

Here’s a fun cake we did for a guy who loves to bowl:

Finally, no blog post would be complete without a few wedding cakes.  First up is a sort of spiderweb inspired design which is quite popular now.  Next is a very simple cake — just plain iced sides — but it shows how much fresh flowers can transform a cake.  The mums and orchids we had to work with to create the cascade were in perfect condition, making for a pretty stunning cake for this couple who got married at La Valencia up in La Jolla.  Finally, there’s a pretty stunning cake (if I do say so myself — and I do), that went up to Grand Traditions in Fallbrook.

Well, that’s it for another blog post.  Next week is Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday of the year!  We have the usual pumpkin and apple pies and our biggest seller — the chocolate pecan pie.  We’ll have extras for sale on Wednesday and Thursday (We’re open until noon on Thanksgiving day).  But it’s best to order ahead of time to be sure we have what you want.  The holidays are here!  Yippee!!   Thanks for reading the blog and thanks for all the orders!

I’m woefully behind on blog posts, but it’s been a very busy (and HOT) end of summer.  I could have easily done a full blog post with pictures of cakes from each week, if I’d set aside some time to do that.  But you get caught up in the day to day bustle of each week’s production and before you know it, it’s been 6 weeks since you made your last post.  So I’ll just feature some highlights.  I’ll start off with some very lucky kids who got some pretty extravagant birthday cakes.  First is a Care Bear Castle that’s just too cute for it’s own good for a little girl and then a Superhero tiered cake for a little guy.  Then there’s a baseball themed cake for the son of one of the Padre’s relief pitchers and a Pirate’s Treasure Chest for a little girl.  Frozen continues to be incredibly popular — even in the withering heat of this past September (or perhaps because of it).  Who wouldn’t want an Elsa around to cool everything down when it’s 98 degrees?  We did a single tier cake with Elsa and Anna on top, made and drawn by hand!  All these cakes feature décor items that we did by hand, which, of course, makes cakes a bit more pricey.  The last kid’s cakes is a tiered cake with edible images which help keep the cost down a bit.  But you can compare the hand drawn Elsa in the single cake to the edible image of Elsa on the tiered cake to see the difference.

If you’re like me, you’re sick of being informed that someone you knew from high school “saved a life” in Candy Crush Saga.  Perhaps if I ever played the game, I might be more grateful to that heroic virtual act.  But I’ll keep my opinions of Candy Crush Saga to myself when someone pays us to make Candy Crush Saga cake!  And while we’re on the candy theme, here’s a tiered cake that’s covered with candy — literally.  It was quite the production getting all the candies to stick to the bottom tier of the cake, but it just looked fantastic.  Finally, in the candy theme (sort of), I’ll also show a Hot Fudge Sundae cake we did with a Neopolitan Ice Cream theme.

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I just don’t get having a Day of the Dead theme for your wedding.  It just seems a little macabre to me, but then I didn’t grow up in a culture that really incorporates that.  Of all the Day of the Dead wedding cakes we’ve done, however, the next one is by far my favorite.  It actually looks sort of elegant, which I’d never really seen before with a Day of the Dead theme.  It made me think that having a wedding cake with skulls all over it might not be such a bad thing after all.

And while we’re in the wedding cakes with Mexican themes, one of our former night bakers got married recently and got three cakes from us.  Ian is one of my all time favorite former employees.  He has such a wonderful, upbeat spirit about him with a very quick sense of humor.  He was great to have in the bakery as he really buoyed everyone’s spirits and kept everyone in a good mood.  I was sorry to see him move on, but that’s life in the food business.  I was happy we had him as long as we did.  For his main wedding cake, he got a three tier cake with large Mexican party flags all around.  Then he got a cake in the shape of an apple pie and another in the shape of a ham bone ready to be carved.  Ian was nothing if not unique.  My best wishes to Ian and Sarah for a long and successful marriage!  You can click on any of these images to see a larger version.

In a much more traditional vein, here’s a beautiful cake with ombre rosettes on the bottom that went to Old Venice in Point Loma.  They have a pleasant patio in the back which is a nice place for a low-key out door wedding if you’re in the market for such a venue.  One of the most popular designs we do is a cake with buttercream piped in horizontal pleats.  The next cake is the first we’ve done like this with chocolate buttercream rather than vanilla.  And then there’s a variation on this pattern where the pleats are piped in a wavy pattern rather than straight.  Again, click on any image to see a larger version.

Finally I’ll close with a 3D helicopter we did for a Navy Helicopter pilot who was retiring.  The emblems on the side of the cake show all the different divisions (if that’s the right word) of the Navy that he flew for during his career.  His wife was thrilled with the cake when she picked it up.

Well, that finishes off another blog post.  Thanks for keeping us so busy.  I’m grateful for all the orders we have.  And remember, if you want us to make you a fantastic cake like one of the above, be sure to contact us several weeks in advance of when you want the cake.  We book up 2-3 weeks in advance these days.  Thanks for reading!