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Sunday Sweets: Tour De Force, Pt 1

John and I are having a fantastic time meeting so many of you on the "world" tour, and we're also having lots of fun seeing what the fabulous bakers who volunteered their services at each event are bringing to feed you guys. We'll be posting more pics of those cakes as the tour progresses, but for today I thought it'd be fun to troll through these bakers' sites and show you some of my favorites.

First we have Johnnie of Something Sweet Cake Studio. I've already posted the great Wreck Tribute cake she made for Orlando, so here are a few of my favs from her site:

This is competing with the Darth Vader cake to be my all-time favorite baby shower cake. C'mon, a snorkeling/scuba-diving baby? What's not to love here?

And on the more elegant side:

Gorgeous flowers, and I like how Johnnie hand paints so many of her cakes.

For Portland we had three separate people/bakeries providing goodies: Sadie Damon and her pastry class students from Western Culinary Institute, Jessica Hill of Black Sheep Bakery (who provided a yummy chocolate vegan cake), and Angel & Robin of The Dessert Tray. Since Angel & Robin are the only ones with a site for me to lurk on, here's one of their oh-so-lovely designs:

Note how they were able to make cherry blossom branches withOUT making them look like poo logs. See? It CAN be done!

For last night's event in Seattle, we had Paul of Jet City Cakes and Matt of Starry Nights Catering collaborate on a cake project that will absolutely knock your socks off when you see it. But that will be another post, so you'll have to stay tuned. [evil snicker]

Paul and his wife Liz specialize in sculpted cakes, like so:

(Look at the detail on the screen! Suh-weet!)
And so:

(Why yes, that IS an Alien wedding cake. Why do you ask?)

Matt and his wife Denise (and helper Heather), however, specialize in more traditional designs:


Those are hand-painted chocolate shells. Gorgeous.

Like I said, stay tuned for lots more pics of the "World" tour events. John and I are scrambling to get our photos in order and post-able while traveling like mad every day, so just bear with us a little bit longer.

Thanks again to all of today's bakers. You guys have made each stop so much sweeter (pun intended) and it's been fantastic meeting you all!

- Similar Sweets: Cake Nouveau