Many, many cakes

Where has the year gone!!

2011-06-28T15:57:00.000-04:00

WOW! Can you believe that it is already almost July!! We sure cant believe it ourselves. As always the time tends to get away from us as we are busy with wedding cakes, graduation cakes and all the other busy day to day things we do here. However one very special thing we recently were able to take part was to create a birthday cake for a girl named Alyssa.

As you know Sweet Cakes Design will do just about anything for kids! We love working with the wonderful people at the Make-a-Wish foundation along with our new favorite organization "Icing Smiles".

SC Design had the privilege of creating a one of kind cake for Alyssa who celebrated her 15th birthday in May. She is a huge New York Mets fan and LOVES Derek Jeter. For more about Alyssa check out Icing Smiles Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/icingsmiles.

To find out more about Icing Smiles, please view the video and/or check out the website at:www.icingsmiles.org and you will see why we are so happy to be able to put a "smile" on these beautiful children! We were so glad to be a part of this organization and hope to work with them again in the future!

Sheetcake Comparison

2011-06-16T17:30:00.000-04:00

Cake Comparison

After hearing some different thoughts on the differences between our cakes and a typical grocery store cake, we decided to do a cake comparison. We do sometimes have people call to inquire about our cake prices, only to find that it is more expensive than they have budgeted for. By doing this comparison, we wanted to show exactly why it is that our prices are what they are. Besides using the best, fresh ingredients, we also want you to see the difference in the quality of the decorating. We hope you enjoy what we found and can have a better understanding of what really goes into our cakes; both ingredients and time!

Generic grocery store cake:

This is taken directly from the label off of a grocery store cake.

Ingredients:

Sugar, enriched wheat flour, bleached (flour, niacin, redacted iron, thiamemononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid) partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening (soybean and/or cotton seed and /or palm kernel oil) water, whole eggs, high fructose corn syrup, nonfat milk, milk (vitamin D3) cornstarch, invert sugar, leavening (sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) sodium aluminum phosphate, aluminum sulfate, monocalcium phosphate, tetrosodium, pyrophosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate) mono and triglycerides with bht and citric acid, dextrose, modified food starch, propylene glycerin mono and diesters, whey, corn flower, salt, soy lecithin, polysorbate 60, sodium casein ate (milk- not a source of lactose) carbohydrate gum, caramel color, natural and artificial flavors, wheat gluten, sodium stearoylactylate, calcium sulfate, xanthan gum, soy protein concentrate, cellulose gum, guar gum, cellulose gel, carrageen an, poylyglycerol, fatty acids, potassium sorbate, ascorbic acid, sorban monostearate, iricalcium phosphate, calcium, propanate, sodium propionate, caciumagetate, wheat starch, beta carotene as color, blue 2, yellow5, yellow 6, red 40, titanium dioxide (as color) rice flour confectioners glaze, titanium dioxide, gum Arabic, gum tragaganth, sorbitol, vegetable oil, malic acid, carnauba wax.

This product was manufactured on production lines that also produce items which may contain nut ingredients.

This included the ingredients in the cake, and the frosting; no filling... This cake was the same size as what Sweet Cakes Design sells as a small ½ sheet which is approximately 30-35 2” by 2” servings. This grocery store cake was the same size in length and width as ours, but significantly shorter than our cakes. The store price was $20.48 and according to the label description it weighed in at 6 pounds 10 ounces. Sweet Cakes Design’s cake of the same size weighs roughly 7 pounds 8 ounces! What a difference. Also if you were counting that is a total of 78 ingredients!!! Now lets compare to a Sweet Cakes sheetcake!

Cake Ingredients:

Granulated sugar, cake flour, white chocolate, heavy cream, unsalted butter, eggs, milk (vitamin D3), baking powder, vanilla, salt

Italian Meringue Buttercream Ingredients:

Unsalted Butter, sugar, egg whites, water, vanilla and cream of tartar

American Buttercream Ingredients: (sweeter buttercream)

Powdered sugar, butter, cream, vanilla, salt

As you can see, we do not bake with any preservatives; we do our best to use all natural, local ingredients when in season. In comparison, the Sweet Cakes sheetcake is not only almost a whole pound heavier, but the cake only has 10 ingredients, Italian has 6 ingredients and American has 5 ingredients.

We also apologize, as wedding season is upon us, we have been extremely busy and have not been able to update as often! We will also be adding some new pictures here as well as facebook!!! Thanks for hanging in there! Remember also if you have any thoughts on any of our post please comment to us on here or on our facebook page!!!!

Tim & Heather's March5, 2011 Wedding

2011-03-21T12:32:00.000-04:00

On a cold, snowy Saturday we had the pleasure of creating a tropical wedding cake for Tim & Heather. They had a destination wedding several weeks before and wanted to bring that warm feeling back for their reception! Lori from DaVinci Photography sent these pictures for your review. Nice work The cake was a combination of tropical flavors, including strawberry mousse filling for one tier, citrus delight cake for another tier, as well as the delicious Tropical Pineapple Coconut cake; which consists of our moist White Chocolate cake paired with coconut cream cheese and pineapple Buttercream fillings! Yummy! The perfect beach cake was even topped off with custom made, white fondant Adirondack chairs! Congratulations Tim and Heather, I think this beach cake made everyone feel like they were on a warm sunny beach somewhere!!!

A Very Special Birthday!!

2011-03-11T16:16:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday Haley!!! This was a surprise birthday cake for Haley, who just turned thirteen! Her mom came in to order the cake for her, as she is a HUGE Cake Boss fan. All of her friends and family surprised her last weekend with a birthday party at Peppino's! We were so excited to hear from Haley and her mom how much she loved the cake!!! Thanks Haley and hope it was the best birthday ever!!!

Perfect Gift for New Mom's

2011-02-23T16:44:00.000-05:00

Gift idea for new moms! SCD does great cookies for $18 a dozen, beautifully boxed with a blue or pink ribbon. Perfect for sharing or keeping all to yourself. Chose from the following cookies:
Chocolate Chip, amaretto chocolate chip, white chocolate cherry macadamia, peanut butter, lemon poppyseed, chocolate malt, orange coconut, oatmeal raisin, lemon coconut, cashew caramel, chocolate orange shortbread, coconut macaroons, oatmeal chocolate walnut, chocolate crinkles, snicker-doodles, and decorated sugar , just to name a few :)

Don't Forget, Only One Week til Valentines Day!

2011-02-07T17:29:00.000-05:00

With Valentine's Day just around the corner Sweet Cakes has come up with some delicious, irresistible treats for you to enjoy this year. Not only do they taste good but they look amazing thanks to photographer Mindy Larva, of Grand Rapids. Here is a list of the treats we will be offering as our Valentines Specials this year, along with the cost. Remember, Valentine's Day is NEXT Monday!!!, so get your orders in soon! We will be taking orders for the specials that can be picked up any day this week and weekend, as well as next Monday. This way no matter when you will be celebrating the day, you can enjoy some of our sweet treats! Don't forget too that our Valentine's specials are not just for that special someone in your life, they are great to surprise your friends, co-workers and your kids! Call today to place your order before time runs out, you only have a week!

Each of these items will be boxed and tied with a bow

1 Large Cookie Boxed…………$4.50

1 dz. Heart Cookies, in black & white polka dot box………$15.00

½ dz. Stacked chocolate cookie w/ peanut butter cream cheese filling…$3.75

4 mini cupcakes, boxed w/ribbon…………$4.50

1 of each following flavor:

White Chocolate cake with Pink Champagne Buttercream

Chocolate Fudge cake with Whipped Ganache Icing

Macadamia Nut cake with Tangerine Cream Icing

Tiramisu cake with coffee liqueur syrup and Mascarpone Icing

1 dz. Conversation Heart Cookies, bagged w/ribbon…………..$10.00

2 His & Her Mini Cakes, boxed w/ribbon………….$10.00

His- Chocolate Cake covered in chocolate ganache

Her-White Chocolate Cake with Raspberry filling

4 Assorted Cake Balls, boxed w/ribbon…………..$8.50

Straight From The Heart at The B.O.B

2011-02-07T15:59:00.000-05:00

Sweet Cakes Design will be taking part in an event this coming Friday, February 11, 2011 at The B.O.B. The event is going to be themed around chocolates and everything sweet! The event is $10 at the door on the night of the event, with proceeds going to the Heart Association. Everything with be heart themed, perfect in time for Valentines Day! Come check us out this Friday and treat yourself to dessert from us, as well as hair and make up services and cosmo drink specials! We hope to see you there and help raise money for the cause!

Straight From The Heart
7pm - February 11 at The B.O.B.
Presented by Spotlight 616 | Red Attire Highly Suggested
A Night of Indulgence and Pampering Including:
+Sweet Treats

from Sweet Cakes Design, Dorothy

and Toto's Kettle Corn, Vita Dolce

Chocolates and more
+ Hair and Makeup Services
courtesy of Design 1 Salon Spa
+ Valentine's Day Fashions
from Lee and Birch, Bohemia Too,
Stella and Dot, JB and Me
+ Cosmo And Red Wine Sampling
+ Floral Arrangements
from Modern Day Floral
+ Soundscape
DJ Todd Ernst and DJ Steve Swift

Alfred Angelo Opening a Success!

2011-02-07T15:12:00.000-05:00

We are so excited to say that the Grand Opening of the Alfred Angelo Bridal Boutique was a huge success to say the least. We loved the fact that we were invited to take part in this event. Along with meeting many new brides n need of a cake, we were also able to provide our services to some of the staff as well! As always, we had a few of our delicious min cupcakes for samples and they went fast. We look forward to working with the wonderful staff at Alfred Angelo's in any other upcoming events or weddings. Here is a picture of our beautiful display cake, as well as some of our mini cupcakes. We featured our chocolate raspberry cupcake, lemon zest cake with french vanilla buttercream, apple strudel cupcake and our traditional white chocolate with pineapple buttercream and toasted coconut. Yum! The photographs are courtesy of Jenny Jacobs with HGW photography in Grand Rapids. For more information abou her services or to see some of her amazing photography check out her link on the side of our blog site.

Grand Opening of Alfred Angelo Bridal Boutique

2011-01-11T11:02:00.001-05:00

Sweet Cakes Design has been chosen to be a preferred vendor at the Grand Opening of Alfred Angelo Bridal Boutique. Come see us this Saturday from 9:00-5:00, and Sunday from 12:00-5:00 and receive a complimentary sample.

Alfred Angelo
3763 28th Street SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49512

www.alfredangelo.com

InFrame Bride Give Away

2011-01-05T16:25:00.001-05:00

Sweet Cakes is taking part in a Give Away with In frame Bride magazine. We have donated a $75 gift certificate to them to give away. Check out the link below to find out details how to win, and also check out the In Frame Bride Website.
http://www.inframebride.com/blog/2011/01/04/win-75-towards-sweet-cakes-design-january-giveaway/

Its the end of October!!! Wow!

2010-10-22T17:03:00.000-04:00

We cant believe that we are almost through the month of October! But you know what that means......? HALLOWEEN!!! And..... Halloween cookies!!! This year we have decided to do something special! We will be giving away Halloween treats to ANYONE who stops in with a costume on! We are also hoping to get pictures of some of you in your costumes to post on the blog! So come out and get a free treat, but remember to wear your costume! On top of that we will be posting the pictures on facebook, then letting YOU choose the best costume. A 6" round cake of your choice will go to our fans pick of the best costume! (a $25 value!)

We would also like to thank all of you who came out to join us for the launch of our new cake balls!!! We hope you all enjoyed them as much as we did! Although we don't officially have them on our brochure yet they are always up for sale! Just remember, they do come as assorted dozens based on the bakers choice. Only specifics we are accepting at this time is if you have someone with a nut allergy, they can be prepared nut free.

Along with all of the other fun stuff we have had going on we have been working hard too! Wedding season is coming to a close and it seems like just yesterday we were saying we couldn't wait for it to start. We will have more time to work on fun new things that we have up our sleeves for next year. Can you believe it will be 2011!!! Wow! So keep an eye out on here and facebook for anything new! Here are some pictures of cakes that we have been working on the past few weeks! Hope you enjoy and remember, we love your feedback so leave us comments! Thanks!

They really wanted this girl to know she was turning the big 3-0! So fun with all the little numbers on each tier

We could use some of that sunshine now! Cant believe fall is already here! Happy hula birthday!

This was for a guy's birthday who is into architecture, very modern and interesting!

For a very special first birthday! The cake was almost as cute as the little girl in her birthday dress!

Lady bugs and flowers! Such a cute cake! Good job Rachel!

Here is the monster of a cake that was designed for Grand Valley's 50th anniversary Homecoming weekend! The whole event was based around the theme of Willy Wonka! So much fun! And here are the pictures

Cake Balls Are Here!!!!!

2010-09-28T17:31:00.000-04:00

One of the newest trends in the world of cakes are cake balls! We have begun to see them popping up all over and recently were lucky enough to sample some from a bakery in Chicago, IL. They were so good and irrisistable it prompted us to begin making them ourselves. After several taste testings (darn, :) yummy) we have perfected the consistancy and flavor of cake balls!!! We are so excited to now be offering assorted cake balls that we are doing something we have never done before!!! Giving them away.... FOR FREE!!! Yup you heard it right, free cake balls! This coming Friday and Saturday, Oct 1 and 2 we will be giving away one dozen! astd. cake balls to each of the first 25 people to walk through the doors!!!! Thats 50 dozen free cake balls!!! Who can resist???!! The only thing we ask is one free dozen per person, and leave us some feedback either on our facebook or comment on here to let us know what you think about them!!! Hope to see you all soon! And remember we open at 9:00 both days so get here early!

Some of our Cake Ball Flavors include:
Chocolate Peanut Butter
Peanut Butter and Jelly
Chocolate Caramel
Citrus
Coconut Carrot
and many more amazing flavors to come!!!

Things Keep Getting Better and Better!

2010-09-21T16:07:00.000-04:00

We recently were able to do a small replica cake for one of our bride and grooms from last year. We were very excited to do this cake as they were also one of our featured weddings in Grand Rapids Bride magazine! Here is the cute couple with their cake, as well as the pictures of their original wedding cake. Pictures were provided by their photographer, Phrene-Exquisite Photography. http://www.phrene.com/

We also have had several beautiful other wedding cakes that we would like to get out there. Thanks to all of our wonderful brides, and grooms for allowing us to make your special day even better with a beautiful wedding cake!

Just to show a few! We will be adding more pictures as the week goes on! Also watch for the pictures of our cake we are doing for the opening ceremonies of Art Prize, that will be featured downtown tomorrow, (Wednesday 9/22) at "the Hub" the new gathering place for all things Art Prize!

Amazing Crazy Cakes

2010-09-01T14:35:00.000-04:00

Wow! There is so much to catch up on! We have had so many cool cakes the past few weeks and have so many photos to share! First off, without further delay I have the photos from our cake for the 105.3 HOT FM First Annual Bridesmaids Ball. Keeping with the theme of the fact that the groom was going to leave the bride at the altar...... He is running down the side of the cake trying his best to get outta town!! Which in turn leaves a not so happy bride at the top trying to throw her bouquet at the groom.

Overall the event went fabulously and we can not wait for next years event!!! Thanks to everyone who came out to the event, as well as the people who helped make it happen!

Here are some photos of the other cakes that we have done in the past few weeks, that we know your just dying to see!!! Hope you enjoy, and remember when you look at our postings on here you can comment on them just as you could on our facebook! Click on the "comment" icon below the post and leave some feedback! We love to hear what you think of our cakes!

These baby blocks were done by one of our designers, Rachel, for her nieces! The blocks turned out almost as cute as the girls!!

Matching dinosaur cakes! These two brothers had birthdays just a few days apart! So of course, celebrate together with matching Cakes!!!

This was for the beach loving birthday girl, Abigail! She and her friends are lounging by the water playing beach volleyball!!! So fun!

This was for one of our regulars, it was her daughters first birthday and they were having a carnival themed party! There were three seperate cakes, the one to show all the fun things to do at a carnival, one with a roller coaster and one to look like a carousel. Then there were these ADORABLE cupcakes that she placed on top of each round cake! Some were make to look like ice cream scoops, some to look like sno cones and my personal favorite! POPCORN!

Tea time! What a sweet way to celebrate a little girls birthday! One large teapot cake to serve the adults, and on individual "teacup" cupcake for each little girl!

Now for some of our beautiful wedding cakes we love making!!! Thanks to all of our beautiful brides for allowing us to make your day special with a wonderful cake!

Small cake for cutting and individual cupcakes for each guest! This has become very popular with the growing trend of cupcakes.

We were so excited for this cake as it was the first to be held at the John Ball Zoo!!! Covered in animal print, the women at the wedding were also encouraged to wear animal print dresses So fun! The ceremony was held across from the penguins, with dinner and drinks served on the boardwalk near the lions. The zoo staff even walked around with animals for the guests to pet and play with. Hopefully this is just one of many fun weddings we will be able to be a part of at the zoo.

We hope you enjoyed all of the photos for today! Keep an eye out for many more to come later in the week!!!

Busy, Busy and Even More Busy!

2010-08-16T18:59:00.000-04:00

Wow! The last few weeks have been so crazy for us at Sweet Cakes! On top of all of the weddings we are working on and awesome special event cakes we participated in the first annual 105.3 HOT FM Bridesmaid's Ball at the JW Marriot. Everything went off with a hitch, unless you consider the groom walking out on the bride a hitch lol. The Dog Story Theatre put on a fake wedding in which that groom has several of his EX-Girlfriends standing behind him. Which of course caused problems, and the groom ended up walking out. However there was still a party and the reception went until all hours of the night. Our cake mimicked the fact that we knew he would be running off leaving the bride at the alter. We will be posting pictures of it soon, but as we all are cake decorators and NOT photographers we didnt get great pictues that would do the cake justice. On top of having a great display all of the tiers were different new flavors we are now offering.
      *Banana Split Cake- 1/2 Banana Almond cake, 1/2 white chocolate cake with french vanilla
        buttercream filling, chopped nuts, fresh sliced strawberries, chocolate buttercream and chocolate
        ganache

     *Chocolate Fudge cake with Orange Grand Marnier buttercream and fresh orange curd

     *White Chocolate cake with Blackberry fresh fruit and vanilla cream cheese, my new personal favorite!

     * Death by Chocolate- chocolate fudge cake with chocolate malt buttercream and chocolate ganache

     * Lemon cake with lemon creme filling and fresh lemon curd

If you have any other interesting flavor combinations that you would like to try for your next cake let us know, we are always looking for new flavors!

Keep an eye out for new photos that we will be updating later this week!

Bridesmaid Ball

2010-07-23T09:17:00.002-04:00

Sweet Cakes Design will be part of an upcoming event hosted by the local radio station, 105.3 HOT FM! The event is going to be Friday August 13, at 7:00 PM. It will be an evening of fun and games. They will begin the night with a "wedding gone wrong" hosted by the Dog Story Theatre with radio DJ Ellen Tailor as the Maid of Honor, and DJ Gravy as the Best Man. It is a free event, however you have to have a ticket to the event and it is a 21+ event. Sweet Cakes Design will be making a REAL wedding cake, that will be a part of the reception area at the "wedding". We will be cutting and serving the actual cake, so for those of you who have never seen our cakes before this will be a chance to see them. It will be a full size wedding cake, with multiple tiers and a top secret design that will incorporate the theme of the wedding! Check out their website for more details, and tune in to 105.3 HOT FM radio station and listen to hear our name.

Babies, Birthday's and Graduations

2010-07-13T17:01:00.000-04:00

Along with many wedding cakes we do each weekend we have been doing so many specialty cakes for other events! Also as you may have noticed we are still working on getting our website back up and running properly, keep checking it for new photos daily! Here are a few photos of some of the awesome cakes we have been doing!!!

This was for a first birthday, with a lolipop theme. So much fun!

We loved the story behind this one. It was for an new mother to be who was having a scheduled birth and they wanted to celebrate with a cake!

Monkey See Monkey Do! This was our intern, Angela's very first 3-D fondant character!

One of our photographer friends, Jen Kroll had a cake made for her son Ethan's Birthday. He is a HUGE fan of the Harry Potter Lego game for his WII, if you couldnt guess

This was a cake for a boy graduating from high school who was going to college to be a biochemist!!! Thus the microscope cake and the scientific writing. Hope he understands what it means, we sure didnt!!!

Website Under Construction!!!

2010-06-29T17:10:00.000-04:00

In the process of trying to update to newer photos on our website we seem to have lost everything!! Yikes. So if you are wanting to look at the site, hang in there we are doing the best we can to quickly fix this problem. We know you are just dying to see some new pictures of our cakes we have been working on so we will be updating and fixing this as soon as possible!!!

On a happier note, if you have not yet added us as a friend on Facebook join soon! We are going to be having tons of fun giveaways this summer and have recently posted our first one! Starting July 1st and running until July 31st we are having a "Refer A Friend" event. We will be offering a 25% off gift certificate to each client that refers a first time friend to place an order with us. Only exceptions are on wedding cakes as we are almost completely booked for the year. Only one certificate per client :)

Along with many many wedding cakes that we have been doing, we have had the opportunity to do quite a few fun kids birthday cakes. Here are a few to share with you:

This top picture was for a little girls birthday who wants to be an astronaut!!!

A fun scooby doo cake!!!

One fish, two fish. Red fish, blue fish. Cat in the Hat birthday celebrations!!!

One of our favorite cakes!!! Alice in Wonderland. We tied in all of the elements of the movie, and even put a little fondant figure of Alice sticking out of the rabbit hole!!! It even had a tea party set on top! So cute!

The one on the right was a fun sweet 16 party, and the cake on the left was for a baby shower that we decorated to match the sheets that the new mother to be had picked for the nursery.

New Things To Come!

2010-06-16T23:33:00.004-04:00

As many of you know we are back into the swing of things with our wedding season starting up! We are working on getting cake pictures updated on here as well as on our Facebook! Look for more posts to come with lots of pictures of what we have been up to! Follow us on our facebook and read about the people behind the cakes! We are going to be introducing each of the members of the Sweet Cakes Design team over the next few weeks on our Facebook. This week we are going to be featuring Sweet Cakes Design's very FIRST intern, Angela! Also keep an eye out on there for some interesting contests and give-aways that we will be having this summer!

Here is a sneak peak at one of our new cakes that we did recently for a lucky young lady's sweet 16!!!

Exclusively @ Leigh's

2010-03-30T12:21:00.005-04:00

Leigh's in Breton Village kicked off a pre-spring break party last weekend by show casing the opening of their Lilly Pulitzer shop. Love the bright colors and patterns! Refreshments were served along with mini cupcakes created by SCD.

Be sure you add a shopping trip to Leighs on your "to-do" list and check out their amazing Spring & Summer fashions..or check out their website at www.leighsfashions.com!

2009 Wedding Cakes

2010-03-24T08:31:00.007-04:00

We love it when some of our couples or their photographers send us their photos of the cakes we created for them. I will be the first to admit that I am not a photographer...I leave that up to the experts!

Here a couple of pictures that were sent to us within the past couple of weeks.....Thank You!

January 9, 2010

Dawn & Nate

Thank You to Paul Retherford @ www.PaulRetherford.com

for providing these great pictures.....great job Paul!

This wintry cake design really complimented Dawn & Nate's vision of a winter wonderland theme.

A nice variety of cakes were served to their guests.....1/2 chocolate fudge& 1/2 white chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling, French vanilla cake with Bavarian cream & french vanilla filling and raspberry swirl cake with raspberry butter cream filling.

Dawn also surprised Nate with a tree stump grooms cake which was our Cookies and Cream cake with French vanilla butter cream and crushed oreos...mmmmmmmm!

Too Cute!

October 17, 2009

Noddea & Calin

What a fun couple! They are both very talented actors and are very involved with the Civic and Circle theater and wanted a cake designed to reflect their love of theater, jazz and New York City! Well, I believe we fit the bill.........check it out. Thank you to Noddea for providing us these pictures!!

They had replicas of themselves made for the cake top....aren't they cute!

The three tiered cake consisted of carrot cake with vanilla cream cheese filling, buttermilk spice cake with caramelized Apples and caramel butter cream and almond cake with pear ginger butter cream filling.

2010-03-02T16:29:00.007-05:00

Bridesmaid Cake

This sweetheart cake was created for Jenna Rose of www.jennarosephotography.blogspot.com. She needed a cake for a photo shoot project, and requested lime green and pink colors and stated that she loved plumeria's. We were happy to accommodate and loved the way it turned out. Check out Jenna's work...she's amazing!

Here are a couple of "milestone" birthday celebration cakes we created these past couple of weeks for two special guys! We love it when our clients give us an idea of what they're looking for and let us run with it!

Eric is a big fan of Founders, so his wife surprised him with a large beer mug cake. Oh course we had to add some peanuts and pretzels! This cake was a German chocolate cake filled with milk chocolate buttercream and coconut pecan filling. Delicious!

Love, love this cake! This was for a 40th birthday bash that our friend Diana Racek of www.mimosa.me requested we create for a client of hers. It was made with our fabulous carrot cake with vanilla cream cheese filling. Yum!

Be sure to check out Diana's web site to see more pictures of this special event.

Great job Diana!

2010-02-23T14:00:00.002-05:00

THANK YOU!

A big Thank You to all of you who purchased Valentines Day cookies! Because of you, SC Design was able to send $55.00 to the American Red Cross earmarked for Haiti Relief. We appreciate all of you!

It' not just another bridal show!!!

Please Join Us

The Wedding Experience

Sunday, March 7th

12:00 - 5:00 pm

Amway Grand Plaza

Be sure to mark your calenders to attend this very special bridal event!

SC Design will be there showcasing some new cake designs. Be sure to stop and see us to pick up a "bit of deliciousness"!!

We hope to see you there!

Bride's Choice Awards 2010

2010-02-05T09:23:00.002-05:00

WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced Sweet Cakes Design has been selected to receive the WeddingWire 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards™ for Sweet Cakes Design

The annual Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and celebrates excellence in quality and service within the wedding industry, as determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 500,000 newlyweds.

Sweet Cakes Design is among the top five percent of all vendors in the WeddingWire community, which includes over 100,000 wedding professionals across the US and Canada. Awards were given to winners across 19 different service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers.

We are happy to announce that Sweet Cakes Design is among the very best Sweet Cakes Design within the WeddingWire Network. We would like to thank our past newlyweds for nominating us for the 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards. Thank you!

Have a Heart for Haiti

2010-01-29T09:10:00.003-05:00

For every Valentines Day cookie order sold between now and Febuary 14th Sweet Cakes Design will contribute 10% of total sale to the American Red Cross for aid to Haiti. Spread a little love this Valentines Day season with sweets for friends, family and neighboors and be able to help those in need in Haiti.

Valentines Day Treats

2010-01-22T09:40:00.008-05:00

Valentines Day is right around the corner and now is the time to place your order for Sweet Cakes Designs annual Valentines Day Treat Special! The girls have been busy baking and designing new sweets for you and your loved ones and let me be the first to tell you, these packaged goodies are the perfect touch for any sweet tooth.

Call us to place your order for your special someone today!

616-447-9094

5" Chocolate cake with strawberry butter cream filling covered in ganache: $12.00

5" White chocolate cake filled with raspberry buttercream and iced smooth: $10.00

Bag of mini sugar cookie hearts, iced and decorated: $3.50

Assorted medium and small heart sugar cookies, iced and decorated, packaged in festive box with a ribbon (shown on the left) $4.00

Large heart sugar cookie iced and decorated with box and ribbon (show on right) $4.00

Box of two chocolate covered cherries and two chocolate cordial (shown in middle) $4.00

These goodies make wonderful treats for friends, family, classmates, loved ones, coaches or even a secret admirer! Spread a little sweetness this Valentines Day!

We're Back!

2010-01-07T19:51:00.010-05:00

Phew, what a busy holiday season! We hope everyone is having a great New Year and hopefully no one is avoiding cake as part of a New Years Resolution. :) Here is just a tiny sample of the cakes and treat the Sweet Cakes Design Team created over the past few weeks. Enjoy!

How CUTE are these little guys!?

Wouldn't you just love a slice of this baby shower cake or maybe one of the matching mini cupcakes?

Who doesn't love a 90th Birthday cow themed cake

Isabella's sweet two tiered birthday cake for her 2nd birthday

This cake was favorite with the girls at SCD

Keep up with the New Years Resolutions and remember; a little Eye-Candy never hurt anyone ;)

Holiday Sweet Tooth

2009-11-30T12:56:00.009-05:00

I hope everyone had a very happy holiday weekend and everyone got there fair share of turkey and Sweet Cake Design sweets and treats. What's that you say? You missed out on Sweet Cakes fabulous holiday treat!? Well don't worry, you still have time to place your order for your upcoming party, treat to bring into the office or ever-so thoughtful Christmas present. We would be happy to wrap or box your treats and add a festive ribbon!

Sweet Cakes Design offers a wide variety of sweet bites including, cupcakes, cream puffs, chocolate covered strawberries, pies, cheesecake bites, peanut butter bars, holiday cookies, banket and many many more! Do you have a traditional dessert favorite? Give us a call and see if our sweets can compare to Grandmas old fashion treats. I bet you'll be happily surprised....

Happy Holidays!

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-30T13:39:00.007-04:00

Happy Halloween Everyone! Sweet Cakes was in a spooky mood this weekend and we were lucky enough to work with a few festive clients.

Here are few Jack-O-Lantern Cakes we created for Grand Valley State University because it's never too late to check Halloween cakes!

Circle Theater hosted a Halloween party for the holiday and what's a party without a scary haunted house cake.

Finally our very own Amanda dressed up, in true Sweet Cake fashion, as a cupcake!

Happy Belated Halloween!

Grand Rapids Wedding Affair

2009-09-28T12:07:00.001-04:00

October 16th can't get here any sooner because Sweet Cakes Design is so excited to unveil their newest creation. We have been busy creating new and fantastic receipts for everyone to try at the Grand Rapids Wedding Affair. The event will be held from 5pm to 9pm at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. Register in advance to receive a discounted rate. Please join for an evening for wonderful vendors, amazing displays and hottest dessert to hit Sweet Cakes kitchen!

A Birthday Celebration!

2009-09-21T11:54:00.003-04:00

If you ask me the best part about a birthday party is the cake! What better way to celebrate your birthday then asking a friend to join you as together, you take over Sweet Cakes Design's bakery and create your own masterpiece! These two little boys sampled, designed, sampled, decorated, sampled a few more times and viola, the perfect birthday cake was born.

These two are hired!

Just had to double check the icing...

Feel free to give us a call to if you are interested in scheduling a small birthday party or group outing. Because our kitchen is always busy we encourage parties on weekdays during the months of January through March.

Two Tiered Mini Cakes

2009-09-14T09:49:00.006-04:00

We had the pleasure of working with Chasity and Andy back in June and Jenn Marie from Jenn Marie Photography sent over a few fabulous photos of the couples two tiered mini cakes. Each guest received their own wedding cake, well a mini version of course!

I just want to send a little thank you to my team at Sweet Cakes Design. Each and every weekend they produce gorgeous work and the detail and time that went into each two tiered mini cake is why I'm proud to work along side of you. Thank you!

A Dessert for any Event

2009-08-31T12:44:00.006-04:00

At Sweet Cakes Design we take pride in creating a magical and memorable dessert for any occasion and over the past few weeks we have had the opportunity to create special treats for many special days. Bridal showers, baby showers, birthdays, you name it, we'll bake it! One of my favorite cake displays was a collect of purses for a bridal shower. A bridal shower it a great time to break-away from your wedding colors and theme and have fun exploring with a fun themed party, crazy food and drink and of course, a not-so-traditional wedding cake.

Enjoy!

Cookies are fantastic favors for any event!

Almost to cute to eat...almost!

Civic Theater Cake!

2009-08-23T21:42:00.004-04:00

WE WON!
So, what is this all about? SC Design and other area bake shops were
asked by the Grand Rapids Civic Theater to donate a "Birthday Cake" to
celebrate all the birthdays of their wonderful, dedicated volunteers.
They gave us carte blanche in regards to the design, cake
flavors/fillings ect....
As everyone knows, we can't do something simple.........we pulled out
all the stops on this one!
ANYWAY......each volunteer was requested to vote for the cake they
liked the best and we recieved the most votes!

Sooooo...we won a free advertisement in their first playbill for "The
25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee".

Myself and my staff REALLY enjoyed participating in this
event.......thanks for letting me share this with all of you!

A Nice Day for a Centerpiece Wedding

2009-08-14T10:33:00.009-04:00

A single wedding cake has become a thing of the past. The latest and greatest in wedding trends is centerpiece cakes! Why not alow an entire table of your guest to enjoy there own personal wedding cake? Theses cakes make for great table decor and the styles are endless. Let's let the pictures do the talking.

A traditional tiered wedding cake may still be used but a fun twist would be to display it on the head table!

Bride and Bloom

2009-07-10T13:08:00.008-04:00

We are so proud to announce that the Summer 2009 issue of Bride and Bloom is hot off the press! We thought we should give you a little sneak-peek of what's inside but be sure to pick of a copy of your own. Trust me, it's well worth the read.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful work Jenn, Jodi! And a big shout out to Jen for the wonderful images. Below are few images that didn't make the spread but who doesn't love a good cake picture. Enjoy!

ooooo I just love the summer yellow color! Enjoy the weekend everyone!

A Month of June Weddings

2009-06-22T13:09:00.008-04:00

June is a beautiful month for a wedding and you would be surprised at the variety of styles, colors, and themes we see.

Chasity and Andrew celebrated their wedding this past weekend. Each guest received their own mini, two tiered cake. The style, cake and fillings variety for each design and oh the detail! Theses little beauties are almost to cute to eat.

Corie and George selected beautiful draped cake with touches of hydrangea. The silver polished monogram was the perfect final touch.

June wasn't all weddings so we thought we should show you just a little of a gorgeous graduation party. Hats off to Jodi and Jenn for their always fabulous event and floral design expertise! On to the cake!

Hats off to Jen Kroll for her beautiful image. It's hard to believe June is almost done with but we are really looking forward to kicking some wonderful cakes for the rest of the wedding season.

Kid Cakes

2009-05-30T12:21:00.011-04:00

Even though we are starting to kick of our 2009 wedding season we are still able to sneak a few fabulous birthday cakes. An there is nothing better then seeing a 4 year olds favorite cartoon come to life.

Who doesn't love the Backyardigans?!

The gangs all here!

We are able to create almost anything your kids can think of and here are few of our favorites. Boy kids sure do have creative imaginations!

Cookies are always a crowd favorite!

And finally, who doesn't like to host a great Cinco de Mayo fiesta?

Like I said wedding season is up and running so it's back to the kitchen for me but feel free to give us a call so we can bake you something sweet for any occasion!

Wedding season has begun...

2009-05-14T12:51:00.005-04:00

...and we'll begin those next week :) This week we have quite a variety of different celebration cakes.

Here is Dominic's birthday cake for his second birthday. We did his first birthday cake last year, and we happy to do another one for him this year! Hopefully he'll stay with us for his cakes all the way up to his wedding :)

This awesome orchid cake was for a baby shower! How cool is that? So totally different. Jennifer dropped off a plate and a napkin for us to get creative off of. I think the result is great!

I love this one year olds birthday cake. The flowers remind me of some sort of zinnia, maybe. Lots of bright and fun colors for this one-year-olds birthday... oh and her cute little smash cake to go with it.

Who wouldn't want an i-pod to cut into for their birthday?! This birthday boy's mom even knew his favorite songs to have written on the cake - that is one loving mom!

We did a baby shower cake similar to this before, but it was just one tier. Covering the 3 tiers of cake we these dots is just perfect for a modern, hip, classic mother-to-be. The top is adorned with some baby bottles, a few diaper bags, a pair of sun glasses and a snuggly baby blanket. I'm not a fan of big, poofy bows on cakes, but these simple bows are just adorable.

An adorable monkey baby shower cake was ordered from one of our favorite clients - who I hear throws amazing showers.

A simple birthday cake featuring spring colors and tulips is perfect for a mothers birthday.

We will most definitely have wedding cake pictures from this weekend next week to talk about and post. I cannot count the weddings on one hand and I don't think I could count the wedding and specialty cake orders on two hands... so be prepared for photo overload! - Sara :)

Gearing up

2009-04-29T21:16:00.003-04:00

Hey Readers!

It has been a long time! We have spent the last few weeks prepping for our upcoming wedding season as well as preparing for last week's grand opening of A Modern Event. The opening went fantastically, we met and were re-united with a ton of great vendors and brides that night. So a large thank you to all who came and took part in the event!

As we begin gearing up and jump into the 2009 wedding season, we wanted to share with you some new cake flavors as well as some updates on our season's bookings this year.

First for the new delicious flavor combinations:
~ a caramel turtle mix, which consists of chocolate fudge cake, caramel buttercream, chocolate ganache, and if you'd like, a layer of praline pecan.
~ strawberry lime, consisting of our white chocolate cake, layered with lime buttercream and fresh sliced strawberries. I also think this combo would be delicious with our lemon cake (my fav!)
~ lemon blueberry... we use our lemon cake and layer it with blueberry compote and french vanilla - or lemon! - buttercream. The blueberry compote is made from fresh blueberries and is just fantastic.
~ a ginger pear flavored buttercream is currently in the works after one of our fall brides suggested it. I think it sounds delicious layered in a spice cake... fall has awesome, warm flavors to play with!
~ we love trying to flavor combinations and love suggestions from all you out there! We added two new flavors last summer that became hits after a local photographer's son's had some unique requests. Give us some ideas! We are also working on a triple berry compote for a wedding this coming season also... ideas are endless!

So, we are excited to say that we are booked for the rest of May, June, and July! We've got some awesome brides with awesome cakes this year! August is getting pretty full too, so is September and October... in fact, we are booking into 2010! Remember, we usually start booking about 8 to 9 months out for weddings, and June is usually the first booked.

If you have a cake order you need over the summer, 2 weeks notice is very preferred, its almost a sure-fire way to make sure we'll be able to do a cake for you! Graduations are just about booked up too! We are busy, and want to make sure we do not take too many orders that may comprimise our quality in flavor and design. We will be able to take a few small orders during the next couple months, but cannot guarantee every one. So, please call as soon as you know you need or want something to check our availability...we will try our best! We had one of our clients book her JUNE birthday cake in JANUARY this year. Awesome :)

Now onto some cakes:

This wedding cake used a combination of beautiful, rich colors - deep purple, charcoal black, with pewter highlights.

For a little boy's first birthday! I love love the colors, and think the elephants are just great!

Kristen has great tastes. I love this bird cake! We had one very similar on display in our lobby for awhile... she loved it and we were happy to duplicate it for her!

A mini cake wedding with bright hues of orange, blue and yellow. The cakes were accented with delicate royal icing butterflies.

These colors are great. This was for a local make-up artist's son's second birthday. Hope you loved your cake Jack!

We'll have more cake pictures and fun stuff coming soon. Wedding season begins in full swing next weekend! - Sara :)

BIG NEWS!!!

2009-04-07T14:07:00.004-04:00

We are branching out even more!

We are excited to announce that we are now a part of A Modern Event, which is a group of professional vendors that have formed Michigan's first ever event design boutique, located right here in Grand Rapids. We've teamed up with the great Modern Day Floral, Ben Harrison Photography and In Any Event to make this boutique come to life.

Please join us for our grand open house on April 23 from 5-8pm to browse the new boutique, meet the vendors. Don't forget to RSVP to events@amodernevent.com. We hope to see you there!

Hope you're wearing your green today...

2009-03-17T08:55:00.004-04:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day from everyone here at the shop!

To get started with some pictures from the past couple weeks, here is Isaiah's first birthday cake! His mom chose some really cute plates to use at his party which we used as inspiration to decorate his cake! My favorite part is the number 1 on top with the party hat, or the lion with the cupcake - too cute :)

Adoption is a wonderful way to expand your family, and a wonderful gift to give a child. This cake was for a couples shower, welcoming in their adoptive daughter. We copied a design from the invitation onto this cake, painting it directly onto the icing.

A Sweet Cakes one-of-a-kind design. The bride gave us her colors, and her ideas, and let us run with them. Once a couple books their wedding date with us, we are more than happy to draw and design sketches for them of potential cake designs. Its great for us to do - the couples will know exactly what to expect from us on their wedding day, and they get a unique cake designed just for THEM - Not just a cake picked out from a magazine for us to copy. This cake had a butter yellow colored fondant ribbon wrapped around the bottom of each tier, and was accented with a beautiful red fondant scroll coming from different corners on each tier.

A hip, modern cake design was requested for this mother-to-be. Her first baby, a little girl, is on the way, and they wanted to welcome her in with style. Diaper bags, a baby blanket, some bottles, and of course, some sleek sunglasses were added to the top of this polka-dotted ribbon wrapped cake. I love how this turned out!

Enjoy this beautifully warm weather we are and have been having the past couple days. From what I'm hearing, its not going to last too long. It's Michigan after all, and its only March! I'd like to get my hopes up that it won't ...snow... again, but let's be honest, IT'S MICHIGAN.

more soon! - Sara :)

SUPRISE and excitement!

2009-03-04T21:23:00.007-05:00

We are more than happy, eager, excited, glowing (more adjectives please)... to announce that we will be featured in not one, but TWO bridal magazines this coming year!

The first will be in Bride and Bloom, this years April issue.

They are an awesome, high-end wedding magazine, covering everything from cakes, flowers, invitations, gorgeous receptions, wedding dresses, and much, much more. And they are FINALLY highlighting a fabulous place to hold a wedding - Grand Rapids! We were more than pleasured to work with other great vendors such as Jodi Bos of In Any Event, Jen Kroll Photography, and Modern Day Floral. You'll have to wait for the magazine to see anything!

And the featured wedding that will be in theKnot magazine is of Liz and Kurt, back in August of 2008 at Cascade Country Club. I loved their colors, their style, and of course, their cake! Mmm... plaid. Most of the same vendors that we worked with on the Bride and Bloom shoot will also be highlighted in this article to appear this spring I believe.

We are excited... look for our name in lights! - Sara

spring forward!

2009-03-04T20:35:00.004-05:00

Spring is in the air! Well, almost, since it is still a chilling 30 degrees in the morning - but I'll take that over 8 degrees. The "Spring Forward" time change is this weekend, which means that we'll get a little less sun in the evening, but more in the morning. I love being up at 7am with lovely sunshine starting to shine through the windows. Although I can also not wait for those evenings where its light out until 10 o'clock at night. Those, are truly wonderful.

This is the time of year where we gather and recoupe ourselves from the previous year. You thought that was during Christmas-time? Nope, its a month called February and *early* March. We value this time so, so much. We set new standards for ourselves, see where we can improve, and update our brochures and websites along with pricing - and all to better serve you! We really appreciate the time to relax and prepare ourselves for the year to come. This is our summer vacation. And we have been up to a lot this summer break (look for following entry!)...

onto the cakes!

An adorable baby shower cake covered in blue and pink buttons, fondant fabric, and baby booties on top. Perfect to welcome baby!

This mock license plate cake was made for Katie's SUPRISE 16th birthday party. Hope you had a blast Katie!

A sweet little girl turned one, and her mom requested limey greens, purples and pinks for her cake, topsy turvy style of course. We were happy to deliver.

An awesome Sheriff's badge cake for Warner's birthday. Complete with cowboy boots and a hat.

Another 16th birthday cake! This one was a bit more elegant covered with black polka dots and light pink ribbons. The zebra stripes are my favorite part of this cake!

I'm sure there will be an update above this one before you even get to read this part. The next entry is super exciting! Enjoy the slowly warming weather! - Sara :)

just a few...

2009-02-11T08:39:00.003-05:00

So... its raining outside?! What happened to the beautiful 60 degree sun-shiny weather from yesterday? At least its not 10 degrees yet, but I did hear more snow and cold weather later this week. It's only February, right? We couldn't be that lucky :)

Awesome Bakugan cake for a lucky boy! This cake was for an 8th birthday of a boy who likes to visit us at the shop sometimes. Such a cutie! He wanted one of his favorite toys, a Bakugan, replicated for his birthday cake. Amanda sculpted this out of gumpaste and then painted it all by hand. His other request was to have swags on the sides of his cake. Happy Birthday!

This one is from late 2008, but was just recently dug up. Its one, of many, centerpiece cakes that a bride displayed at her wedding. There were 4 different designs, all incorporating a bronzey color. This is one of my favorites.

Our first poured sugar piece cake! So much fun. We were able to use our sugar knowledge from what we learned in pastry school to create some beautiful amber colored snow flakes for this wedding cake. I think they turned out beautiful! And....

Let us make your cake topper! If you can't decide, let us run with some ideas incorporating your cake design and colors. For this cake, we formed a capital "J" out of gumpaste and then highlighted with an amber and bronze color dust. Some mini snowflakes were added to the top to bring the design up the cake. Love!

Everyone have a great week! Let's hope this melting snow doesn't turn into ice too quickly!

Sara :)

Something to warm you up

2009-02-05T13:45:00.004-05:00

While looking out the window at the sunshine right now just makes me so eager for spring. I can almost see the branches bursting with new blooms and the snow melting away into the gutters. But, until that month appears, the first of these pictures should warm you right up!

Who wouldn't want to warm up on a day like today with a big tall glass o' Starbucks goodness? We crafted and carved this cake to look, and taste, like the birthday girls favorite drink - a Mocha from Starbucks.

And who couldn't picture sitting on a beach, somewhere in the South currently, with the sun blazing on your skin, absorbing lovely Vitamin D... Lovely. Connie's got the right idea!

This wedding cake is from a few months back, but the picture was just uncovered and is absolutely gorgeous. The reception was located at the Holiday Inn Select off of 29th St. near the Beltline, and they just have wonderful facilities there! We iced the cake to look "Stucco-ish" and simply added some hand made sticks, and lovely fresh orchids. With really teamed up on this cake with Natalie from Mulick Floral, and she created its cake stand base. I love how it turned out.

isn't the lighting in this place wonderful?!

We created and carved this baby grand piano for a birthday of a man who is truly loved. Look what his friends bought him for his birthday! This definitely turned out to be a work of art. Piano key, sheet music, a top that actually lifts off... Grand.

Dino's are back in the states... The mother of twin boys wanted to us to recreate the T-Rex footprint in Jurassic Park - how the water shakes in it when the T-Rex is approaching. We were happy to help. I think this turned out AWESOME. How life-like is that?! The well of the footprint is actually filled with gelatin, so it jiggles when the table is tapped.

Aren't white winter weddings just beautiful? A simple, elegant, white wedding cake accented with shimmery branches and berries is perfect for a snowy January day. This bride chose to fill her entire wedding cake with White Chocolate Cake layered with Raspberry Fresh Fruit, French Vanilla Buttercream and Raspberry Buttercream. Imagine getting a slice of that. YUM.

A baby shower cake wrapped with buttons and fabric is just so cute. And the little booties on top are the icing on the cake.

This cake was created for a dear mother who was having back surgery on her birthday! How not fun! So, her kids came in and ordered her this wonder. Handmade pill bottles with sugar pills (that may have helped the mom just as much as the real pills) , hand crafted dixie cup with crushed ice, and a wonderful perscription from the doctor wishing only health and better days in the future.

Enjoy your week and weekends! It's supposed to be 45ish this Saturday!

- Sara :)

some fun ones

2009-01-22T19:15:00.002-05:00

Hello all!

Not too long back we mentioned that we'd soon have a pic or two of some cake toppers we can make for your cake if you don't want to go with a traditional monogram or bride and groom (although we have made them before and would again!). Here is a bird hand-formed from a thick gage wire that would adorn the top of your cake; two would be awesome on top! We've done some trees before too (think "fall theme"). Many colors are available, but I love the color of a metallic to stand out and bring attention to your cake.

We worked hard on this cake, specifically the car... which if I remember correctly is a '42 Chevy. Who knew it would be so difficult to get the exact angles of a car correct?! A client stopped in and wanted a replica of a car they've had in the family for a long time which was originally his dads. This cake was in celebration of the father's birthday and included signs where he went to school, grew up, grandkids that were born along the way, and some of his favorite relaxation spots.

A loving husband ordered this cake for his wife's 30th birthday! From what we hear she enjoyed a relaxing day at the spa, followed by some delicious cake and a great birthday party. We incorporated some of her favorite colors and flowers on here, and did her favorite style of cake - topsy turvy!

What a cool cake for your first birthday! I think I had Rainbow Brite on mine... anyway, this must be one cool little girl! We kept the colors in different shades of pinks, and through a request from the mother, added 3D skulls and crossbones to the bottom tier of the cake. Also, as a side note, the bottom tier of this cake would have been delicious to enjoy and is one of my new favorites - Pastacio cake with French vanilla buttercream. Although my favorite filling with this would have to have been orange curd buttercream. YUM.

Everyone enjoy their weeks (or I guess now, weekends!) and we'll have some more fun stuff soon! - Sara :)

Happy 2009!

2009-01-08T18:41:00.003-05:00

We just wanted to say a GIGANTIC thank you to all of our wonderful brides and clients over this past year. It was a huge transition for us early last year - moving into a retail space, expanding our business, bringing on new staff employees - you were all there with us, and it was fantastic to have you around.

Thank you TRIFOLD to all of our great vendors who are always recommending us to their clients. Honestly, without all of you, we don't know where we would be today. All of our photographer, florists, videographers, event planners, venues, and our neighbors! - we love you all. So stop in a grab a cookie and chat with us while we have time to talk! Because, you know, come April, we won't have time for words until December :)

As for this year, we are so excited for everything upcoming. We have booked just about the ENTIRE month of June, May is out of control, and August through November are looking to be just as busy as the rest... which we love. Keep coming to us with new ideas, colors, designs, and inspirations. We want to create the best cake for you! Also, we are really beginning to design cake toppers to go right along with the design of the wedding cake. So if you are a bride that doesn't want the usual monogram, or bride and groom figurine, let us run with it! We should have a picture up in a few days of one we've been working on... I know it will be pleasing.

Ok, so now, on with the cakes!

I love the bronzey metallic color to this cake. Beautiful for a winter wedding.

Isn't the stucco look of this cake awesome? You definitely do not have to have a smooth iced cake! You could accent something like this with fresh flowers, fruits, or crystals and flowers on wires like this one.

SO CUTE for a baby shower. So. Cute.

I loved this cake topper for this wedding! We hand made the branches from chocolate fondant to accent the the owls (!!) that were made by a close friend. This owls were supposed to be incorporated throughout the entire wedding. I love 'em.

Everyone have a great week! - Sara :)

2008-12-28T21:56:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the crew at Sweet Cakes Design!

We are all trying to enjoy a bit of time off and relaxing with our families and loved ones... so don't worry, new cakes are coming soon

Enjoy this wonderful time with those you love! - Sara :)

Holy Moly!

2008-12-11T13:56:00.004-05:00

Hey Everyone! We have really been cleaning house (or, computer) over here trying to get all of our pictures together from this past year... and whew... what a year it has been! We found a ton of pictures of cakes that never got published (I don't think), so hopefully I'll be getting those up in the next few days.

As for now, here are a few from this past weekend...

Stay tuned for more!

Enjoy the snow outside too...brrr... - Sara :)

a few random notes

2008-11-18T10:19:00.002-05:00

Good, bright and sunny, Morning to everyone!

I love crisp, sunny mornings with some snow on the ground. Beautiful!

We have just a few small topics that we'd like to make known to everyone!

The first is to announce that we are already CLOSING dates for the 2009 season! May 16th and June 20th weekends are booked solid! Woo hoo!

July, August, September and October brides, do not be afraid to contact us as soon as possible! We do not close dates when we reach a certain number of cakes in a given weekend like other bakeries might. We look over all of our returned contracts for given dates, and depending on the attention each cake needs (and the hours plus some for the designer to accomplish the beauty of that cake) will determine when we book a given weekend. We do not want to short cut anyone, and that's why we close weekends. We also take into factor where the reception site is. We deliver only about a hour and a half before the reception is supposed to start... we can't be in 8 different places at once, and there are only so many of us :)

Just a note to remember to return your contract as soon as possible: we only hold your wedding date for two weeks after your first client meeting with us. After that, it goes back into the open pool. This is only fair as we work on a first come first serve basis. We hate to dissappoint, so remember to return those ASAP!

One last note. We like to be able to customize cakes to our brides. We do that through colors, tier sizes, design, monograms, and more. And we LOVE to sketch out a few cakes using those details for you to see, so that we know what you like, don't like, and really narrow down the perfect design for your wedding cake. This way you really know what to expect too! However, we cannot offer this anymore until you book with us. This is just so that our designs for you stay just that. Yours. We'd be upset to spend the time customizing a cake for you, only to see it pop up somewhere else. As designers, we always take inspiration from others, but we don't want to supply others with a design we worked so hard on. I know you all understand :)

So, if you have any questions, call us!

Thanks for your listening ears!
Sara :)

if you want an 8 track player...

2008-11-18T09:31:00.000-05:00

we can do one!

This was Amanda's baby for a whole week (or, the second half of the week)...

detail, detail, detail! Remember I said "give her something electronic and she can copy it?" I wasn't kidding. This turned out AWESOME. And no, this wasn't a grooms cake, it was their actual wedding cake! People have great ideas and we love to do them!

look at this woodgrain! LOVE.

brings you back a few years, no? (although I don't think I have ever really seen one...)

Burgandy's and golds are just so beautiful together. On this cake we placed a thin burgandy fondant ribbon at the bases, and piped a royal icing design similar to the couples invitation on the cake. After the royal icing dried, we painted it with gold luster dust. This picture doesn't do it justice for how the gold really stood out.

We have fantastic neighbors at our shop, and they always order fun stuff for birthdays. Last time we put crickets on top of their cupcakes, and this time it was pizza! We actually made a small miniature pizza and then cut it into slices. The remaining cupcakes got pizza boxes!

This elegant cake looked beautiful this weekend! The cake had a simple swirl on it, and a bronze colored fondant ribbon wrapped around it with a bow.

This cake for a 1-year-olds birthday was so much fun! Each tier was airbrushed seperately and then stacked together. All the animals were made by hand and then added to the cake. The top has a John Deere tractor on it, although its hard to see. What a fun farmed themed first birthday :)

We wanted this cake to look like a piece of lace was laid over the top of it, so tight swirls were added heavily to the top, and became more spread out as they climbed down the cake.

Happy (belated) birthday to one of our favorite photographers Jen Kroll! She and her associate photographers always capture such beautiful images, and we can't get enough of looking at them. Not to mention she usually comes in with her boys who are always a joy and a bundle of fun, and bring smiles to our faces on a hustle bustle day :)

What a fun 50th birthday party cake! We did a "bar theme" with wood paneled walls, and large beer mug, and some shelled peanuts. The theme of the birthday party was somewhat hawaiian, and what man doesn't want a luau party umbrella in their beer mug?! This cake, was fun, especially the "happy birthday" banner hanging across the front. Nice!

That's all for the beginning of this week. I wanted to say a big "thank you" to Aletha for stopping by the other day! It was great seeing you again. And ladies/brides/readers if you need an event planner for your wedding, Aletha is awesome! Checkout her website and blog, because she's always giving great tips, which are great not only for brides, but for decorating your house too :) And her attention to detail is amazing.

So, everybody enjoy their weeks and the lovely snow that is falling! - Sara :)

lots of love for different cakes

2008-11-05T17:00:00.000-05:00

Wow, these past weeks have been completely fun with SO MANY different cakes. We are still working on gathering all the pictures... but we had animals, 8 track players, crazy huge cakes, and many, many, beautiful cakes. These are why we love what we do! Enjoy :)

Love this incorporation of the monogram. Barb made this monogram out of gumpaste, and it looks stunning on this simple cake.

Rachel (we find Rachel when we need life-like and realistic interpretations of things...) did this one, a britany spaniel, horse, and trailer... she did a great job!

This whimsical yet elegant cake turned out wonderful. We dusted the balls on the cake with gold and silver luster. Funky and fun.

This cake was HUGE and let me tell you, when Barb and I were carrying it in... lets just be glad we didn't have to hold it too long and had a cart to help us with all the heavy work :) This picture doesn't do it justice to the detail Barb put into it, so just check out Jen's blog because her picture is just so much more beautiful!

The MOLE cake (groom's/bride's cake for the above cakes wedding)! We loved how it turned out. I love the details on it... my favorite part of the whole cake is the heart and letters carved into the trunk of the tree. Romantic. Oh, and I love the step mushrooms going up the side of the stump (do you see the grubs in the dirt in front of the mole? Love those too). This was my "project" for the weekend, and I was so excited to detail it up. What you don't see on here is the diamond ring we gave her, and a prettier, fuller, glittery bow. We hear bride and groom liked it a lot too :)

A simple, square cake with a long red ribbon and bow around the bases.

A true Alice in Wonderland cake. Thats right. We thought this cake was right side up topsy turvy, but when we finally found a picture of it... UP.SIDE.DOWN. Thankfully, this was only a 5 and a 6 inch, with a 4 inch styrofoam for extra support on the bottom. If this was any larger, gravity probably wouldn't have stayed our friend. And don't you all just love the warm glow of light that fall evenings bring??

Look at these cute booties Amanda made!

that when on this super cool baby shower cake. I love the buttons!

And, a triangle wedding cake. This turned out awesome, and the bride and groom loved it. It became the centerpiece of the entire wedding, and recieved so many great comments. We love our brides and their awesome ideas!

So, that's all for now. We'll have some more later this week! -Sara :)

some more for your pleasure

2008-10-22T17:37:00.000-04:00

As we continue to download pictures from our different cameras, you'll continously get to see more and more cakes. I know, exciting, right?!

So, here we go with some more...

loooooove this one! They made the cake stand out of a stump... awesome! and the colors, just beautiful :)

mmm... lots of shaved white chocolate. Delicious!

more to come!

septembers and more

2008-10-21T18:13:00.000-04:00

Hi Readers! It sure has been a long time since our last updates!

First, we are sorry to say, that we have to close the weekend of October 31st/November 1st. We have a few large weddings that weekend that also have awesome grooms cakes, and we need to make sure make those cakes get the quality they all deserve!

Second, we are selling PIES for the holidays! Start calling to order your pies, they will be available until early or through January. What's Thanksgiving without a pumpkin pie? We've got some great new yummy flavors, so check them out!

and now onto the cakes :)

More soon!

just a few...

2008-09-15T16:28:00.000-04:00

Hello readers!

We are going to start out with a post earlier this week, and hopefully have another one once picture collection is done!

Below was a very traditional style cake we did to resemble the wedding cake of a lovely couple 50 years ago! How awesome is it to make it to your 50th anniversary?! Many congrats to these two and their very loving family.

This cake was posted a while back, but we never had a picture of it with its finishing touches - the flowers. The grass really gives the cake a different texture and added fun. It turned out beautiful!

A simple and clean wedding cake, just as beautiful.

For a bride that had no flowers at her wedding, crystals and feathers were the way to go. We believe she purchased her cake jewelry fron here http://www.cake-jewelry.com/ but we are still checking our sources :) This cake was wrapped with fondant, topped with a crystal initial, and more crystals were added at the corners. It turned out stunning!

The ultimate 21st birthday cake! A real life sized beer mug -- But I PERSONALLY think cake tastes much better than beer. Would anyone ever want a beer-flavored cake? Is that even possible?!

A stucco-like icing surrounded this cake and was topped with fresh fruits...yum!

And that's all for now. We had some fun cakes last weekend and are sure to have many more this coming weekend. So check back! Enjoy your weeks - Sara :)

is there another word?

2008-09-01T21:04:00.000-04:00

Is there another word for how sorry we are that we didn't update the WHOLE ENTIRE MONTH of August?! Holy moly that flew by fast! I cannot believe that it's September first... And you know what we love about fall? The change of wedding color themes, fall cakes, and new savory fall cake flavors are on the horizon. We have two cakes this week consisting of Spice Cake filled Carmalized Apples and Caramel Buttercream. DELICIOUS. Its always nice to change seasons and make different cake flavors. But at the same time, I will definitely miss the Citrus Delight cake as it usually its a hibernation period this time of year. But, enough of fall, we need to get those August cakes out here!

This stunning, simple, and modern cake was covered with fondant and hand drawn ferns to go along with the brides simple and elegant tastes at her wedding reception. The greens, purples and oranges were awesome colors to work with. Amy Carroll photographed this wedding and had a sneak preview up featuring, I know, a much better picture of this beauty (Check back to her August 29th entry)

Another of my favorite, very modern cakes! I mean, WHO doesn't love plaid?! I was told by Barb to sketch some modern, J Crew style cakes using blues, greens, and a bit of orange. I came up with a few different ideas, but the plaid cake was the one I was hoping they would choose. I was delighted that they LOVED it. Jen Kroll was the photographer for this wedding, and I'm sure took a stunning picture of this cake.
A fun birthday cake featuring handmade gerbers and other flowers and grasses.

A birthday cake I was so excited to do for a past bride, Becky (her cake is the beauty in front of the stained glass window), for her husband, Matt's, birthday. It's Brian Fellows, from SNL, and it's a bit of an inside joke between them. Luckily we knew of the skit, and were happy to do it for her. Hope you liked the cake Becky!

We are loving this lime green at the shop! This cake has more of a traditional classy look covered in cornelli lace and simple swags.

A classy cake iced smooth and decorated with a swirl pattern and sparsely placed flowers.

These next two pictures go together. The first are cupcakes that are decorated to look like frogs for the kids at Lydia's birthday party. And the second is the cake that accompany's them for the adults. Lydia loves frogs!

Lady bug and Richard Scarry's Gold Bug (some of my fav books when I was a kid!) for Caroline's birthday party at school!

An elegant swirl detailed cake with a plum ribbon border.

We were given a piece of the brides lace dress to copy onto the cake. The lace was beautiful, a bit flowery with branches. We piped on the design with icing, and then pulled it with a brush to make it look like it was sewn on. We loved the result.

What a fun baby shower cake! We made this baby shower cake to look like a book. They wanted it very girly, and to semi-resemble a fairy tale book. So we made it look very elegant, feminine, and whimsical.

An awesome grooms car cake Rachel and Amanda worked very deligently on...

This cake was decorated to resemble the couples wedding invitations. A pic of the invitation is below. I love how the details turned out!

A fun and funky cake for sure for this bride and groom. We dropped this one off, from what I hear, is the newly remolded Centenniel Country Club. The club was beautiful and the staff was incredibly friendly!

Barb decorated this cool cake for a gigantic hockey fan. he was turning 10, and she even made the hockey stick and puck on the front look like the number 10!

A simple baby shower cake for a mom expecting TWIN girls!

Sex and the City themed bachelorette party cupcakes.

A beautiful cake covered in dark ivory vines.

Jackson had a barnyard themed birthday party, they were even bringing in a petting zoo! So this mom wanted a busy barnyard cake... horse, cow, chickens, a pig and a hungry lamb.

I hope that is enough cakes to keep you all busy for now! Hopefully we'll get another post up in the next few days with more of August cakes, then onto Septembers! Crazy. Hope you all enjoyed your holiday weekends, it was just beautiful! - Sara :)

Closing up July...

2008-07-31T15:03:00.000-04:00

We are closing up the month of August with a lot of fun cakes, and one that we've been trying to get a picture posted of for a while. So enjoy the end of July with us!

How fun is this one?! Covered in chocolate ganache (YUM!) and highlighted with bright robins egg blue and lime green. So fun!

A simple cake adorned with daisies surrounding each tier bottom. The daisies were hand made and just add a touch of class.

Another tractor cake went out this week! This time we covered the sides with fields and corn and I just think its so cute! (So did the mom, hopefully we'll have a picture of Jack next week eating his yummy cake!)

This cake has been waiting in the wings a while to get posted! We could not seem to find the picture in our files. Finally, after some deep file searching it popped up. So, Sarah, here is your wedding cake! A little late, but still beautiful!

This cake was also found deep in our files. It was for a baby shower cake a few months back and the colors are just fabulous! We mocked the invitation in colors, style and design. Awesome.

A fun birthday cake!

And YUM! If you don't know Yesterdog, you should. Best hot dogs, hands down. I enjoyed doing this cake SO MUCH! The company Let us Cater, caters for Yesterdog so you can have them at your company party, wedding, graduation party, any occasion. They are great to work with. And instead of those end-of-the-night-slider burgers, how delicious would these be?! Anyway, this cake was for their company picnic, and I promise, did not taste like hot dogs.

Rachel hand made these Britney Spaniels for the top of the grooms cake at a wedding last weekend. She did a fabulous job and the bride, groom and all the guests just raved about it!

And that is all for now. We did just finish a guitar cake earlier today, some fun cupcakes, and are working on some wedding cakes later this weekend, so keep those eyes peeled for more pictures!

have a good week/end! - Sara :)

2008-07-24T17:05:00.000-04:00

We had just a few cakes this week, so it will be short and sweet again!

A cute, cute chocolate cinnamon cake (a newly added flavor to our new brochures) covered with all things John Deere! Including a little tractor!

The wedding cake, to go along with many cupcakes, for Alexandria and Brett this past weekend. We copied their invitation colors and style right onto the cake, along with their new monogram. I love it!

This was from awhile ago, and I don't know how I just stumbled upon it! A solar system style cake was so fun to do!

This cake is so sweet! The mother came in, said she called many, many places and couldn't find anyone to make a watermelon cake for her adorable daughters first birthday! Of course we said yes! To top it off, we made a strawberry cake, so that once it was cut into, it still looked like a real watermelon!

And we made these extra slices for Maggie herself. Yum!

Everyone enjoy the rest of their week and the upcoming weekend! - Sara :)

2008-07-16T22:10:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone! We had quite a few cakes last week, probably our busiest week in July! And honestly, can you believe its the 19th this weekend? August is coming up extremely quick! So, I will keep these short and sweet :)

We did a mini cake wedding...

Another beautifully tall cake... (love this one!)

A castle cake...

(although this is from a few weeks ago) a cake seperated with limes...

A very delicate, and detailed, cake...

a dotted cake...

An R2D2 cake!

A cake adorned with handmade bamboo sticks...

And a whole lot of funky cakes for a completely pink and orange wedding...

I'm still working on getting a few more cakes up here, including an awesome cake for Ethan that seemed like it was on fire...

So enjoy these for now and hopefully those will make it up soon! - Sara :)

Seriously... July?

2008-07-08T23:04:00.000-04:00

I know, I know its been a little while since our last update, but I promise we have been keeping busy! This summer has been busy, and moving quite quickly!

We made many, many dalmation cookies this week for one of our brides as her favors. No worries, this one that was playing in the grass was only eaten by those inside the bakery :)

A beautifully simple cake for a close friends daughter - she was both mine and Barb's professor at one point, and we were more than happy to do her daughters wedding cake! The wedding was at Post Family Farm and was just gorgeous. The weather couldn't have been better!

A swirl design was piped onto this cake and accented with light purple flowers.

The dinosaurs made another appearance for a birthday party this past weekend, so cute.

This castle cake was so much fun to do! We made the columns out of cardboard tubing (cleaned!) then covered in white fondant and accented with pinks and purples. A princess was made for each girl to have for themselves. My favorite part of the castle was the window boxes. They are a simple addition that really pops, and adding flowers to it made is super cute.

I hope you all enjoyed the preview, we still have a few cakes to upload and add to the blog, and we have quite a few wedding cakes this weekend! So be looking for an update either later this week or early next! Hope you all enjoyed your 4th of July weekends! - Sara :)

Whew!

2008-06-25T08:14:00.000-04:00

Hey readers! It's been quite busy around here which is just awesome! We have quite a few pictures from the past couple weeks, and we are still trying to get a few more of our recent wedding cake pictures, so bear with us!

Seriously, this teddy bear ended up at the top all on its own! Too cute though for a 1-year-old's birthday party!

A silver anniversary party.

Holy Strawberries Batman! Yum, we had some delicious, and gigantic, strawberries to add to cakes layers this past weekend. Delicious!

A cute cake for a bridal shower.

Another 1-year-olds birthday, this time with a farm theme. I love making these little guys! The chickens are definitely my favorite! :)

This is a wedding cake/cupcakes from a few weeks ago. We dyed and crushed up rock candy to resemble crystals on top of the cupcakes... but my favorite part of these??

The cupcake wrappers. How AWESOME are these things! And so many kinds are available! It will up the cost per cupcake, but what a statement compared to a simple wrapper. We definitely need a few weeks notice to order these, but I love them!

A beach themed cake.

A funky fun gerber daisy cake for a 21st birthday!

A dessert buffet compared to a tradtional wedding cake. The fresh fruit is delicious!

Just a simply fun anniversary cake! Oh, and covered in chocolate ganache... completely sinful!

Funky, funky, funky.

Probably my favorite cake/photo over the past weeks. The natural lighting is awesome and the flowers on the cake just pull the whole thing together. I love it!

A special birthday party cake!

ohhh cornelli lace!

Everyone have a great week! - Sara :)

More enjoyment

2008-06-18T06:46:00.000-04:00

Holy cow... we really cannot believe we are already more half way through June. Honestly. Its nuts and going by so quickly!

I love good lighting, and funky cakes. This cake was wrapped with think black ribbon and a deep turquoise ribbon. The result is a simple but fun look!

There is absolutely nothing like fresh fruit in the beginning of summer! The sweet, tart and all around delicious berries. YUM!

I love love love this one! The cake was covered with fondant in a pleated look and finished with soft white ribbons and handmade calla lillies. Now if only our beautiful, new cake stand wouldn't reflect such bright light onto our cakes...

This cake definitely looks a bit art deco-ish to me, and I love it. Its definitely a more traditional cake and is really stunning.

Congratulations to Riley who celebrated her graduation this past weekend! She is a beach, sand and sun lover, and requested that a fondant figure of herself sit atop her cake. And what do you need at the beach? Sun glasses. Perfect.

A simply yet elegantly decorated cake wrapped with a fondant ribbon and tuxedo style bows. The fresh green colors are absolutely so pretty this time of year.

And happy birthday to Zebb who turned five this past week. His two requests were for sprinkles and cars, so enjoy them both!

Its an early morning (posting before 7am?!) and still a bit chilly. We are getting ready for another weekend of fun cakes ahead, and hopefully warmer weather! And we are still working on getting a few pictures from some brides and others, so check back for those a bit later this week.

And a thank you to Dusty Brown Photography for dropping off a print of the cake from Monique and Kevin's wedding a few weeks ago, it looks stunning in our shop!

Have a good week everyone! Sara :)

6-7-8

2008-06-12T22:24:00.000-04:00

So sorry this took so long to post some past cakes from this weekend! We had some pretty awesome cakes for pick-ups this week so we delayed the post until those were done :)

Have we mentioned yet that we love doing unique cakes? Please, come to us with your ideas, and let us run with them!

This cake was for Carter's birthday. He loves Elmo, trains, and trucks (sorry we had no room for the trucks Carter!) But we did have plenty of room for Elmo to be riding in a train! We tried a mirror shot so that you could see the train wrap around the whole cake. Happy birthday Carter!

Allison and Paul's wedding cake this past weekend contained four verses, one piped on each tier, from one of their favorite songs. I loved the greens and the pinks and think it turned out wonderful! Truly unique to them!

Remember the R2D2 cake? Well, I don't know if R2D2 could stand up to this one. It may look like a semi truck front, but its definitely Optimus Prime from the new Transformers movie. This was so much fun to carve out of cake and decorate. Hope you have a super birthday Conner!

This cake was for a dad, who was given a baby shower for his soon to be new daughter. Apparently this dad was hoping for a little buddy to go fishing and do all those manly things with. The light pink border just reminds him of his wonderful daughter to be!

A bridely blue elegant shower cake for a bride to be.

The topsy turvy cake returns! This was delivered to the JW Marriott this weekend for a beautiful wedding reception. The five tier cake was hand carved and then covered in fondant, and decorted with hand made sugar gerber daisies, swirls and pearls.

I tried to tint out the yellow as much as I could to really get the purple to show through - the colors were just so much fun!

Enjoy all these fun cakes! Thank you again to all of our wonderful clients, we truly love and enjoy being part of all your fun celebrations.

More cakes soon after this wedding filled weekend!

Sara :)

!!!!

2008-06-05T22:40:00.000-04:00

FedEx dropped us off a fabulous package today. First we thought, "what the heck did we order that is so heavy in such a small box?!" Then much to our suprise we saw this:

and then this:

Yup, we are pretty geeked!! Grand Rapids Bride is a wonderful magazine featuring everything from event planners, to cakes, to rehersal dinner sites. And it is just such an honor to be part of one of their two featured weddings. This is the only sneak peak at this years issue you'll get from us, so go out and purchase one for yourself and support a great magazine (and see our featured cake)!

Thats our exciting news. Honestly. We are so blessed! :)

to end our May weddings

2008-06-05T22:03:00.000-04:00

Hello Readers! We seriously cannot believe that it is already June! Honestly, where did April and May go? It feels like wedding season just started, and we are already into the third month... crazy! We really have been lovin' our cakes lately...

This beautiful cake covered with simple moss green vines was delievered to the beautiful Cascade Country Club. We made two sugar cala lillies to sit on the teirs to match some of the table decor. What a beautiful event!

I love this one! I just love the bright colors of stripes, and it just says summer to me.

A very unique graduation cake for a Rockford grad was decorated with the "Beardcore" symbol, a group he takes part in.

Bradley was turning 5, and wanted a western theme cake. Instead of doing guns and handcuffs, we decided on cacti and cowboy hats. Too cute!

The dino's have returned! I love doing these dinos, they are just so cute and have so much personality.

Colleen and her groom Charlie chose a simple design of horizontal lines in two different shades of green. This cake was delivered to the beautiful St. Georges downtown. If you don't know about it or haven't seen it, check it out! Its set-up is so unique and needs hardly any decorating.

Monique and Kevin wanted to provide their guests with a variety of desserts and sweets at their reception at Thornapple Pointe, and we were more than happy to provide them. Requested were cream puffs, lime cupcakes, carrot cake cupcakes, and chocolate ganache dipped cupcakes. They also had a wedding cake ready to be sliced up for their guests. Delicious variety! Aletha from Pearls Events was their event coordinator and did a fabulous job as always (check out her services because she is just awesome!!) and Dusty Brown Photography did a beautiful job capturing their day, so make sure to check out his blog for more photos too!

We have plenty more weddings this weekend, so check back soon! Oh, and we have exciting (!) news, so look for that entry soon to come! Enjoy your hopefully not too rainy weekends :)

Almost June?

2008-05-27T22:22:00.000-04:00

Hello Readers!

This weekend was filled with many wedding cakes, and a lot of unique ones at that. I think brides are becoming more and more personal with their cakes, and that is awesome! We would love for every single cake to be different. It makes our jobs so much more fun, and its great to see the cake incorporated so much into the bride and grooms wedding details.

This cake was wrapped with thin black ribbon in a kind of criss cross pattern, for a very fun and modern look. And the black and white is just stunning!

How awesome is this cake? We hand rolled fondant into the shape of pearls, then pearlized them with luster dust to give them the look and sheen of real pearls. We then placed them on the cake kind of like a string of pearls being draped over the tiers. A deep ivory fondant ribbon accented the cake and really helped the pearls stand out.

A simple white on white decorated cake was adorned with small piped vines and leaves and accented with fresh flowers. Beautiful on its own!

The cake is as fabulous as the stained glass window behind it, or more so! This is the first cake that we have done with taller tiers - the top tier on this cake stands 6in tall instead of the normal 4in. It ended up being a gorgeous tall masterpiece. The tiers were all wrapped with real satin ribbon in a light ivory champagne color. The flat iced cake was accented with hand made fondant flowers similar to dogwoods, and touched up with a bit of pink petal dust to bring in a bit of the wedding colors.

Congrats to all of our brides and everyone enjoy their week! :)

Just a few...

2008-05-14T19:10:00.000-04:00

Hello Readers!!

Here are just a few cakes from this past weekend!

The first three pictures are of a baby shower cake. We love when people come to us with their ideas (what the baby's room will look like, colors the mom-to-be likes) and then lets us run with them! This future baby's room was going to be woodsy and organic, with some animals... but they still wanted the cake to reflect that it was a baby shower. We were happy to oblige!
One cute little baby bear with some honey...

and one cute little baby bear with his blanket! Too cute :)

This bride and groom wanted a cake that was just "them". They saw a style of cake they liked, and we sketched something a bit similar, but totally unique for them with their wedding colors. The end result: funky, elegant, and awesome.

This bride a grooms cake was very unique! They had alternating layers of chocolate ganache covered cake with itailian meringue buttercream iced layers. I personally think the result is pretty cool. With the bright pop of pink gerber daisies, this cake was large and stunning.

Everyone enjoy their weeks! We should have lots of pictures this coming weekend considering its one of our busiest all season! :)

All so different

2008-05-07T21:51:00.000-04:00

Hello readers!

This past week was full of ALL different cakes! It really is a lot of fun to be able to do so many different designs during a weekend.

First, we were unable to get a picture of one of our wedding cakes we delivered due to a battery failure... but that is why we love our photographers! Karrn, and her husband Ken, jointly own Lotus Photographic, and they took amazing pictures not only of the cake, but of the wonderful day this bride and groom had! Check out the pictures and our cake at their website here under "Jessica and Josh". The cake below is Karrn and Ken's cake from back in February, modeled after their invitations. This is definitely one of my favorites :)

The cake below was for Dominic's first birthday party this past weekend. What a fun and fabulous cake for a first birthday!

I think this cake topper is just beautiful. And by adding a few flowers here and there, it really makes the whole display "pop". Oh, and all the white flowers were just stunning... who knew the absence of color could be so lovely?

A fun Hawiian themed cake for a future baby!

This is the style of designing that we love using... we like to call it "embroidery".

We did many cheesecakes for a wedding this past weekend. We topped all of them with an "L" made out of royal icing and using a pooling technique. Slick as can be!

Hope you all enjoyed the cakes and be looking for more after this coming weekend! :)

vacation in... november?

2008-04-29T18:30:00.000-04:00

This past weekend truly, honestly was a kick off to the wedding season to come. This past week seemed to be not only a popular wedding day, but also a busy college graduation day, and busy birthday day. Who knew they might all fall on the same day?! And although it was a bit chilly, the sun shone here in the afternoon and lasted throughout the evening. It ended up being quite a beautiful evening. Now, where did our warm spring weather go?

Here is a close up of the cake posted last week, with the closer attention to the fondant swag detail added around the top of the cake. Let's just say this fondant covered cake helped us prep our muscles and rolling abilities for the coming summer :)

And so we added a new designer! To assist myself and Barb with the decorating, Rachel was brought on. Fabulous. I knew all those good grades in art class in high school would come in handy someday!

The Tinkerbell cake was a hit, and just so cute.

An EMU graduation cake. You'll also notice a daisy theme over this past weekend...

A simple, beautiful wedding cake from this past weekend.

A fun and springy wedding shower cake, complete with requested flip flops for the bride and groom.

The navy blue and light/bright pinks this bride chose were absolutely stunning. I blame the lighting at the reception hall for the poor quality photo :) A simple decorated cake with a navy blue tuxedo bow and ribbon on each layer with the pink gerbers in just beautiful.

This were awesome and fun cupcakes we did for a local hospital support group all topped with bright colored gerber daisies and green whirly-gigs.

You can have beautiful cupcakes at your wedding instead of a cake. And it really is becoming quite a popular trend. We have another cupcake wedding this weekend! This bride had amazing flavors of cupcakes (my personal favorite was banana with caramel buttercream filling, yum!) for her guests to choose from.

And more fun and funky cupcakes, this time for a 1-year olds birthday. I'd love to look back at my first birthday and say, "What cool cupcakes you bought me mom!".

Neat, right?

Here is Miss Sarah's princess birthday cake. Complete with glittery, shiney stars, a jeweled crown, and a castle!

Many, "happy birthdays" and, "Congratulations" to all of our clients and brides!

long waits I know!

2008-04-24T20:12:00.001-04:00

So sorry its been so long since our last update! We have been so busy lately, which really is a blessing! Here are a few cakes from the past weeks we have to share with you...

A beautiful deep sage green fondant covered cake. We loved the fabric-looking border that went on this cake, and the green and the pink are perfect together.

This purse cake was for Grace, a very girly girl, who turned 6 years old and wanted a very feminine cake. We heard she really loved it!

A funky cake for a proud 40 year old woman to be.

An elegant split tiered cake filled with flowers and greens.

And a sage green pulled embrodiery cake, just beautiful.

Hope you are all enjoying your week so far! It's a busy weekend for us at the shop, so look forward to lots more photos to follow this weeked :)

2008-04-05T18:29:00.000-04:00

Hello Readers!

We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day to "officially" start our wedding season. I don't believe we have a week/end off until October as of right now. Time to get back into wedding season, and we are ready! But before we awe you with beautiful wedding cakes, here are a few fun cakes from the past couple weeks!

This was Lauren's birthday cake last weekend. She is just a little cutie pie and loved gymnastics! We glittered this one up just for her!

Luca wanted cars on his birthday cake, and Luca got cars. How fun! Happy birthday Luca!

For all you brides that don't know what design you want on your cake... who ever said you couldn't have fresh fruit? This couple loved fruit, and chose to adorn their wedding cake with simple swiss dots, and lots of fresh fruit! How delicious.

This couple chose to do a few different styles of cakes for their guests. We did centerpiece cakes, mini cakes, and a main cake for the couple to cut and save for their anniversary. Their colors were beautiful, and elegant, and who doesn't love a cake covered in chocolate ganache? We topped the cakes with fondant tulips and ribbons. The main cake was covered with an embroidery technique in a soft ivory color, and topped with fresh flowers. All in all, it was a beautiful set up!

Hope you all have a good week, and enjoy the warmer weather! :)

Happy Easter!

2008-03-24T19:30:00.001-04:00

Happy Easter to all readers! Hope your weekend was filled with family fun and warm sunshine!

We had fun this week doing quite a few cakes... as we watched the 5 or so inches of snow fall!

But we had fun none-the-less doing spring-ey designs, including this one that was for a 3rd birthday. She loves ballons, bunnies, and the color blue. This one is for you Olivia!

A happy 8th birthday to Claire!

And a happy birthday to Chad, who turned 24 this weekend, and got this awesome R2D2 cake. Star Wars fans unite!

Everyone have a great week, and enjoy your first full week of spring!!

Calling all fall brides!

2008-03-20T20:38:00.000-04:00

Calling all fall brides... on the first day on spring?!

Today we are giving a shout out to all fall brides... why? Because we are booking up FAST! And we are already getting calls for some 2009 weddings (awesome!) So, all you fall brides that still may want go with us, send us an email or give us a call and get an appt. set up! We are getting close to closing dates in September already!

Hope you all enjoyed the sunshine today and happy first day of spring! Its supposed to snow tomorrow, but hopefully it will stay south of here!

Come back Saturday to see a cute bunny cake!

E-mail issues!

2008-03-20T12:25:00.000-04:00

Hello readers!

We are currently experiencing a few issues with our email through outlook express, so please hang in there with us while we make a change to a new address. You can now send us emails at: sweetcakesdesignllc@gmail.com and we will get back with you as soon as we possibly can :) We are also in the process of switching our current phone number over to the new store, so for now, make sure to leave us a message, and we'll call you back as soon as possible, as we check the machine a few times a day.

Thanks a lot!

Oh, and enjoy the sunshine!

Sara :)

2008-03-16T20:13:00.000-04:00

Spring is finally, almost here! After a wonderful 50 degree Friday, we were all very happy at the shop. We just cannot get enough of that vitamin D!

The cake below with the adorabley cute handmade dinos was for Ty's first birthday. And we have to give many thanks to our awesome neighbors who let us use their green wall as a backdrop. Thanks!

A brontosaurus, stegosaurus, and a TRex (who might enjoy eating too much!)

We also had the pleasure of doing a bridal shower cake for one of our future brides this summer. We loved her choice of colors with light lime greens, and light and dark pinks. A perfect feel for soon-to-be-spring!

With handmade gerber daisies, leaves and grasses, this cake is truly a taste of spring. And we love, love, love the look of the textured fondant ribbon!

Have a great weekend/week everyone!

Spring Forward!

2008-03-07T19:57:00.000-05:00

It is the weekend that we lose one hour of sleep... but all these "spring-ey" cakes lately are ok with us. We usually get these excited feelings towards the start of every new season. Lots of flowers and pastels in spring, fun bright colors in summer, beautiful fall leaves and organic colors in fall, and beautiful snow flakes and glitter in winter. We love the changes of the seasons, and all the awesome new cake designs they have in store!

Here is a birthday cake for a sweet little one

And a cute bridal shower cake

See? Even more spring. Now we just have to wait till these bloom outdoors...

Have a great weekend!

2008-03-05T16:30:00.001-05:00

Here at the shop, we are really hoping for spring to come soon! With a butterfly inspired cake this weekend, we were busy making lots of butterflies, flowers and grass... but you'll have to wait until Saturday to see the whole thing put together! And to the snow... keep melting!

One of the wedding cakes this weekend also left us waiting for spring. What a beauty in such snowy weather!

Many, many cakes

Where has the year gone!!

Sheetcake Comparison

Tim & Heather's March5, 2011 Wedding

A Very Special Birthday!!

Perfect Gift for New Mom's

Don't Forget, Only One Week til Valentines Day!

Straight From The Heart at The B.O.B

Alfred Angelo Opening a Success!

Grand Opening of Alfred Angelo Bridal Boutique

Sweet Cakes Design has been chosen to be a preferred vendor at the Grand Opening of Alfred Angelo Bridal Boutique. Come see us this Saturday from 9:00-5:00, and Sunday from 12:00-5:00 and receive a complimentary sample.Alfred Angelo3763 28th Street SEGrand Rapids, MI 49512

InFrame Bride Give Away

Its the end of October!!! Wow!

Cake Balls Are Here!!!!!

Things Keep Getting Better and Better!

Amazing Crazy Cakes

Busy, Busy and Even More Busy!

Bridesmaid Ball

Babies, Birthday's and Graduations

Website Under Construction!!!

New Things To Come!

Exclusively @ Leigh's

2009 Wedding Cakes

Bride's Choice Awards 2010

Have a Heart for Haiti

Valentines Day Treats

We're Back!

Holiday Sweet Tooth

Happy Halloween!

Grand Rapids Wedding Affair

A Birthday Celebration!

Two Tiered Mini Cakes

A Dessert for any Event

Civic Theater Cake!

A Nice Day for a Centerpiece Wedding

Bride and Bloom

A Month of June Weddings

Kid Cakes

Wedding season has begun...

Gearing up

BIG NEWS!!!

Hope you're wearing your green today...

SUPRISE and excitement!

spring forward!

just a few...

Something to warm you up

some fun ones

Happy 2009!

Holy Moly!

a few random notes

if you want an 8 track player...

lots of love for different cakes

some more for your pleasure

septembers and more

just a few...

is there another word?

Closing up July...

Seriously... July?

Whew!

More enjoyment

6-7-8

!!!!

to end our May weddings

Almost June?

Just a few...

All so different

vacation in... november?

long waits I know!

Happy Easter!

Calling all fall brides!

E-mail issues!

Spring Forward!

Sweet Cakes Design has been chosen to be a preferred vendor at the Grand Opening of Alfred Angelo Bridal Boutique. Come see us this Saturday from 9:00-5:00, and Sunday from 12:00-5:00 and receive a complimentary sample.

Alfred Angelo
3763 28th Street SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49512