Recipe ‘cards’ courtesy of PaperlessPost

Recipe ‘card’ courtesy of PaperlessPost

Recipe ‘card’ courtesy of PaperlessPost

Recipe ‘card’ courtesy of PaperlessPost

Recipe ‘card’ courtesy of PaperlessPost

Recipe ‘card’ courtesy of PaperlessPost

Recipe ‘cards’ courtesy of PaperlessPost

At five years old, Roxanne Wickware had obvious artistic talent but it’s only been a little over a year since she found a way to incorporate her artistry into her career. Now, as a freelance baker, she’s able to pick and choose her jobs, and says, “when you find what you’re really meant to do, everything else falls into place.”

By Stephanie Wright

Last Sunday at The Cake Show, which was held at the Artscape Wychwood Barns and produced by the Bonnie Gordon School, Wickware took home first place in the professional designers’ Cake Challenge.

Wickware has come full circle in just about a year and a half with the school. Starting as a full-time apprentice and making mental notes while she washed dishes and assisted in every class, she’d go home and practice what she’d seen being taught during the day. It wasn’t the first time she’d unconventionally attended artistry classes. When she was five, her mother used to dress her in her pajamas in time for an evening art class for adult painters where she learned advanced techniques like pointillism, — the application of tiny dots of pure colour to ‘trick’ the eye into seeing a much wider colour spectrum — but it wasn’t an enjoyable experience and eventually her parents allowed her to stop going.

Since graduating from the school, Wickware has launched her own business, Roxycakes, for which she runs a home office and rents commercial kitchen space to bake and design in. Her goal, which she has already achieved, was to create one cake per week. She likes to take each cake seriously and doesn’t want to get overrun with work.

Becoming a freelance baker wasn’t a direct route, on the advice of her parents, Wickware became a English/French translator. Growing up in Timmins, Ontario, to Francophone parents, French was her first language. It seems though that she inherited more than just the language of French culture from her family; Wickware says, “I love food. All food. … I used to press up against the glass at bakeries, even Starbucks, and admire the look of the baking.” Though she loved to bake, entertain and to paint, it didn’t come together until she walked into a bookstore on her lunch one day and saw Martha Stewart Wedding Cakes. Something just clicked. Within days she’d discovered the Bonnie Gordon School and quit her job. Today, she teaches at the school where she learned everything from.

The kicker? Wickware’s body is highly intolerant of sugar so she can’t test or enjoy anything she makes, let alone any other baked goods. To overcome this challenge, she tested her recipes on everyone she could get to try a sample of her cake. She made feedback cards which she left with local businesses along with 50 samples of cake and asked for clients and employees to taste and comment on the cake: she refined her recipes until they were consistently receiving excellent critical feedback.

Equating her inability to taste her creations to Beethoven’s inability to hear his music, Wickware doesn’t see her particular challenge as a detriment to her career – she knows she’s gone over and above all requirements to ensure her cakes taste heavenly and sees her job as the antidote to her sugar cravings. She even considered calling her business Beethoven’s Cakes.

The ‘cheese’ cake she designed and won with at The Cake Show is currently her pièce de résistance. When she first created it for a wedding in wine country, she knew she’d finally gained the confidence to trust her own creative instincts without looking for inspiration and approval from her peers. Now, she’s looking to create other completely original designs for her clients, “people are looking to me to create a showpiece, they like different and artistic cakes,” she reports, and she’s happy to design and bake them – as long as it’s only one a week!

Roxanne’s website is: roxycakes.ca

Find the other winners from The Cake Show here

Read Catherine’s comment about The Cake Show here

Tonight’s the night at the Brooklyn Pop-Up Wedding Series for The Crane Chandelier!

Catherine and Stephanie G. are teaching brides and industry to make origami cranes in the heart of the DIY world.

Find out more about The Crane Chandelier Project (and see our new pictures!)

Read about the project at the Brooklyn Pop-Up Wedding Series and the Martha Stewart Weddings Chapel

Read what The Brooklyn Bride has to say on The Bride’s Guide (the Martha Stewart Weddings blog)

Meet Laura Floyd, a bride-to-be who will marry her sweetheart, Matt Boonstra, on August 22.

By Stephanie Wright

Laura’s goal for her wedding, first and foremost is an evening that is clearly reflective of herself, of Matt and of their relationship.

They’ll be married at the Holy Rosary Church and the reception will follow at the Burlington Golf and Country Club, they chose the Country Club partly for its picturesque views. Laura says she’s learned along the way that a bride can really express herself if she doesn’t take the first available option for everything. She and Matt have been careful about their choices — they want to keep everything romantic and soft and about them, rather than creating a cookie cutter wedding day that could be anyone’s.

Incorporating a number of DIYs into her wedding day, such as paperbag lanterns that she’ll place around the terrace. She has an image of a friend’s wedding in her head of the bride leaning over and lighting lanterns just before her guests arrive which she loves. Laura will also provide handmade message cards for her guests to write their greetings and wishes on. She wants, as she says, ” an easy going night that my guests will walk away and remember that it was created by us along with our family and friends.”

Laura was inspired by the origami cranes at The Wedding Show in January and has decided to incorporate them into her day as well. When we talked last month, she was thinking about creating a tree in the entrance to the club and covering it with folded cranes, incorporate cranes into her bouquet or the boutonniers, she might also use the cranes as her RSVP insert into her invitation, or as placecards for her guests.

Like the rest of her wedding, the cranes seemed like a fitting and relevant addition for Laura and Matt, “we just fell into the colours for the wedding, ” she said, flipping through her binder of wedding inspiration, “soft greens, creams and pale yellows just seem to fit because we don’t want to take away from the view outside.” The cranes will add to the nature-inspired feel, I suspect.

The Wedding Co. will keep up with Laura as she heads into the last two months of wedding planning and keep you up to date with her sweetly crafted day.