Color Block Cake

We’re excited to welcome our newest contributor, Allison Kelleher, owner of AK Cake Design!  She’s here today with an inside look at her creative process.

For me, making great cakes is always about process and craftsmanship.  I really love the act of building something with my hands: playing with shapes, colors, and textures – to create nuance and what I like to call an ‘intricate simplicity.’

I’d say about 10% of my time goes into design – and 90% is devoted to creating a perfect foundation:  delicious cake, straight lines, smooth fondant.  As I see it, you can’t make a great cake (or a great anything!) without a great base to build on.

Inspiration comes to me from many places – art, nature, patterns (yes, lots of patterns!). . . . Most often, I’m inspired by certain elements like light, color, or texture.  This color-block cake is a bit of an anomaly for me – rather than using something as a springboard, I set out to make my own cake rendition of Antonia Sellbach’s artwork.

I think Sellbach’s use of color and pattern is brilliant – I kept returning to her color palette – tweaking it ever-so-slightly.  I used cut-out squares and triangles to create a random pattern – but still within the spirit of the original work.  And to add depth of color, I painted each fondant piece with the same shade of paint (petal dust + lemon extract) before applying them to the cake.  I purposefully left paintbrush strokes on the pieces to, again, harken back to the original.

The end result is a very bright and bold cake!  Thank you all for reading – I will see you next time!

VENDORS & CREDITS:
Cake : AK Cake Design
Photography : Lara Ferroni
Cake Stand :  Sarah’s Stands
Inspiration : Antonia Sellbach
Learn From This Baker : Modern Mosaic Cakes with Allison Kellher on Craftsy