The 6th Cake of Christmas

It’s our third annual holiday series…. The 12 Cakes of Christmas!!  We’re oohing and aahing over twelve marvelous cake designs, created especially for this series!  All brand new, never seen before, and created by some of your favorite bakers!    For our theme this year, we’re taking a moment to reflect on our favorite Christmas memories and traditions.  It’s a feel good month, celebrating the little things that make this season shine bright.  Each of our featured bakers was asked to create a cake based on a classic Christmas tradition.

We’re officially at the halfway mark with cake number six.  Our sixth cake celebrates a tradition that’s as sweet as it is timeless.  For many of us, this is where it all began.  Our love of baking and being in the kitchen can be traced back to special moments around the holidays.  Time spent with our families, measuring, mixing and baking up memories that stay in our hearts forever.  The Sixth Cake of Christmas was inspired by…. Christmas cookies!

The sixth cake in our series comes to us from Maggie Austin, owner of Maggie Austin Cake located in Washington DC.  This is Maggie’s second year to share one of her exquisite designs in our holiday series, as she had us swooning over her plaid ruffle cake back in 2011.  Filled with symmetry and grace, Maggie’s designs have inspired an entire movement of soft, feminine, frilly cakes.  While best known for her rows of wispy, handmade fondant frills, Maggie’s signature style shines through in all of her creations.  And this year’s Christmas design is yet another example of her unique artistic vision.  Perfectly tailored with a flurry of snowflakes and a cookie ornament perched on top, today’s cake is sophistication at its best.  It’s time for The 6th Cake of Christmas!

Maggie Austin shares the inspiration behind her design:

“I grew up on the coast in Massachusetts and there’s nothing more beautiful than snow blanketing the rocky shore- pristine and monochrome against the white winter sky.  My memories of childhood, though, are all about baking.  My dad would bake fresh bread every Sunday and was a creative (though not always successful) force in the kitchen.  But holidays were all about my mom’s sugar cookies.  A consummate perfectionist, she and I spent hours rolling and cutting the dough.  I was in charge of watching them bake, knowing that just a single minute stands between tender and disaster.  Our decorations changed every year and we’d pack our creations in white tins tied with ribbon for neighbors and friends.  The cookie ornaments were my dad’s idea, though we were careful to place them only on the strongest branches of the live Norfolk Island pine that stood in our living room.”

While, of course, we are partial to this gorgeous cake, this is not the only amazing sugar work Maggie has crafted this holiday season.  Her sugar flowers are currently displayed in the White House as part of this year’s Christmas decor.  How incredible is that!  You can catch a behind-the-scenes peek at her creation process during the White House Christmas Special on HGTV.  It airs on Sunday, Dec 15th at 8:00 PM e/p.  I know my DVR is already set!

Absolutely breathtaking!  Thank you to Maggie Austin for creating this stunning snowflake cake for our series.  And for inspiring us to frilly greatness over the years.

If you love Maggie’s cakes as much as we do, you’ll be happy to know that you can learn her signature techniques in her video tutorials and classes.  Maggie’s techniques are straightforward and definitely achievable.  Plus her calm and encouraging demeanor is just what you want out of an instructor.  If you haven’t already checked it out, you can find her classes on Craftsy HERE.   

Coming up tomorrow… a new recipe and another fabulous DIY!  See you back here soon!

VENDORS & CREDITS
Cake:  Maggie Austin Cake