Polka Dot Bride is running a wedding dress giveway for Australian brides to be. The contest is only available to Australians, but surprisingly we get a good amount of Australian traffic so I thought it would be worthwhile to post about it. So if you are from Australia go ahead and enter!

Entrants need to create an inspiration board. Read more about inspiration boards and how to create one on Polka Dot Bride Blog.

Inspired by our topsy turvy Quinceañera Cake, this 3-tier sweet 16 cake is decorated with flowers, pink feathers and butterflies. The flavors include our signature pink velvet with vanilla, chocolate cake with oreos and cream filling, and vanilla cake with strawberry filling.

On Wednesday we had to say farewell to one of our interns, Risa, as she headed back to school. We wish her luck at The Culinary Institute of America! In honor of her last day, we threw a ’salad party’ and everyone brought an ingredient for Risa’s favorite salad. It was yummy - since I too love salad…I was very excited! Here you can see us clad in party hats! It’s too bad we don’t ever have any fun….ha.

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We always appreciate the recognition received from other bloggers and websites. And, since it’s been a while since we did a cake blog roundup post, I figured it was time to highlight some recent posts:

CakeSpy - Jessie of CakeSpy devotes such detail and passion to each and everyone of her posts. We were fortunate to get the opportunity to do an interview with Jessie. Both Christine and I answered several baking and decorating related questions. You can see the full interview here.

Cupcake Takes The Cake - This blog continues to amaze me in the amount of cupcake related content they generate and link too on a daily basis. How much cupcake content am I talking about? Well over a three year period they posted over 5000 cupcake posts! We are happy to be included as part of that in a recent interview posted on the blog.

NJ My Way - The cupcake trend shows no signs of slowing and this article talks about some of the places in NJ to get unique and unusual cupcakes.

Christy Hulsey featured our Bridal Shower Gift Box Cake and cupcakes in a recent post on her blog. I personally really enjoyed making this cake and appreciate Christy recognizing our work.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. Stay tuned for more posts in this series…

Our Pink Cake Box “Office” staff thought it would be funny to mold my “World’s Greatest Boss” mug in lemon jello. You see, as disturbing as it is, I seem to be Michael. I like to think it’s just because I’m “The Boss”… not because I am socially awkward. That’s what she said. Thanks guys!

My mom snapped a few photos of Indira and me towards the end of our topsy turvy cake demo at FCI. Click on the image to see the larger version.

To help sort through the seemingly endless supply of blogs, a new blog directory called Blogged has recently entered the fray. Pink Cake Box is listed in their dessert section along with many other of my favorite blogs including:

Cream Puffs in Venice
Cupcake Takes the Cake
Baking Bites

You can check out all the desserts blog here.

Here’s a great review of our tasting process. I couldn’t ask for a better review. Thanks Jennifer

So I have this small obsession. With Bleach. Fantastik with Bleach will do. I inherited this obsession from my mother. And with this strange fanaticism comes an equally compulsive addiction with clean floors. It really isn’t funny. I will crawl under tables if I have to.

My faithful employees have of course learned of my crazy love - as I inspect the mop job each night. I apologize to them incessantly as I know I’m beyond irritating! I can’t even help it. It’s like a little voice is in my head yelling ‘rub - a -dub-dub!’ It’s not a crazy schizophrenic type of voice - more like a little cheerleader, cheering for Team Soap.

Ok - so I promise there is a point to this rant…. Last week we received a surprise visit from Julie, our friendly neighborhood health inspector! Of course I was excited and yelled, “Health Department, Man Your Stations!”…. A long story short…we got an A+! No discrepancies! That’s better than no cavities! I beamed at the squeaky clean cake shop, as a proud, slightly neurotic mama.

So the moral of the story is that there is a time and a place for extreme compulsive behavior. The time is now, the place is Pink Cake Box, and the compulsion is clean.

Pink Cake Box will be closed for vacation during the week of Jan 7th. In the meantime, to satisfy you cake cravings we’ve put together a list of our top cakes from 2007 based on traffic. Thanks for making 2007 a success!

#1 - Corpse Bride Wedding Cake	#2 - Knot Party Wedding Cake
#3 - Dresser Cake	#4 - Pink Cake Box Grand Opening Cake

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Take our 7 tier cupcake stand, add a top cake decorated with sugar flowers, monogrammed initials or swarovski crystals and add our cupcakes for a great alternative to the traditional wedding cake.

Some examples of the wedding cupcake tiers we’ve created recently:

See more cupcake wedding tiers here.

We are proud to announce that Bridalwave has recognized our blog as one of the top Wedding blogs of 2007! Check out there top 10 list for some other great wedding blogs:

1. What Junebug Loves
2. Martha Stewart’s wedding blog
3. The Misadventures of a DIY Bride
4. Weddingbee ** Personal Fave
5. From “I Will” to “I Do”
6. Pink Cake Box
7. Eco Chic Weddings
8. Something Old, Something New
9. Manolo for the Brides
10. Wedaholic

Looking for a keepsake to remember your wedding cake? How about a Christmas tree ornament replica of your cake? Camille from Pretty Girl Things runs an Esty Shop with many beautiful replicas of wedding cakes. What a cute idea!

Thanks to event coordinator Angel Brave and Miss Penguin from Wedding Bee for originally posting about these wonderful little keepsakes.

Came across this gorgeous cake stand while browsing through Lucky Designs. Wouldn’t it look great served with our black and white cake?

We recently came across a relatively new New York City bridal site - brideboard.com. This site differentiates itself from the typical wedding site by allowing its users, vendors and various wedding experts the ability to contribute content.

Features include a BrideReviews section with vendor reviews, BrideBlogs with wedding advice and tips, BrideBazaar for purchasing new and used wedding products, and BrideSpace for brides to share photos and wedding experiences.

I think the site is off to a good start and if they can encourage brides to contribute I imagine they’ll have continued success. To that end, I recommend they think about running promotions to help motivate users to contribute. Barbie from bakespace.com did this rather successfully with her recipe swap site. They ran several giveaways where they tied user contributions to points. The more points you accumulated the better chance you had of winning the weekly or monthly giveway.

You can check out our profile on brideboard.com here.

I’d like to introduce you to Peter! He’s our brand new sheeter! Yes…his name is Peter the Sheeter. Ingenious, huh? We’re so happy the stork dropped him off on our doorstep. He rolls out fondant and cookie dough…yippy! We’ve rolled out close to 10,000 cookies by hand….so Peter is long over due! He’s the only guy in our shop…so he’s a lucky fellow of course. Anyhoo….I’m very excited and actually shrieked the first time I saw Peter do his rolling thang.

We’re so proud to announce that one of our interns, Kristin Dispenziere, was the winner of Seton Hall’s 2007 Just Desserts competition! She skillfully crafted red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and topped them with a fondant star.

Congratulations Kristin!

The holiday season is upon us and it is a busy time at Pink Cake Box. While cakes are still popular this time of year, we also get an influx of cookie orders especially for corporate holiday parties. Here are a collection of sweets we created last year:

Place your order soon - we fill up fast!

Today is a fantastic day. It’s fantastic for so many reasons…because global warming has helped make the day a good 60 degrees (I’m going to ignore the negative impacts of melting icebergs for the moment and enjoy the warmth in my own ignorant bliss) …I actually am not working today (yippy!)… I slept until 10:15am (Double Yippy!)…

I’m sitting on the couch watching the national dog show sipping on a freshly brewed mug of coffee….and in just a few hours we’ll be together with our family enjoying each other’s company…some turkey which will surely be succulent, and of course some pies! I finished at about 10:30pm last night with the last pie.

You might be wondering…”How many pies did she make?” Well…I only made 3 pies and one large tart. The kicker is that there will only be eleven of us around the dining room table this year. Which entitles each guest to about .36 of a pie. Pretty favorable odds in my opinion. I made 2 pumpkin pies…one with a graham cracker crust, and one with a regular pastry crust, a coffee pecan pie with my favorite butter crust, and an apple crumb tart with a shortbread crust. That one is for my mother who ‘doesn’t eat pie.’ Let’s not tell her that a tart is a pie baked in a tart shell

Of course aside from the food, the day is about giving thanks. I am thankful this year for our new commercial space, our customers, my dedicated employees, and my family. I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and hope you have at least .36 of a pie in your future!

Thanksgiving is a day filled with the sound of a crackling fire and the smell of a turkey roasting in the oven. The day is definitely all about food — the turkey, the yams, the creamed onions, the butternut squash soup, the stuffing … and of course the pies. However, to me it is a holiday that is very focused on family.

Growing up, our entire family would drive up to Cape Cod and spend the holiday weekend together with my grandparents. My cousin and I would help my mom, aunt and grandmother prepare dinner, while the boys did … well, I’m not really sure what they did.
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Our roundup of all things wedding related:

• Looking for a dream wedding destination? How about the Chateau Saint Martory in Toulouse, France. Read Bridezilla’s profile of this gorgeous wedding destination.
• Wedding Event producers June & Norma have a great eye for all things wedding related, including these cute bookplates and stationaries from Pink Loves Brown.
• With Thanksgiving approaching, Cookie Jill from CookiesHeaven has a holiday challenge for all of us. Donate to your local foodbank this holiday season. Foodbanks are struggling with less donations this year then previous years and could use our help. Read more at the NY Times.
• I was reading through Creative Blogs and came across this unique site - The Mosaic Queen Blog. She does created some beautiful cakes and cupcakes out of mosaics. She has just started a new blog, and I don’t think everything has been migrated yet - so you can check out more of her work on her old blog.

• Jess from All Things Cupcakes came across an adorable Cupcake Zip Hoodie from wetseal.com. Check out the rest of Jess’s blog for more cupcake trends and gift ideas.
• Cakespy wrote a fun holiday gift giving guide for the cake fan in your life. She covers it all from Birthday Cake Lip Balm to a 18k Tiffany Cupcake Charm. Also make sure to check out Cakespy’s Esty shop - filled with sweet artwork!

Happy Halloween!

Anne will be on Ebru satellite television today at 10 AM (with a repeat at 2:00PM) for a segment on cupcake decorating.