Art and Appetite is celebrating its one year anniversary on October 19th! This is the perfect time to do a giveaway. To start if off, I will be giving away 6 books! Yes, SIX! I have been blessed with so many loyal readers and wonderful emails that I would love to give everyone a chance to win a set of books. THANK YOU everyone! Contest has ended. Check below for winners.

I’ll keep this post short and simple. All you have to do is guess how many pieces of chocolate chips are on the photo above. You can enter by leaving a comment on this post and/or leaving a comment on the Facebook page (look for the official “status” post). I will pick TWO winners; one from this blog and another one from the Art and Appetite Facebook page. You may only enter twice; once on this blog and once on Facebook. Yes, you may ask anyone from your household to enter. Prizes are not redeemable for cash. You must have a valid email address to enter (so I can contact you).

The winner on this blog will recieve four books:
Wedding Cake Art and Design by Toba Garrett
Sugar Orchids for Cakes by Alan Dunn, Tony Warren and Tombi Peck
Sugar Roses for Cakes by Tombi Peck, Alan Dunn and Tony Warren
Satin Ice Sugar Craft by Mercedes Strachwsky

The winner on Facebook will recieve two books:
Wedding Cake Art and Design by Toba Garrett
Satin Ice Sugar Craft by Mercedes Strachwsky (autographed copy) 

Contest ends on Friday, October 22, 2010 at 11:59 PST. CONTEST IS OVER. WINNERS  ARE ANNOUNCED BELOW.

What a close match! Thank you everyone for participating! The chips are triple checked by two people for accuracy. The total number of chocolate chips is:

968

Edited to add: As of 2013, AFTER the contests winner/winners have received their prize/prizes, I have deleted several comments due to an aftermath of realizing missed spam comments. On this matter, the number and order of comments is no longer accurate. Again, this has happened AFTER the winners have been announced during the time frame of the contest.  For updates on future giveaways, you can subscribe HERE, follow me on Twitter or join me on Facebook. Good luck!

Hello everyone! I know, it’s been a while since my last post. I’ve had families from around the globe visiting us and I’ve been swamped with so many projects. To start it off, I want to share some cakes I’ve done for a couple of magazines.

A few months ago, I worked with Jackie Shaffer of Cake Central Magazine to create a cake for their August issue. The magazine has monthly trends, where they feature different cakes of the same theme. This time, they wanted something Chandelier inspired. Here is what I came up with.

I went with something simple yet clean. Simple isn’t always easy because there is very little room for mistakes. A huge chunk of my time was actually spent on getting the fondant smooth and clean. I barely cover a cake at night because there is very little light to spot the flaws. The sun is definitely my best friend when it comes to cakes. The black accents in the other hand were done using molds found here. I then enhanced them by brushing a couple layers of confectioners glaze.

This cake was featured in the summer section of the magazine. It was actually my first topsy turvy cake and also my first experience with giant roses. Thanks to my good friend, Jacqueline Butler for her guidance. Comparing my roses to hers, I wish I could have done a better job. She is a flower empress!

Oh, and I used this mold to create the floating effect on the bottom tier, while the other elements were done using  custom molds.

For this next cake, I worked with Victoria Smith and Suzanne Shade for the Minted Ad they were working on. This beautiful ad is featured in Town and Country Weddings Magazine Fall/Winter. Also, check out the Minted website for beautiful invitations.

Victoria wanted a cake similar to my signature “birds and buds” cake. With very little time on creating this cake, I was glad I kept the extra buds I made from my last project. This is one actually turned out to be my favorite version. Check out Victoria’s beautiful blog to see the behind the scenes.

You know, I really missed blogging. To celebrate my come back, I will be posting a book giveaway next week! So stay tuned!

For updates on this giveaway, you can subscribe HERE,  follow me on Twitter or join me on Facebook. Thanks!