How do you design a single event element that gets 2,000 Facebook fans and a mention on the red carpet at the Golden Globe awards? If you’re Kimberly Bailey, owner of the Butter End Cakery in Los Angeles, you make a confection that looks like it defies gravity. For actress Kaley Cuoco’s New Year’s Eve wedding in December, Bailey crafted a six-tier wedding cake that hung upside down from a chandelier throughout the evening.
“While [the cake] created an unprecedented wave of press for us—and was no doubt a structural challenge—it wasn’t the biggest project for us in 2013,” says Bailey, 44.
In the past year, other feats of sugary engineering include creating a cake for a 400-guest wedding in St. Barts. After shipping products to the island months in advance and collaborating on site with French chefs, the cake was complete—and staffers started working on the couple’s second wedding in Los Angeles. That one called for 400 mini cakes, another massive bridal cake, and an extremely detailed groom’s cake. All this was accomplished “with a very small staff and not much sleep,” Bailey says. Another big project for 2013: a cake for the cast of How I Met Your Mother, which featured the New York City skyline embedded with actual lights.
For Bailey, getting creative with sugar is a “home away from home” and a “source of joy” that began by experimenting with fondant out of a tiny kitchen in a Venice Beach guest cottage in 2008. “Within weeks, I was overrun by baking and decorating supplies as my obsession took over my little studio,” Bailey says.
