How Great Cakes are Made

Slowly, very slowly! We built Gateaux on the premise that quality can't be rushed. Over a decade later, we still limit the number of cakes that we'll take in any given weekend to three. They are baked fresh, never frozen, and are frosted in a base of pure-butter Buttercreme, then topped with a hand-rolled eighth inch of Swiss Fondant for a flawless finish. You won't find a more delicious fondant out there. We've searched far and wide, and made our own for years until we found a company that made a fondant that was even better than ours (it tastes like powdered doughnuts)!

Decorating

The average decoration time on one of our wedding cakes is 15-36 hours! That's three of us spending between a five and thirteen hour day on one cake. That doesn't include baking, or any of the frosting items made in advance (see below). Why so long? First of all, we don't have mass-produced stock designs, each cake is a unique creation. Our crew meticulously copies lace and embroidery details onto the fondant with a stylus or pin prick technique. We custom match all of our colors to swatches supplied by our clients (no random bakery mint greens or bubblegum pinks here). Our cakes are often hand-painted, lustered and even guilded in edible gold leaf. We hand cut stencils and templates to match filigree patterns from invitations and brocade fabrics. Robin, the owner, does all of the cake design meetings, and is always present for decorating, so there's no room for interpretation of your cake design. The cake is made exactly how you designed it with her.

Decorative Details

Our bow loops, gum paste flowers and sugar monograms are all created in-house a week in advance of the wedding to ensure ample drying time. We've made edible cake toppers ranging from the Taj Mahal to the bride and groom's favorite pooch! That means, that at any given time, there are hundreds of tiny gum paste blooms, prim little bows, and crazy curly-Q mad hatter accessories in various states of creation gracing our bakery racks. Ahhh, sweet chaos!

Delivery and Set up

Cakes are delivered to the reception site unassembled. We wouldn't trust just anyone to set one of these up, so they are delivered by the decorating team ourselves. No delivery guys. We stack the layers once on site, finish the bottom borders, add the finishing touches and make sure that the cake table is decorated beautifully before we go. We don't charge for our delivery service within the Twin Cities metro area. We even include the use of any of our cake stands in the pricing of our cakes, we just ask that you assign a member of the bridal party to return them to us the following week.