Exploring Soulard and Into the City on Sunday (Cakes 113-123)

The girls and I were excited to have the opportunity to meet one of the "Cakeway to the West" artists today. Rich Brooks announced on Facebook that he would be starting a new cake at the Soulard Art Market. We haven't seen the cakes in that area, and have definitely never seen an unfinished cake, so we decided to drive out there after our usual Sunday routine. I knew Chloe was excited about it when she kept saying, "Mom, it's almost noon," and, "Mom, we're going to be LATE." I tried to explain that he would be there until 6...

Rich told us that he spends as long on a cake as he needs to, in order to do it right. I told him that we LOVE his cakes, and it is always fun to see a new one. I made sure I knew which ones of his we've seen, so that I could tell him what we specifically liked. We've seen his Soulard Restoration Group, Meramec Caverns, SSM Cardinal Glennon, Maritz, Art Museum, Lyon Park, and Mastodon State Park cakes...and those are not the only ones he's done. I can't wait to see the Citygarden and Kiener Plaza cakes. I've only seen pictures of those! (For reference on the sidebar in case you're curious, Rich Brooks painted cakes 116, 110, 95, 78, 68, 60, and 6.) Lots of the cake artists are not nearly as good as he is; he's definitely one of the best ones.

Now Holly really wants to paint her own cake...she really does! In fact, later in our visit, she actually touched the orange part of the cake, which was WET, and got some orange paint on her arm. She didn't mess up the cake, though. Rich knew there'd be kids there...he was very nice about it. (And of course I got on to Holly a little.) Then at the next cake we saw, she was worried about touching it, because it might be wet too. That told me that she didn't really understand that this cake was "in process" and not finished. Oh well...I'm trying to show the girls what the artistic process on this project is like!

On to some Soulard cakes...the first one was at Clementine's, which is one of the Midwest's first gay bars, having opened in the 1970's. Clementine's is also the starting point for the Mardi Gras Barkus Pet Parade. Each year thousands of dog owners dress up their pooches in costumes for the parade. It's a big event!

The Sweet Divine is just a block or so away. We stopped in for a snack! The Sweet Divine used to just be a cupcake truck, until the owners won the Food Network Cupcake Wars with their Drunken Pig cupcake. (It was the Angry Birds episode of Cupcake Wars, apparently.) I wasn't brave enough to try it...I wish now that I had! It has sharp cheddar cheese, Newcastle beer, sharp cheddar cream cheese frosting, and is topped with bacon. The restaurant just opened in the spring of 2013...it's darling! The cupcakes are $3.00 or so.

The one bad thing about exploring this area on Sunday was that the Soulard Market was closed. We will definitely have to stop back by on a Saturday morning...there are so many cakes in this area, it's no trouble to see some different ones after a trip to the market!

The flowers at the Soulard Restoration Group cake are just wonderful! This is such a pretty setting for a cake!

Then we saw the Historic Trinity Lutheran Church cake.

This is called "photobombing sister pictures." Chloe insisted upon this at almost every cake we saw today.

The next cake we visited was at Lafayette Park.

Did you know that sometimes you can get the best smiles by practicing the worst mean faces first?

Not in Soulard anymore, but there are LOTS and LOTS of city cakes right there...so it was impossible to be in the area without nabbing just a few! First, the Ameren cake:

Just after I took the above picture, Chloe noticed this little friend, perched on the candle of the cake...she's always interested in checking out the candle, so of course she spotted this spider! And after that, Chloe wouldn't go near the cake again. 

There are two cakes very close to Union Station. The St. Louis Union Station cake, which is located right by the Hard Rock Cafe and main entrance, and the Emmis Communications cake. 

If you can't climb on the cakes, climb on your sister. Right?

When we were at this cake, we met some people (two men and two women) who were just getting started. The women were standing on the top tier of the cake...both of the girls immediately said something to me about it, but I wasn't comfortable telling those folks to stay off of the cakes. They can figure it out like we did, as they get into it more. And as you can see, we don't stay completely off of the cakes...we just don't climb up on the layers. I think it's impossible for children to stay off of the base. But Holly did ask them how many cakes they'd found...only 15 or so. Chloe told them we had 112. Holly said, "Are we winning?"

And next the Scottrade Center cake...Scottrade Center is the home of the St. Louis Blues. You can see that as the afternoon went on and I kept driving to new cakes, our pictures got sillier and sillier!

Can you spot the cake in this next picture? Cake hunting is not for amateurs, people! It's not always easy! But finding city cakes on a Sunday is definitely easier than on any other day...there weren't many people at all in this area, and parking was plentiful!

It was hard for me to drive home...there were literally cakes in every direction for us to see. But, eleven cakes were definitely enough for one day. We'll be back to get more city cakes soon! Since we've saved a lot of the cake-heavy areas for last, we should rack up some big numbers in the next few weeks. That's good, because once school starts, we won't have much cake-finding time.