My Willie Nelson Experience

I’m really fortunate to live in a city like Nashville, TN. I’ve had the honor & pleasure of meeting and working with quite a few musicians and celebrities that live around here. What a perk!

Around this time last year, I was contacted by CMT to design and create a birthday cake for the one & only Willie Nelson. Being birthed and raised in Texas, there was no way I was NOT going to make a cake for the Red-Headed Stranger! It was explained to me that the cake would be presented to him during CMT’s Hot 20 Countdown show on CMT as a celebration of his 80th birthday so it had to “stand out” for television.

I had seen Natalie Sideserf’s Willie Nelson cake (Hi Natalie!) and it is just so awesome! And even though cake sculpture is a part of my repertoire, I didn’t want to copy her work. I paint on cakes all the time – that’s one of the techniques I’m known for around here – and that’s what I envisioned for this cake. I did take some inspiration from a cake made by The White Flower Cake Shoppe and designed the cake based on a particular black & white photograph of Willie and added the iconic red bandana for contrast.

Here’s a video I created (with the help of my husband) about that experience: