Texas Cake House

The San Antonio Zoo wants an over-the-top cake for their VIP fundraiser for a new jaguar habitat, but they've got a tough request for Natalie and Dave Sideserf: they want jaguars featured prominently, but they don't want to cut into anything resembling an animal. The unusual request has the Sideserfs experimenting with new techniques, but that's not the only animal on their plate: they're also challenged to make a cricket-shaped cake out of cricket flour for an event to get kids excited about bugs.

Cakes are flying in the big Texas sky as Natalie and Dave Sideserf work on two airborne cakes. A local art school asks the Sideserfs to make a cake for their big open house, so Natalie and Dave get to work on a flying kitten cake complete with parachute. Meanwhile, when a skydiving school calls, the Sideserfs experiment with a magnetic platform to make an edible penguin that can fly.

You can't talk about Texas history without mentioning the Alamo, and the famous institution asks the Sideserfs to make a bust cake of a famous Texan for the opening of a new exhibition. Natalie and Dave also have an order for another Texas icon: country music legend Ray Benson, whose crew wants to give him a birthday surprise by presenting the cake on stage at South by Southwest in front of a giant crowd.

The stars are out in force! The Museum of Science and Technology wants a space cake to celebrate their second birthday, inspiring Natalie Sideserf to create a celestial body out of cake and edible glow-in-the-dark paint. Back on earth, the Sideserfs are star struck when they meet the ladies of the Austin roller derby league, who challenge them to create a cake for an upcoming match that will knock them out.

The famous Moontower Comedy Festival is amongst Austin's most beloved local events, and the Sideserfs are excited to make a funny cake featuring a sloth. To get it done in time, Natalie asks Dave to try his hand at sculpting for the first time. Then, they receive another sweet order from a much different client: a local sculpture garden requests a life-sized replica of one of their garden's most beautiful visitors for their gala.

"Keep Austin Weird" is the unofficial slogan of the Sideserfs' beloved home, and one of Austin's strangest institutions, the Museum of the Weird, wants a cake befitting their name to celebrate their anniversary. Then, the annual dragon boat races order a show-stopping cake to celebrate the annual Chinese festival. Natalie plans to create a massive, ornate dragon cake, but Chinese mythology is crammed with symbolism that's easy to get wrong.

Hearts come in all shapes and sizes, and the cakes coming out of Sideserf Cake Studio prove it! Two very different local Austin celebrations have ordered cakes: a group of young Irish dancers celebrate their performance at a local festival with a Claddagh-inspired cake, and some local VIP donors get surprised at their annual ball with a thank-you cake that will melt your heart.

Keep Austin Beautiful orders a cake as a thank you for the thousands of volunteers who will spend the day cleaning up Austin's waterways, so Natalie and Dave Sideserf bake and sculpt two giant koi fish that must fit together perfectly to create a yin yang effect. Meanwhile, the Austin Dance Fest is hosting its first ever youth dance contest and wants a decadent chocolate cake to honor the kids.