Letter Cakes

We aren't planning on having a traditional wedding cake, but if we were I love the look of these seemingly plain cakes decorated with a splash of color. Of course if these were our cakes they would surely have yellow writing instead of red and pink!

Bow Tied Cupcakes

I recently launched a second blog called Sweets and Celebrations in order to chronicle my baking. To see more of these bow tied cupcakes along with other Sweet things simply click here!

It's Strawberry Season

I have always loved strawberries and I love baking with fresh ingredients so when my coworker challenged me to bake an all strawberry cupcake I was quite excited. I bought fresh strawberries from a fruit stand in Sonoma and then adapted a vanilla cupcake recipe by adding fresh strawberries and a fresh strawberry puree. I then added some more strawberries and strawberry puree to my buttercream and the final result was very tasty...or so I've been told since I gave up unnecessary sweets at the 3 month mark.

Dessert

Having just graduated from pastry school and choosing Love is Sweet as the theme for our wedding makes dessert a big deal! I have always been more drawn to dessert displays over traditional tiered wedding cakes but selecting the perfect sweet treats to adorn our dessert table has not been easy and finding someone to make them has been even more difficult. I am amazed at how many Cake decorators are in the bay area, but none of them specialize in providing an entire dessert display. I've decided to prepare some of the desserts myself and enlist the help of a few of my fellow pastry school graduates to bring our wedding dessert display to life!

Lemon Drop Bake Shop

I can't believe that Pastry School is actually over, we graduated yesterday after what felt like the quickest 6 months ever...I guess time really does fly when you're having fun! As part of our graduation each student prepared a dessert display based on a theme of their choosing. I picked lemon partly based on my love of yellow and partly based on lemon meringue tarts which turned out to be my favorite dessert learned in school. It's hard to imagine how I'll spend my time now that I won't be balancing work and school, but something tells me it will still be spent with lots of butter and sugar!

Daisy Surprise

I had so much fun making this daisy inspired dessert display for a co-workers birthday and I love the pop of white daisies on all of the chocolate! She couldn't decide if she wanted cupcakes or a cake so I made both and I even used the leftover cake remnants to make cake pops which was so easy and fun. I figured if Starbucks sells them I better try making them and I now see why they are such a trend. I was pleased with how the final product turned out and I hope the birthday girl is too!

Happy Birthday Kerstin!

Lots of Lemon

I baked these lemon chiffon cupcakes filled with lemon curd and lemon buttercream in preparation for my culinary school final. It's so hard to believe it is actually coming to an end, but with this being my last week I suppose it's time to face the facts. We have our final written exam tonight and then we spend the rest of this week and weekend preparing for our practical exam and graduation party. My theme for the party is lemon so you'll be seeing more and more lemon inspired desserts as the week progresses.

Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes

These double chocolate cupcakes are not nearly as visually exciting as the angry birds, but they taste delicious. I finally perfected my chocolate cupcake and chocolate frosting recipes and this is the final result. What better way to start the week than with cupcakes!

Croquembouche

On the theme of wedding cakes (seen here), we also created a traditional Croquembouche often served at French weddings instead of wedding cake. This cream puff extravaganza is not only quite tasty, but also very fun to make. I especially liked making spun sugar despite the hot sugary mess that covered the kitchen!

Wedding Cakes

[A Kitchen full of Wedding Cakes]

[Daisy Cake]

[The Back]

It's hard to believe I only have 1 month of Culinary School left, but I guess time really does fly when you are having fun! This week was my favorite week so far as we spent all 3 classes on Wedding Cakes and the final result is pictured above. I was inspired by my love of yellow to create the Daisy Cake and while I do not plan on having a 3 tier cake for my wedding I was quite pleased with my first wedding cake!

Mousse Cakes

Raspberry Mousse cakes decorated with stencil ribbon sponge cake, glacage, and white chocolate. I had never seen or eaten anything like this, but they turned out fabulous and are more visually interesting than most regular mousse cakes.

Happy Birthday

We celebrated my future mother in-laws birthday this weekend and it order to make it extra special I made her a chocolate chocolate chocolate cake. The devil's food chocolate cake paired perfectly with the chocolate mouse filling and the chocolate fudge frosting...yum!

Today is her actual birthday and I hope she still has leftovers to enjoy...Happy Birthday Keven!

Princess Cake

We made princess cake at school last week and I have to say I think it was my favorite project so far. The subtle green marzipan shell decorated with soft pink roses make the cake look so delicate while the inside layers of chiffon cake, raspberry jam, and diplomat cream (pastry cream mixed with whipped cream) make the flavor so delectable. I will definitely be making this again soon!

Happy Halloween!

I hope you all have something fun planned for Halloween Weekend. Ian and I will be dressing up as Mr. and (soon to be) Mrs. Peanut, we thought it was creative since he is allergic to nuts. In order to kick off the weekend I made these Pumpkin Spice Halloween themed cupcakes and while decorating with cream cheese frosting can be difficult I was pleased with the final result (especially the mummy).

Clown Cupcakes

These Clown Cupcake's would be perfect for a child's birthday party...too bad I don't know very many young children or I'd be in business. Instead, I'll be using the striped buttercream technique to create more adult looking cupcakes in the future.

Happy Birthday Kathryn!

Flower Cupcakes

I made these Flower Cupcakes for my coworkers surprise bridal shower! I started with the yellow bowl and covered a styrofoam ball with green granulated sugar to fit inside, then I attached the unfrosted cupcakes to the styrofoam with toothpicks in order to get the placement I was looking for. I made every flower cupcake a little different and dyed the buttercream three varieties of yellow and orange in order to match her wedding colors. I will definitely be recreating this flower arrangement idea in the future as the colors and flower varieties are endless.