Happy Birthday Mona!

I love Saturday mornings.  The hubby is snoring away, Pepper is on one side of me and my coffee is on the other.  Even better, this Saturday morning is one of those rainy, stay at home kind of weather.  It's so nice to just hear the rain plattering on the roof and sitting in semi-darkness because of the gloomy sky.  So what's better than quiet time with the family and a cup of coffee?  Well, catching up on the week and writing a new post, that's what!  My dear friend Susan contacted me about doing a cake for her mother's birthday.  Susan and her brother were planning a surprise dinner for their mother, Mona, at The Old Spaghetti Factory in downtown San Diego on Monday.  Of course, I was invited to attend the surprise party, which made life easier on the planning aspect, since I can just bring the cake with me!  Susan mentioned chocolate cake and enough to feed roughly twenty-something people.  The design elements were left entirely up to me (which I completely love!) so I went with flowers and butterflies.  Purple is Mona's favorite color, so I wanted to figure out a way to incorporate purple into the cake, since I was stuck on the idea of white lacy butterflies!

So, I decided to make a two-tiered cake!  The bottom cake is chocolate with a chocolate hazelnut buttercream filling and the top tier is red velvet with cream cheese frosting.  Both cakes were covered in fondant (since I really love the look of fondant cakes...ok, ok...I also admit my frosting smoothing skills aren't quite up to snuff...I'm working on it!).  I also decided to try my hand at making those loopy bows so that it can sit on top of the smaller cake.  I have learned quite a lot when I made these bows.  Apparently, Duff brand fondant....never, ever use except for covering cakes.  You know how you can use fondant or gumpaste to make flowers and figurines out of?  Well, Duff brand is just to soft and pliable to ever dry.  Like, ever.  I cut out strips of plum purple and also had strips of lavender purple (which I mixed Duff brand with Wilton).  I shaped the strips and waited for them to dry.  One week later (yes, seriously!), as I was trying to put the bow together, the plummy purple loops kept getting squished because it didn't completely firm up!  To fix this, I re-cut strips of plummy purple (after I mixed it with some gumpaste) and had one day to let it harden out so that I can use it.  I also finally got some tylose powder this past week too!  (After this whole nonsense of taking a week to somewhat dry, for future usage, I'm going to make sure to knead some tylose powder into that fondant!)

These bows were actually pretty awesome.  They were really simple to make but looked really nice!  I thought they sat on cakes very well, giving a very celebratory feel!  So, I had mentioned I made flowers and lacy butterflies for this cake too.  I wanted to create a design with the butterflies in mind.  I really love the lacy butterflies that I bought during my road trip and wanted to use it.  To me, it reminds me of weddings but I wanted to use them now, for this event!  So, I figured flowers and butterflies will make the cake more spring-like and little less wedding-ish.

See, aren't the butterflies adorable?  They looked (and were) super fragile.  Each piece on the cake was individually hand crafted by yours truly and I just think nothing is more special than hand-crafted gifts.  Every single piece is different from the other...they may look deceptively similar, but I find great joys in knowing they aren't!  I also decided to make the "Happy Birthday" banner at the bottom of the cake at the last minute.  It has also come to my attention that I definitely need to improve upon my writing skills.  Time to bust out those third grade cursive writing pads and repeat as necessary! Overall, I was pretty pleased with this cake!  It's becoming more and more easy for me to do cakes (as I used to prefer cupcakes and will make cupcakes instead of tackling cakes) and I find that I actually really enjoy doing cakes....or perhaps it's just the whole baking thing as a whole!  But it never ceases to amaze me what I can do, and I never thought I'd ever do cakes!  So every single cake I make, I am extremely proud of the turn out.  I'm waiting for that one day when churning out a cake is just as simple as churning out cupcakes!  I think I'm almost there, but a few more cakes won't hurt!

Happy Saturday and St. Patrick's Day everyone!

Congrats LDIR graduates!

Boy, what a weekend!!  In fact, what a week!!  This week went by somewhat slow and somewhat fast!  Looking back at the week, it seem to take forever to reach Saturday, yet, it is now almost the start of another week!  Well, this was one hectic week and weekend because, once again, I had the greatest pleasure of working with the same folks from the "For the Love of Justice" event!  This event was super special because it was a celebration event for those graduating from the "Leadership Development in Interethnic Relations" (LDIR) program!  And even more special, my other other half, Christina was graduating from the program!  I was contacted to create a dessert table for their graduation reception.  The colors were ivory, royal blue and mahogany brown...very rich and distinct colors!  The reception was also held outside in a beautiful courtyard at The Village at Ed Gould Plaza.  Everything turned out quite beautiful!  Take a look!

I dragged my sweet friend Mai away from her  bed around 4 am Saturday morning...I know, we're a little crazy, but hey, we enjoy what we do!  I had asked my dear friend to help me set up this event and to also handle the floral arrangements, since she has many years of experience in that field!  We decided to hit up the LA flower district before heading to the venue to set up...hence, waking up at 4 am...(we have both decided that sleep is highly over-rated, and us, being super-women, can handle 2 hours of sleep!)  Did I mention that we're crazy?  Well, we may be slightly... however, to pull out this beautiful set up, despite the tiniest bits of set backs we had that morning, and running on 2 hours of sleep, we really must be super-women, in my humble opinion! Ok, ok, enough pats on the back...hehee...The only hiccup we really, really had was the sun following our beautiful set up and melting away the meltables on our table!  We had to play "move the table from the sun" a few times, but in the end, the sun didn't cause too much damage!

 

Aren't they cute?  They're baked mini cake donuts!  Guilt-free!!  I originally bought one mini donut pan and one regular sized donut pan...I used it maybe once or twice and just really love the cuteness factor of mini-sized anything.  Although, I must admit, coming from a donut background, mini donuts knocked on my heart a little bit more.  So, I decided to put the pan to use and make some baked mini donuts for this event.  Of course, on recipe will make about 5 dozen mini donuts.  I only had one mini pan!  And instead of scratching the idea, I did what anyone else of my craziness would: buy 2 more pans!!  And that's what I did!  They were well worth it though...these are just too darn cute!!  And "healthy" too!  My favorite on this table would have to be my bacon caramel popcorn drizzled with chocolate.  They were so good!  I made a test batch last week and messed around with the recipe and got yummy goodness.  The bacon was smokey and crispy, and the caramel light and creamy, infused with chai tea and cayenne to give it a light, robust (oxymoron isn't it?) taste.  I hope everyone at the event had a chance to try the popcorn! 

Of course, I had a blast designing and setting up this table!  It always is a blast!  However, this set up was made even more fun and delightful with the company of my sweet friend and her artistic touches upon the table!  Congrats to the new LDIR graduates!

Until the next madness begins! 

Happy 90th Birthday!

Yes, you read the title right!  90!!  This past Saturday, Jennifer's family threw a gathering for her grandfather's 90th birthday!  Amazingly, the weather here in San Diego was just beyond perfect that Saturday!  I mean, we had that nasty storm just the week before, and today, it's overcasty with the threat of rain.  Yes, they were lucky indeed!  And, they had given me the honor of baking cupcakes for them!  Which, indeed, was a joy because it's not everyday one gets to bake to honor 90 years of living!  So for the birthday party, I made vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream, chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream, and red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

I also made some vanilla sugar cookies for the family in the shape of "90."  This was something a little extra from me...the perks of having a baking friend?  Sure, why not?  I iced the cookies with fondant and garnished it with some grey sugar crystals on the "9" and dusted the "0" with pearl luster dust.  I find that I love to decorate sugar cookies with fondant more because it usually looks perfect every single time.  I have more trouble with royal icing...don't quite have that steady hand!  I used Duff brand fondant because it actually tastes pretty decent compared to the Wilton ones.  Although, I do think it's time to make more marshmallow fondant.  Now that is a tasty one!  And I'm sure it will taste even better on sugar cookies!!  (It's like a light bulb suddenly went off in my head...).  Hmm, the brilliant ideas that come to mind when one least expects it to!

[Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream]

 [Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting]

[Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream]

I certainly had a grand time making these cupcakes!  I hope Jennifer and her family enjoyed these cupcakes and I am eternally grateful for their loyal support! 

Cheers!