Happy Birthday Faye!

Ahh, one free day before another week of craziness!  And I choose to spend this beautiful day blogging about the fantastic Hello Kitty birthday event yesterday!  Boy, I've been looking forward to Faye's birthday ever since her mother contacted me about doing a dessert table!  Everybody loves Hello Kitty.  She's a staple in any young girl's life.  And it looks like she will be a staple in Faye's life too!  So, sweet baby Faye turned one this weekend!  Yes, the big ONE!  The party was held at my cousin's beautiful new house in Orange County.  The food served was absolutely delicious and the dessert table was fantabulous (*pat myself on the back*).   So what's on the menu for this dessert table?  How about Hello Kitty sugar cookies, Hello Kitty macarons, Hello Kitty cake pops, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, Hello Kitty rice krispy treats, white chocolate covered strawberries, vanilla chiffon cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, and cotton candy?  Oh, and the Hello Kitty cake.  Can't forget about that!  I did a pink velvet Hello Kitty cake.  To my amazement, there really was such a cake as pink velvet.  It is made with white chocolate instead of chocolate.  Pink velvet really has a subtle velvety taste.  Pretty darn tasty...and pink!

Oh yeah, how did I forget about the fabulous table linen???  Yes, my dear readers, this is a custom-made table linen just for sweet Faye's birthday.  You can't see in this photo, but the linen falls straight to the floor.  It was absolutely stunning and I am still in love with it!

Isn't Faye's smash cake cute?  I know, I know...what one year old need a small three tiered cake, right? Well, my Faye did.  Nevermind that she didn't know what to do with it...it was still super adorable and when she is older, I will have plenty of pictures to show her!

See those Hello Kitty cake pops?  Yeah, they were not easy to make!  I learned quite a few lessons making these cake pops...and you can be darn sure I will apply them to the next Hello Kitty cake pops! But these weren't toooo bad, for the first try.

Aren't these Hello Kitty macarons so so adorable??  Amazingly, these macarons were a lot easier to make than the first time I made them!  I actually churned out quite a few Hello Kitty macs!  Super, duper happy with them!

These are abstract Hello Kitty rice krispy treats!  I wanted to put some eyes and nose on them, but my husband convinced me that they looked nicer "abstract."  And because he suggested that, I put him to work! :)

And that, dear readers, is the Hello Kitty dessert table!  I certainly had a grand time creating this table, especially since it's for someone so special, and I hope you, dear readers, had a grand time reading and viewing this post!

Happy birthday sweet baby Faye!

Happy Birthday Jacob!

Happy, happy Monday dear readers!  Boy the weekend sure flies by fast!  And this weekend was extra special.  Sunday was my sweet Jacob's 6th birthday.  He actually had a celebration at Chuck E Cheeses but I was a bad auntie and couldn't make it.  I know, right?  No worries, I made it up to him!  He had two celebrations...I made him a a cute little cake and we celebrated on Thursday.  I think he was pretty happy with that!  Well, the cake I made was one of those 3D teddy bear cake.  It was super cute and pretty simple to make.  The only long part of the process was baking up the cake.  It took about an hour and half total from start to finish.  Although, I had to bake this cake twice.  The first time around, I tried making a white chocolate cake...this cake proved to be too moist and as I took the mold off, half of the bear's face came off.  Round two worked much, much better.  I guess I should have stuck with the instructions and made a more dense/firm cake.  Ah well...it still came out pretty cute.  Take a look:

Isn't he so cute??  Originally, the bear didn't have a tail.  I added one because bears have tails right??  Guess what this tail was made of?  A donut hole!  I had to improvise since I didn't think about a tail until I was decorating!  The fur was very simple to make...took a long time, but still fairly easy.  I think the trick to icing this cake is to have a buttercream that pipes perfectly.  And believe it or not, the most difficult time on this cake was drawing in the eyes and nose.  I know, right?  You're probably thinking that should be the easiest...unfortunately, not for me...but it's all good, the bear came out looking like a bear!

My three little munchkins...well, my cousin's munchkins, but they can be my munchkins too!

And here's baby Jared, stealing the show:

Yep, he sured loved that grass frosting...In fact, now that I think about it, I think his fingers were the culprit to the premature grass mowing inside the cake box before the celebration. Hmm, something to contemplate.  Happy birthday again Jacob love!  Hope you all enjoyed!

Rose Cake

Hooray for Friday!!  Except this Friday is gloomy and rainy...again.  I have no idea why I always end up writing a new blog post on a cold, rainy day.  I guess it's the perfect weather to curl up in bed and just write!  It's probably time for a new post anyways...I've got a few waiting to be shared but just been having one problem after another with my poor old laptop.  I'm happy to announce that the laptop is feeling much, much better, and we are finally getting down to business.  So, I have a pretty cool cake to share with you dear readers today.  It's a rose swirl cake.  What's a rose swirl cake?  Well, have you seen those really cool textured fabrics, making its way into weddings and top notch parties?  There are a bunch of really cool ones...they look really nice and super lush and are to die for.  Well, after the LDIR graduation event, Mai and I ran buck wild in the LA flower district.  Mai had also mentioned that she was loving these textured fabrics and had wanted to make some table linen in the future for an event, any event!  Of course she showed me what she was talking about and I just about fell in love myself!  We really loved all the fabric we saw, but especially loved this one:

Isn't it just too adorable??  We thought about this fabric the entire time we were frolicking in the district...so in the end, I bought it.  This picture really doesn't do it much justice.  At all.  Anyways, this was the inspiration for my cake today.  My friend Evonne, from the Bay area, actually contacted me to recreate Chip's birthday cake...just without the truffles on top and on a smaller scale.  Remember Chip's cake?  So I decided to have some fun with this cake.  I really loved this rose swirly design and designed it onto a cake.  I was so proud of my originality, until I saw that this idea has already been done.  Story of my life!  I'm still proud of this cake though.  Although I think it might have been easier to pipe the rosette with buttercream rather than white chocolate ganache.  Even so, it was an experience I learned a lot from.  Check it out!

Kinda cool huh?  I definitely know what to do the next time I want to make a rose cake!  Hope you enjoyed this post!  

CC&R Luncheon

It's Sunday and I'm thinking my weekend is just about over.  I've been so busy the past few weeks, I feel I need to tack on a few extra days to my weekend!  Too bad there aren't 50 hours in a day, with Alaska type lighting...imagine how much we can get done daily!  Anyways, today's post is about a lunch and dessert table created for CC&R Construction in San Diego!  I was super excited with this gig, as it gave me a chance to play around with savory food, rather than just desserts...although, there wasn't much options for savory food, just different foods out of the sweet category.  My friend Susan and I had sat down and talked about what to serve for the luncheon, and we spoke about cupcakes and perhaps a cookie platter of some sort and maybe some sandwiches.  Once again, I don't know how I went from these three items to a whole table full of goodies.  I think I tend to get overzealous at times and complete a table as need be and once ideas pop into my head, it's super difficult to shake it off!  Anyways, suffice it to say, I added to those three items of goodies and came up with a whole table of goodies.  I think everyone was just expecting a simple lunch before the meeting; boy, were they wrong!  I had all the food on simple white ceramic plates...no plastic here!  I brought out some pretty jars for my mini donut bites and bacon caramel popcorn.  The cupcakes sat on a small 3-tiered cupcake stand.  I even brought in my tall vase with curly willows, which I had hung up a cutout of CC&R.  I must admit, I was feeling a bit silly when I brought my vase full of branches in.  I even debated whether I should bring it in.  It was starting to feel a bit much to me.  I mean, Susan did say nice...and this is how I do nice!  So, what the heck, I dragged the vase all the way already, I might as well bring it in!

See, I had some pretty simple lunch food out...cold cut sandwiches, sliced salami with cheese and crackers, fresh fruits and veggies.  For dessert, I made chocolate cupcakes, custard cream puffs, vegan oatmeal cranberry cookies, rocky road brownies, bacon caramel popcorn and mini donut bites.  Beverage options include fresh water, home-squeezed lemonade, and fresh coffee.  I didn't have enough time to pull out all the little labels I had made...I also had little tongs for the food too, but just didn't have time to pull them out before people arrived for lunch.  Reminder to self: it always takes longer than I think to set up!

Susan wanted CC&R on some of the cupcakes, so CC&R she got!  And we had also talked about hammers and tools and whatnots, since CC&R is a construction specialist.  Thought it might be fun to incorporate the theme.  I actually found a hammer mold and was able to churn out some hammers for these cupcakes.  It's amazing what's out there nowadays!

Overall, this was a fun experience.  What I learned?  Arrive earlier!

Enjoy!