Little girl Emma's grown up cake

Emma turned two, loves zebras, and already had a picture picked out - a rather fancy, grown up cake! We made one large bottom tier of white cake with vanilla buttercream and the two smaller, top tiers were chocolate with chocolate buttercream. The outside was marshmallow fondant with pink buttercream pearls. We must admit, we wish we had this cake for our own birthdays!

Lessons in buttercream design

 

As much as we enjoy fondant, sometimes our arms start to ache from rolling it out! Fondant allows you to play and make astounding creations, but traditional buttercream (swiss meringue, of course!) decorating will always be our favorite. It lets us practice piping technique and experiment with textures. The patterns featured above are our go-to ways to decorate cakes. Fresh flowers also can help fancy it up!

Princess Power!

Every girl needs a princess party! Pink and purple - mandatory. We made:

• Three tier white cake with vanilla frosting.
• Sugar cookie wands decorated with white royal icing and gold sparkles
• Crown cookies for the two sister princesses, Alyssa and Kayla.

Oh, hey ombre.

We can't get enough of ombre. It's an easy way to add a "wow factor" to any cake. As Melyssa demonstrates in the picture, we did a quick swirl of vanilla swiss meringue buttercream to create layers of flowers on a vanilla cake. We used differing levels of blue dye in each cake pan to create the inner ombre and then used the same method for the icing. Easy, peasy!

Frilly undies for a tropical getaway

For a friend's bachelorette party, we traveled to Puerto Rico to escape the never-ending Polar Vortex of the Midwest. I wanted to surprise her with something special, but easy to transport. Cookies, of course!

These are made using a heart cookie cookie cutter and chopping off the bottom of the heart. Can you see it?

She's allergic to gluten, so it was tricky to find a sugar cookie recipe that didn't spread. I ended up using this recipe with Cup for Cup gluten free flour mix. It DID spread, but I used the cutter to help shape the cookie while it cooled. That was probably the hardest part!

From there, we used simple royal icing to decorate the cookies with frilly designs.

BTW I found Sweet Sugar Belle which gives the best sugar cookie tips around!

From L to M

It's Melyssa's birthday! Her favorite is pretty simple - chocolate on chocolate. I did a tall three layer chocolate cake with our favorite swiss meringue chocolate recipe. The flower was made out of gum paste, which I colored with purple gel color. You can't see it in the picture, but there's gold luster dust tapped onto the flower to give an extra oomph. Oh, and I couldn't resist adding neon pink sprinkles to make it extra girly.

Happy birthday, M!

Dessert Tables

Why make one cake when you can make everything your heart desires? We love creating dessert menus and tying them together by theme or color. 

The first picture is of a bridal shower where the host wanted to focus on their honeymoon getaway to Vietnam. So we made:

• Bahn Cam (Vietnamese sesame doughnuts) filled with chocolate Brigadeiros. This is our new favorite recipe that we created.
• Berry Pie "Rangoon," a twist on everyone's favorite Asian appetizer, Crab Rangoon. Instead of cheese, fill with berries. These can be baked or fried - we fried ours (no one saved on calories that day!).
• White Cake with Green Tea Buttercream. We added Sencha powdered green tea to vanilla swiss meringue buttercream.
• Sugar cookies decorated with royal icing. The bride's and groom's names both start with "S"!

The second picture is of a baby shower treat table. The upcoming arrival of a baby boy called for - you guessed it - baby blue! In total, but not all captured in the picture:

• Whoopie pies. Melyssa used a whoopie pie maker and said it was quite messy. We will stick to the good old oven for this in the future.
• Vanilla cake with orange buttercream
• Cinnamon sugar cookies
• Rock candy
• Chocolate covered pretzel rods
• Marshmallow pops

Our tip? Dessert tables seem like a lot of work, but with a properly planned schedule it can be easier than making a large cake. We baked and decorated over the course of a couple weeks. Many things can be made and frozen ahead of time like the cookies, buttercream, and cakes. The doughnuts should be fried the day of the event to keep the taste as fresh as possible.