Hello Kitty Baby Shower

A friend of mine threw a babyshower and hired me to do a cake and favors. The shower had a Hello Kitty/zebra stripe/hot pink theme, which gave me a fun palate to work with. I really love having a theme or colors to work with (it gets my creative juices flowing and gives me a great jumping off point), so this was a fun project. She wanted the favors to be a tasty take-home treat and we decided on Hello Kitty cookies, which were vanilla sugar cookies with vanilla icing and a scalloped fondant circle and HK's cute face in the middle! Individual baggies and bows made these cookies a special gift for all the guests invited. Rosie sent me a picture of the adorable table they set up featuring the cake, gifts and a few of the cookies. I think they did a wonderful job of planning an adorable shower and I always love seeing my desserts in context!

The Debut of "The Austin" cupcake

My friend and co-worker Shireetha is having a baby boy in the very near future, and a few of us at work decided to throw her a surprise baby shower! Now, choosing desserts for a surprise party is harder than I expected. Shireetha had been saying she was craving cupcakes, so that part was easy, but I had no idea what kind to make. I wanted her to like them (obviously), but I couldn't just ask her what she wanted, because then it would ruin the surprise. You're thinking, "Emily, there must be a stealthy maneuver you can use to ascertain Shireetha's favorite cupcake flavors." Well, clearly you don't know me that well, because I am the worst sneaky person you'll ever meet. I am a horrible liar, and only slightly better at keeping secrets, so this was a challenge. But I had to do my best. I ever so subtley started a conversation at work designed to lead to the information I needed. I pretended I was taking some kind of survey for business purposes about people's favorite cupcake flavors and hoped that my face didn't look too guilty as I collected data. She said that she likes vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting best, but if she makes them at home she likes vanilla with chocolate frosting, and actually her favorite might be german chocolate. Oh geez. This was too much information. Which to go with?

So I invented a special cupcake just for Shireetha and named it after her new baby-to-be, Austin (who I actually helped name, by the way). A vanilla cupcake with chocolate fudge filling and german chocolate topping (that gooey, coconutty goodness) and mini chocolate chips on top. I have to say it was pretty delicious. If you'd like to try this cupcake yourself, just tell me you want to try "The Austin" and this tasty treat could be all yours!

Celebration Cookies

Who doesn't love a good cookie? Only crazy people, that's who. This particular box of shortbread and crispy chocolate chip cookies was made especially for my aunt, Monette, who just completed her last radiation treatment for breast cancer and wanted to celebrate with her friends at work. Yay Mo!!!! Here's to great health and great cookies to celebrate it.

Baking for Love

This is my cute cousin Valerie. Okay, she's not technically my cousin. She's my cousin-in-law's cousin. In other words, my cousin married her cousin. Got it? Okay good. Valerie is a seriously cool chick, so when she asked me to give her a baking lesson, I knew it would be fun times.

She is not only cool, but smart, and knows, as we all do, that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. This being the case, she wanted to make her boyfriend a red velvet cake for Valentine's Day. Such a cute idea! So we got together and I guided Valerie through the whole baking process. For someone who admits that the only baking she usually does is cutting up a roll of Pillsbury cookie dough and throwing it in the oven, she did a great job! Here are some pics of Valerie and her cute cake.

A cute apron makes anyone a more confident baker.


These were the vanilla beans we pulled out of our batter. We might possibly have sucked them clean after pulling them out. Just maybe.


Look at that red batter!

It wouldn't be red velvet without cream cheese frosting!

Look at that concentration!

I got found these adorable heart sprinkles at the cake decorating store and was glad Valerie found a use for them!

So cute!

Yay, Valerie! Two thumbs up for sure. Hope the boyfriend enjoys the cake!! It was definitely made with lots of love!

What a Hoot

When I got a call about doing cupcakes for a woodland creatures/owl themed baby shower I got really excited. I love doing projects that let me get really artistic, so this was fun. I get a lot of my ideas by looking on the internet, and boy oh boy, what a treasure trove! Hoooooooo knew how many cute owl cupcakes there were out there? (Get it? hooooooo knew? Like an owl? I'm so clever, you might say I am quite a hoot ;) I sent a handful of the pictures I liked to my client, Tonia, and she picked out this one that she liked best:

She wanted me to use the colors brown, cream, and blue, so I reimagined the internet cupcakes into the ones at the top of the page. I think they turned out pretty cute, and I have to say I like my color combo better than the originals ;)

Here are some close ups of the different cupcakes:

Fruity Foray

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am an unapologetic chocolate lover. I usually see no point in wasting calories on desserts that are not chocolate, so I rarely bake fruit based desserts- but I made a couple of cakes lately that really make fruit a worthy part of dessert.

The first cake was a chocolate cake with raspberry filling and dark chocolate buttercream. I must say that this was one of the tastiest cakes I have ever made. Yes, it was primarily a chocolate dessert so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but the raspberry filling really made this one special and offset the dark chocolate perfectly. Yummmm!!!

The second dessert had no chocolate in it at all and it was still super delicious! It was a lemon bundt cake soaked in tart lemon simple syrup and drizzled with a sweet glaze. This one was seriously a refreshing treat. I plan on making them both again for myself and you should try them too, so consider them great options for your next parties and order one from Emily's Custom Bakeshop today!