Happy Summer!!

I know that as I write this post, back-to-school sales are in full
swing and children everywhere are relishing the last few weeks of freedom before heading back to their desks. But I'm waaaaay behind on my blogging, so let me take you back to a happier time, when 8 weeks of sun, sand and relaxation were ahead of us...ahhhh, the memories.

So back at the end of the school year, my friend Diane commissioned me to make cupcakes as gifts for her daughter Caitlyn's teachers. How thoughtful! I bet all the teachers want Caitlyn in their class next year! Cupcakes are so much better than a mug with apples on it. Not that teachers don't appreciate those too. But you know what I'm saying.

We decided on a mix of decorations that would commemorate both the wonderful work Caitlyn's teachers had done this year and the excitement of summer. Chalk boards, beach balls, and of course, that old classic...the apple.

Sam's Truck Cake!

I love doing birthday cakes, especially when they are for adorable little kids. When you're turning one, you have such a sense of excitement about what you're interested in, which means that your mom knows exactly what kind of cake to ask for. For Sam, my dear friend Michelle's nephew, the thing that he was super into when he turned one in May was trucks!! His mom Jessica found the perfect dump truck cake topper/toy and I took it from there!

Jessica baked these adorable cupcakes to go along with the cake. Yum!

Here's the birthday boy with his mom. Looks like they had a great day celebrating his first year on Earth. Here's to 100 more, Sam!!

Dave's Western Birthday Cake

This was a whole new challenge for me!! I got an email from a friend of a friend telling me that he was throwing a huge Western-themed 40th birthday party and needed a cool cake to go along with the theme. He was open to suggestions and didn't have anything specific online, so I started doing some research. Usually when I need to come up with a cake idea, I google it and come up with a whole bunch of cakes that I can draw from as inspiration. This was not the case when I googled "western cakes." Most were tiered cakes with bandana prints or big belt buckles on the side. I wasn't impressed. That is, until I saw this...


Perfect, right?! I loved it. But Dave needed a cake that would be big enough to feed 150 people, and this one saloon wouldn't quite cut it. So I decided to expand on the idea of the saloon and make a whole Western town. I think it turned out cute!! I made the buildings out of rice crispies and all of the decorations/walls/etc. out of fondant and gumpaste. I used gel food coloring as paint to make the buildings really stand out. The sand is graham cracker crumbs.

Here's a view of the saloon and general store. I named them after Dave and all things related to him and his birthday.

Here is the "40 Bottles Saloon." I love the curtains ;)

Dave's General Store.

Emerson Stables was my favorite part. I love horses! Making horse bodies out of anything edible is basically impossible (unless they're lying down, but who's ever seen a horse lying down in the middle of a bustling Western town?), so I opted to have their heads poking out of their stables. Coincidentally, this is also how I used to draw horses as a kid, because I can't draw! I'd draw their heads peaking out from the edge of the paper. Full circle moment.

Close up on Mr. Ed.

The town was celebrating Dave's birthday too ;)

And what Western Town would be complete without some Cacti??

Dave was excited to see the cake when he picked it up, and says that it was a big hit at the party!

Kallie's Strawberry Shortcake Cake

So my cousin's daughter Kallie loves her birthdays almost as much as I love mine. She started planning this, her third birthday party, as soon as her second birthday had passed. We are definitely related. This year, Kallie decided to have a Strawberry Shortcake birthday. I thought, "oh yay! I loved Strawberry Shortcake as a kid. This will be fun." So I went online to get some inspiration and was surprised by what I found. My old friend Strawberry Shortcake was...different. It's been 20 years, and I guess SSC wasn't loving the way she was aging, so she had some work done. For a reminder, this is what she used to look like:Remember her trip to the Big Apple to compete in a baking competition? Ahhh...childhood. Well, the new Strawberry Shortcake might be more likely to compete in a beauty competition. Take a look:

Oh Strawberry! How you've changed. I'm really not ok with this. I could write a whole other post about what this says about the over sexualization of young girls in America or the media's ideas of what beauty is...but let's just get back to the cake for now. Kallie is more familiar with this new Strawberry Shortcake, so that's what I based the cake on.

Here's a view of the front. Love the bright colors.

She got comfortable on a patch of strawberries.

She brought her pets Pupcake and Custard to the party. While she's always had Custard, she must have adopted Pupcake after her facelift.

While it's definitely not a traditional cake decorating method, I used a sticker for her face ;) I couldn't get it right when I tried making it out of gumpaste and I decided it would be more important to Kallie that it looked like Strawberry than that I'd made it totally edible.

Close up on Pupcake and Custard!

Kallie really liked the cake!! I was so glad to make it for her. The first cake I ever decorated was an Elmo cake for Kallie's first birthday, so it's special that my cake decorating skills have grown up along with my favorite little girl. Love you Kallie!! Let's start planning next year's birthday now ;)

Nate's Firetruck Cake

Since I started posting pictures of my cakes and other treats on my facebook page, I've gotten a few requests from friends that I haven't seen in a while, which is so fun. This one came from Alissa, a wonderful now-mom-of-two who I totally looked up to at summer camp every year when I was a kid. She was the super mature Junior Counselor when I was an impressionable young camper, and I just thought Alissa was the coolest. We haven't seen each other much in the intervening years, but we've kept in touch via facebook and I was so happy when she asked me to do a cake for her son Nate's 2nd birthday. Kids' cakes are always so fun to do.

Nate is a big fan of trucks. Dump trucks, garbage trucks, fire trucks, you name it, if it has a bunch of wheels and is kinda big and noisy, he loves it. Alissa gave me free reign to decide what kind of truck to feature, and since I am a fan myself of firetrucks (well...maybe I'm more interested in the firemen, but their trucks are cool too), I decided to go with that. I found a few great inspirational pictures on the internet, Alissa and I decided on one to base the cake on, and here is the result!! It was one of the funnest cakes I've worked on so far. The skills I learned playing with FIMO clay as a kid came in handy for making the fireman, hydrant and the truck. So fun. I delivered the cake this morning and Nate loved it!! He kept pointing at the cake and saying "Firetruck!" and "Look, the man!" I was thrilled with his reaction. Here are some more pictures...

Here's a good view of the whole thing. I liked using a big cake board to set the scene.

This cutie-patootie fireman is squelching those flames!

Look at this stud. Maybe I should have made him wink.

Fire hydrant. Can't fight a fire without one!


The firetruck= the star of the show!


Side view


And don't forget about the ladder!

All in all I think this is one of my best cakes ever, and it was also one of the most fun to make. Thanks, Alissa, for the project, and Happy Birthday, Nate!!

Rugby Groom's Cake

I love the idea of a Groom's cake. We girls love weddings so much and often end up creating the day of our dreams without letting the groom pick too many of the details, so the idea of surprising our men with a special, manly cake of their very own is a trend that I'm glad is picking up steam in this part of the country. Groom's cakes have long been popular in Europe and the American South, so why not L.A?

I was thrilled to get a request from Alexis, a friend of mine from high school, to do a groom's cake for her soon-to-be-hubby Mitchell. They were using their venue caterers to do the main wedding cake, and they had decided on a vanilla cake in hopes of pleasing the most guests. Mitchell loooooves chocolate (smart man), so he was feeling a bit disappointed about his only dessert option at the wedding. His loving bride decided that she wanted her hubby to have the chocolate his heart so desired, so she asked me if I could do a super chocolatey cake for him. In terms of design, he's a huge fan of rugby and specifically New Zealand's team, the All Blacks, so she wanted to honor that in his cake. I ended up making a dark chocolate cake with a chocolate chocolate chip filling, covered in fondant and decorated with a team rugby ball, a rugby goal post and the team logo, a white feather.

Mitchell loved the cake!! I can't wait to see the professional pictures their photographer took since I had to take mine at night and it just didn't do the cake justice. But for now, at least you can get a sneak peak!

Brothers & Sisters Viewing Party

You might remember from this post or from my weeks (ok, maybe months) of shameless self promotion on facebook that my cupcakes were going to be making their big debut on ABC's Brothers & Sisters. Well, they did! I thought the only appropriate way to celebrate was to view the show with some good friends and good cupcakes. So I hosted a viewing party and used it as a chance to experiment with some new cupcake flavors.


These two actually aren't new. One is chocolate cake with vanilla frosting an the other is chocolate cake with raspberry filling and chocolate swirl frosting. It's a take on that chocolate raspberry cake I made a few months ago. Yum!


Then this one is a pink lemonade cupcake. It's a lemon cake with frosting that has both lemon juice and blood orange juice in it (that's what made it pink!). This one was pretty tasty. I love blood oranges.


This one was a special request from my friend, Rosie. It's a maple Bacon cupcake with turbinado sugar and sea salt on top. If you like bacon, you would love this one. It also makes it totally justifiable to eat a cupcake for breakfast, which is a win in my book ;)

This one is my favorite. It's a chocolate cupcake with coconut buttercream filling, dipped in chocolate ganache and topped with sugary coconut flakes. YUMMO!!! This one is to die for if I do say so myself.

If anyone would like to try any of these let me know!

And if you haven't seen the episode and would like to watch Sally Field carry my cupcakes across the screen, here is the link to the episode on Hulu!

http://www.hulu.com/watch/221383/brothers-and-sisters-home-is-where-the-fort-is

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!