10/25/10

Denim Bottom Toppers

Mixing both of my worlds
= equals =
edible fashions?

I was asked to make some denim pocket cupcake toppers for a client meeting at my office.

To mimic a natural looking denim color, I blended some black and royal fondant together making sure to leave it a little marbled. I happened to accidentally stumble upon the perfect textured cutting board which brought this faux textile to life. After rolling the fondant to 1/8", I used a paper template and a sharp knife to cut the pocket shapes.

Luckily I had a tracing wheel in my sewing box which made the signature stitch marks a breeze.

Turns out that the clients weren't even allowed to eat them... at least they were fun to look at.

10/18/10

International Cupcake Delivery

When you're getting married in the Dominican Republic and you're a graphic artist, you want to handle all the details yourself. That's exactly what my close friend did for her wedding in tropical paradise. Everyone was dressed to the nines (more like dressed for the 99 degree weather), and her attention to detail was a 10.

My friend was so grateful that over 100 of her closest friends and family RSVP'd to her international nuptials that she decided to come up with a surprise for those also celebrating a special time during their trip. She asked what I thought about making cupcakes for a few celebrating a birthday during her wedding week abroad. Impossible? Nah. Challenging? You bet.

She made special custom designed gift tags for each birthday guest and provided me with ribbons, orange tropical royal icing flowers, gold luster dust and gold dragees.
I made the unique cupcake wrappers with my Cricut cutting machine.

All I had to do was make the cupcakes and bring them on an international flight to decorate at the resort, box them up and deliver them to the reception. Well, let's just say... easier said than done. The cupcakes were almost unrecognizable when we arrived. Panic. Breathe. Put the cupcakes back together.

Luckily I had the pretty decorative cupcake wrappers and icing to cover up the crumbly mess that remained.

Tah Dah! Magic!

If I didn't tell you how traumatic they looked before being decorated, you would've had no idea. I think they look as if I had baked them at the resort.

Here's a shot of them on the table at the reception with the table numbers (which the bride also made herself).

Now the wedding cake is another story. I was put in charge of overseeing the wedding cake and by "overseeing" I mean decorating... I had only one direction to follow:
Make sure the cake was not sitting on a paper doily.
It was. I removed. Check.

The cake was bare. It was a traditional Dominican cake covered in some sort of ganache-like icing. That's all. The bride had given some ribbon to the wedding coordinator which my boyfriend and another of our friends helped me put on the cake's tiers before the ceremony.

We needed flowers and the florist wasn't there yet. Panic yet again. Breathe. Go to ceremony while baker transported the cake to the reception. Breathe.

The ceremony was incredible. Rain earlier in the day caused some extreme humidity but the sky was clear and we were ready to celebrate... as were all the on-lookers at the beach in their swimsuits.

While the wedding ceremony guests were attending the cocktail hour, two friends and I ran to the reception hall to add flowers to the cake. We arranged the flowers and greenery on the cake and were able to grab a drink with everyone else in no time. Thank goodness for creative friends!

I think the cake looked stunning in it's tropical setting at the open-air reception.

My friend and her husband seemed to enjoy it as well.

The cake was delicious, too bad I can't take credit for the taste!

Congratulations! Thank you for including me in all the special events leading up to your magical day. Best wishes, my friend.

10/11/10

Ghosts of Halloweens Past

In preparing for my favorite holiday (who am I kidding? they're all my favorites), I took a look back in my photo archive and found these glorious attempts at conjuring up some spooky, fun treats.

2006
Oh goodness! This did indeed give me nightmares... not because it's horrifically spooky, but because I threw a hissy fit attempting to create cereal treats! I made a cocoa crispy treat graveyard and fruity pebble crispy treat ghost pops. I swore off crispy treats after this experience.

2007
These eyeball cupcakes came out pretty cute thanks to Wilton's Wacky Witch Silly-Feet Silicone Baking Cups and Ready-To-Use Icing Tubes. The idea came from Wilton's website too... but don't look for it because their picture makes mine look bad! ha!

2008
I impressed myself with these cookies! I found these Spooky Cutters in my cabinet and had been dyyying to use them so I made a bag of sugar cookie mix and tinted half the dough with cocoa powder to cut out the bats, ghosts, skulls and 'eek's. Not gonna lie... I picked the ones I thought would be easiest to decorate. I re-cut them when they came out of the oven, while the dough was still soft, to give them sharper looking edges and then outlined them with Wilton's Ready-To-Use Icing Tubes after they had cooled.

2009
A co-worker gave me the Wilton Halloween Candy Kit so I made these cute chocolate coated pretzels to give out at our office. I used Wilton's Candy Melts, of course! The witch fingers are my favorite- plus they were easy to make.

2009
Being a Wilton fanatic paid off! I won a Halloween contest on their facebook page and they sent me a box of goodies, including this Skull Mini Cakelet Pan. I made the skulls out of Devil's Food Cake, fittingly, and covered them in black chocolate ganache. I initially tried to make dark chocolate ganache but I ruined my first batch (as always) and luckily had some black candy melts on hand. The faces were piped on with melted white chocolate.

Hmmm... What will I make this year?

10/4/10

Fall Floral Engagement Minis

I made these mini cupcake cuties last fall while I was still taking cake decorating classes. I had just learned how to make the chrysanthemum flower with decorator icing but had not yet mastered the art of buttercream consistencies. The icing I made was too stiff and I was too stubborn to add a little more water and remix it... so I suffered from a few days of hand cramps. Go figure.

The cupcakes were for a friend's fall-themed engagement party. I don't remember how many I made but it felt like hundreds!

I gave up on the mums and did some drop flowers to save my poor aching pastry-bag-hand.

They almost look too pretty too eat... I say 'almost' because a few people were eating them as I was displaying them.
Um... please don't do that.

I also made about 8 dozen of these '24-carrot' cake engagement ring mini cupcakes.

Bite-size beauties.

I can't believe a year passed already and the wedding is about to happen for this couple next weekend!

Click Here to see the South Beach style bridal shower cake I did this summer for the bride... and stay tuned for wedding dessert details!