The Cupcakes that Started it All!

I was looking back through photos and found these pics from Goldie's 1st birthday party. Her given name is Marigold and my idea was to make marigold cupcakes (I took a few liberties with the colors!). This is what lead me to my first cake decorating class. (and my first petal tip).

Is it too soon for Christmas Cookies????

Probably so - but I wanted to try out a new recipe & I figured Santa wouldn't mind.

Butterfly & Monogram Iced Cookies

These iced cookies in lavender, white and brown were done fore a birthday tea. I opted for a wet on wet technique to give the cookies a perfectly smooth look. Frustratingly, photographing them was more difficult than making them. How does one keep a cookie from looking "flat'?

Autumn Leaves Iced Cookies

Bring on Fall!!!!!!!! I love everything about fall - I'm from Maine, so for me fall means crisp air, scarves, fires in the fireplace and of course bright foliage. It's what I miss most, living her in SoCal. So, on your typical Los Angeles 90 degree October day, I decided to whip up some autumn leaves. Yummy sugar cookies with royal icing.

Blood Orange Buttercream Cake

Yum. Yum. Yum.
This cake was soooo good. I used juice from a blood-orange in the frosting which gave it an amazing sweet & sour tang. The natural color it produced was a beautiful sunset-pink.

High School Musical Birthday Cake

OK, so I'll admit it - High School Musical isn't really my scene. But after a bit of research I was able to get inspired for this little girl's birthday cake. I thought it would be fun to do a tiered cake for a four year old as opposed to a more expected sheet-cake.
Mimi loved seeing her name in marquis lights and announced to everyone that the cake was hers! The birthday girl loves chocolate, so it's chocolate-coffee-fudge cake filled with milk-chocolate ganache and wrapped in fondant.

Golden Wedding Cake

I was THRILLED to do my first wedding cake!
The client wanted something elegant, simple and "modern-ish". I decided to keep it monochrome and add interest with sheen and texture.
The cake is a classic buttermilk filled with lemon buttercream and wrapped in fondant.

Baby Shower Cupcakes for Stephanie

I love pink! I love a chance to be girly! And I love classic foil wrappers!
Stephanie was expecting a baby girl so I did these chocolate cupcakes in shades of pink with little satin bows hot-glued on the wrapper. So Cute!

Nancy's Vegan Birthday Cake!

I must admit - doing a vegan cake was a challenge. But I found a great vegan zucchini cake recipe that turned out totally yummy. Where I ran into a bit of trouble was the vegan cream-cheese frosting. One word - runny. no matter how much powdered sugar I put in, that stuff would not stay put. It didn't help that it was the hottest day of the year! I still think It looked cute in the end - just not as clean as I like.

Mustache Ice Cream Cake!

For Robert's birthday he requested an Ice Cream Cake. I did Chocolate Fudge cake with Chocolate Chip Ice Cream and a Mocha-Latte Buttercream frosting. The chocolate mustache decorations made for lots of birthday shenanigans.

The Most Delicious Cake Ever!

I Whipped this up in a flash for a last-minute dinner party. Since it was for ME, I made what I like: Almond Cake with Citrus Butter Cream. It was spectacularly delicious!

Bobby's 40th Birthday Extraviganza!

I was basically given free reign with this cake. All they wanted was for it to be chocolate and for it to be big. Knowing the birthday boy as I do, to be a bit of a dandy, I was inspired to create an opulent peacock cake. My challenge was to keep it all in the realm of masculine. At the time this was by far my biggest cake, so delivering it was a bit of a nail-biter. But we got there in one piece!

Shane's Thomas the Train Cake

I had a lot of fun with this one. I wanted to give the sheet cake some dimensionality so I constructed an honest-to-goodness tunnel for the train. The realistic "lake" is piping gel tinted blue surrounded by chocolate rocks. My favorite part has to be the groovy trees. I'll definitely be doing those again. Happy Birthday Shane!

UCLA Bruin's Basketball Cake

This was a birthday cake for a friend who's a big Bruins fan. "Win Peas!" is a tribute to his little girl's favorite thing to yell at games.