Happy Birthday Kara!

For my fabulous sister who loooooves my cakes!  This one was a Red Velvet smothered in Swiss Meringue Cream Cheese Buttercream.  

King Of Pop

A little tribute to the King of Pop.... Made for a birthday boy who loves MJ.  Chocolate cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream and gumpaste detailing

Princess Sky

My beautiful daughter Sky loves anything pink and princess-y. 

This was a dilemma for me because I tend to veer away from anything that was too, uhm..... frou-frou.  After several debates with Sky, we settled for a tiara cake and some matching cupcakes.  

I loved how everything turned out, because the cake was sooo girly without coming out too flourish-y.  I took my inspiration from Peggy Porchen's Coco's Corsage Cake found in her latest book, Cake Chic. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cake-Chic-Peggy-Porschen/dp/1844007103 

I opted to color the cake in Rose Petal Pink, rather than the more ubiquitous baby pink for a more sophisticated touch.  The tiara was made out of gumpaste, with the design courtesy of various baking and decorating websites. 

Super Mario Brothers

My son Reef and his cousin Dylan are crazy about Mario Kart Wii!  They could spend hours playing with the game when Dylan came over to visit.  So, when Dylan's birthday came around, I thought of giving him a cake designed after their favorite game.  The cake is made of vanilla butter cake with chocolate ganache fillling and fondant icing.  All the character components were made of gumpaste.  

More Than Meets The Eye

My adorable nephew Thomas (aka Booboo) wanted a Transformer's themed cake and cupcakes.

With some very lofty ambitions about the cake (after all, I was a fan of the whole Autobots vs Decepticons saga) I first wanted to stick an 18" scale realistic paper model of Optimus Prime in truck mode on top of the cake.  However, several paper cuts later, I finally nixed the idea because the model was too damn complicated to execute!

I opted to stick to a gumpaste Autobots insignia cake topper with gumpaste flames (mimicking the ones found on Optimus) undulating around the sides of the cake.  Thrown in were chocolate cupcakes adorned in red and blue marshmallow icing with matching colored sugar sprinkles.  Sometimes, simplicity is always the best option :) 

Ballerina Princess

Luna, one of my daughter's good friends, wanted cupcakes to match her Ballerina Princess themed party.  Since the little darling was allergic to red food coloring, these cupcakes were a challenge to make since how can we have a ballerina theme without pink cupcakes?!?

Leda (Luna's mom) and I decided to go for the natural color of swiss buttercream (ecru) and play around with the color palette from there.  Leda opted to have edible gumpaste toppers that she can remove to ensure that Luna would be safe from any allergic reaction.  We ended up with a collection of cupcakes with ballerina shoes, stars and tiaras as toppers, which delighted the little princess on her special day. 

A Bunch of Cupcakes For One Smart Baby

I have always been amazed at how smart and precocious Ela is.  I mean, the kid could speak clear and coherent sentences at the early age of one and a half!  So, when Ria, her mom, called me up for a cupcake emergency, I was more than happy to oblige her last minute order.

Ria requested to have mini cupcakes in lieu of the usual 3 oz cupcakes we usually find at children's birthday parties so the kids could have bite size portions of the treat.  We decided on a pastel color scheme based on Ela's favorite colors.  The result was bite sized chocolate morsels topped with marshmallow icing.