Bridal Shower Cupcakes & Quick Cake for an Auction

I don't think I've ever baked this much in such a short period of time! Though frantic at moments, it was really fun, especially when Molly & Isabelle were helping. Basically, in less than 24 hours I had cupcakes and a cake to make. The cupcakes were for a bridal shower our church organized for my lovely friend Sarah. I decided to go with a blue and pink theme, with hearts and floral decorations out of fondant (I have been SO happy with the simple marshmallow recipe I found!). I made the chocolate and vanilla cupcakes from scratch from two recipes I found online, and filled them with a raspberry whip cream filling that I kind of made up. The frosting was (since I hate wasting food) a revamped version of the frosting from last week's baptism cake. I had kept it refrigerated and just added some freshly whipped cream to it and it turned out really yummy! Overall I think the cupcakes and the shower were a great success and was happy to get to make special cupcakes for a very special bride to be!

Cupcakes: Dark chocolate & vanilla

Filling: Raspberry whipped cream

Frosting: Lemon buttercream mixed with freshly whipped cream

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After the shower I had about 3 hours to bust this one out. I think had I had more time I would have done it a little more in keeping with my original design. Not to mention, today was EXTREMELY hot and as a result the fondant was being difficult, so I ended up just piping on stripes. I do still really want to try painting with frosting, but due to the tight schedule I just kind of palette knifed it on. Nonetheless it went over pretty well and got a final bid of about $75 toward a very good cause!

Georgia O'Keefe Cake, based on Red Poppy, 1927

Cake: Bittersweet dark chocolate

Filling: Pomegranate, malbec & raspberry filling

Frosting: Pomegranate, raspberry & cream cheese buttercream

Big THANK YOU to my mom for helping clean up my huge baking mess--our kitchen really was a disaster zone after my whirlwind of baking!

Church Baptism & BBQ Desserts

Did a lot of baking on Saturday with Molly before the Giants game that evening. We called it our "All American Day" because of the pie making and baseball combo. We decided to go with two "unique" pie recipes we found online for the BBQ: Mango Strawberry and an Avocado pie. While the mango one was delicious and something I'd definitely like to make again, the avocado was fun to try and pretty easy but not my favorite flavor. We also made a cake to celebrate the two baptisms during the Sunday service. O verall I think we were very successful... unfortunately I can't say the same for the Giants. We still had fun though!

Mango Strawberry Pie

Avocado Pie

Baptism Cake

Cake: Lemon pound cake

Filling: Lemon cream with whole raspberries

Frosting: Lemon buttercream covered by fondant

Lichtenstein Cake

Cake: 3 layers moist chocolate cake

Filling: 2 layers blueberry filling
Frosting: 1 layer mocha icing under fondant



I made this cake for the first First Friday art meeting. Didn't turn out exactly as I planned, but I think it was a good start to my art cake series and people liked the idea of tasting art (and liked eating the cake too!) Here's a series of photos taken during the process of making the cake.

お誕生日おめでとうございますCupcakes for Amanda

Last weekend my dear friend Amanda joined the quarter-century club and I used it as an excuse to bake some cupcakes! I chose a Japanese theme (since she's half Japanese, and pretty into all things Japanese) so I decorated them with little cherry blossom flowers I made out of gumpaste and (attempted) to write "Happy Birthday" in Japanese on them too.

Surprisingly, she was actually able to make out what it said without me giving hints! I was pretty stoked about that since my Japanese is more or less limited to domo arigato Mr. Roboto. Which reminds me, I came across these cupcakes and feel inclined to make a variation of my own (I LOVE ROBOTS!!!!)

Cake Series Idea

This past week I got the idea to do a series of cakes based on some of my favorite works of art. I thought it would be fun to not only base their design on the works, but their flavor too. Here are a few first designs from my sketch book. I think I'm going to tackle the Lichtenstein this week and bring it to the first Pacifica Arts Meeting that Amy. Q. from church has organized, taking place this Friday. What will be nice about creating it for that is that I'll be able to get some feedback from the other artists and also can feed them the cake after so I don't eat it ALL!

Merry Christmas Meghan

An actual canvas o'mine

An Idea I Had...

Ingredients: Chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting and fondant flowers
It's a cupcake bush; definitely a few things I would do differently next time, but not a bad first try of a concept I just came up with the other day. Hopefully the kids at church will enjoy them :)

1. My First Attempt

Cake: 2:1 ratio White Cake mix to Lemon Cake Mix

Filling: Lemon curd topped with fresh raspberries

Occasion: Gail and John Manson's 25th Wedding Anniversary & Vow Renewal

I have a certain tendency to try things for the sake of seeing whether or not I am actually able to do them. In this case, it was making a wedding cake for the Manson's 25th Anniversary & Vow Renewal Party. I have never tried using fondant or gum paste of any of those fancy bakery sorts of things, but I must say, it wasn't as hard as I expected it to be, and I think this may be a new hobby...now I just have to find events to make cakes for and people to eat them!!