Audrey & Winson's Wedding

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending my friend Audrey's wedding at the gorgeous Brooklyn Botanic Garden in Brooklyn, NY.  Audrey and Winson are pretty much the cutest couple ever - and I couldn't be happier for them!!

The Botanic Garden is amazing - I can't wait to go back and spend the day walking around.  From a garden filled with flowers from Shakespeare's novels to amazing rose gardens, there was far too much to see in the hour or so that we had to walk around.  Just a few shots of some of the beautiful flowers in bloom ...

For their wedding favors, I made red velvet cake pops, dipped in white chocolate and a milk chocolate drizzle.  Packaged in colors to coordinate with their wedding color scheme, the cake pops added an elegant touch to each table setting.

After dinner, our table could barely wait to eat their favors!  Here are our new friends, Kristen and Wai-Sing, clearly enjoying their cake pops:

Audrey and Winson - wishing you a life filled with love, laughter, and endless happiness!!

The beautiful bride and me!

Featured on Sugar Turntable!

These days, there are plenty of good cake related resources out there - but it's rare to find a really *great* one! The Sugar Turntable is filled with fantastic tutorials and creative cake and sugar ideas. Kathryn, the amazing woman behind the blog, owned a wedding cake bakery for several years, and is now sharing her love of baking and expertise online. 

I'm delighted to say that my cake pop tutorial is featured on the Sugar Turntable today - head on over and check it out!

Guest Post: Summer S'mores

Happy summer everyone! Last week, I mentioned that my guest post this month on the Pure Joy Events blog would piggy back and my s'mores cupcakes post. I'm happy to say that the recipes are up - head on over to learn how to make s'mores pops and peanut butter crunch s'mores bars!

A S'mores Extravaganza!

The official start of summer is just about a week away - and nothing says summer to me quite like s'mores!  The gooey, melted chocolate, slightly cripsy and totally melted marshmallows and crunchy graham crackers?   Yes, please.

Today I have a twist on this popular campfire treat - s'mores cupcakes!  Don't be intimidated by the number of steps - each one is pretty easy, and the outcome is certainly worth it.  Wondering what the other treats are in the photo above?  In addition to the s'mores cupcakes, we have peanut butter crunch s'mores bars and s'mores pops - you'll learn how to make both later this month in my guest post on the Pure Joy Events blog!

Continued after the jump »

Stars & Stripes Graduation Cake

This weekend, I had the pleasure of creating a gorgeous Stars & Stripes themed cake for a big graduation party for a brother and sister. Eric and Lauren graduated from college and high school respectively, and had a pretty fabulous party!

The top two tiers were lemon cake with lemon cream filling, the third tier chocolate cake with cappuccino cream filling, and the bottom tier coordinated perfectly with the party theme - red, white and blue velvet with vanilla cream filling (I can't wait to see a picture of a slice of the red, white, and blue cake!).  This is the biggest cake I've made yet - yes, I've made other 4-tier cakes, but this is the first one that's all cake.  I really enjoyed creating this cake - everything went super smoothly, and I couldn't be happier with the final result. 

Congratulations Lauren & Eric!  Best wishes to both of you in the next chapters of your lives!

Laurie & Scott's Wedding

My cousin Scott married Laurie last night in a beautiful ceremony at The Greenhouse, in Plymouth NH.  The party continued afterward at a super cute inn just down the road.

And now for the sweets (and there were a lot of them last night!). Guests brought home chocolate cake pop flavors...

...and ate lots of cupcakes for dessert!   We offered four types of cupcakes - white velvet filled with lemon curd and blueberries, white velvet filled with strawberries & cream (both topped with vanilla buttercream), chocolate filled with a ganache filled raspberry and topped with chocolate buttercream, and chocolate stout cake filled with whiskey ganache and topped with Bailey's buttercream.  The cutting cake was white velvet filled with strawberries and cream, and was embellished with modern purple flowers.  Sorry that these pictures aren't the most fabulous - I'll have some better ones up soon!

Laurie and Scott cutting their cake - I'm going to say that Laurie was giving the cake a "thumbs up" in the second picture!

Immediately after the cake was cut, the crowd descended upon the cupcakes. Everyone LOVED them - this is a huge reason that caking makes me so darn happy!

And me at the end of the night - looking a little tired, but super happy!

Congratulations you two lovebirds!  We were so happy to be there to celebrate this momentous occasion in your lives!